by Richard D. Erlich
I became aware of the problem early in my teaching career, in 1967 or so. We were doing a standard-definition exercise in a composition class, and a student was reading aloud her brief definition piece that began, “In the United States treason is” — and then merrily gave her own definition.
“Whoa!” I said, “Time out!” and made the “time-out” gesture. “If ‘treason’ is the word you want to define, you can argue for all sorts of definitions, but if you start a sentence ‘In the United States treason is,” you have to finish the sentence with the definition in the Constitution.”
(It’s Article 3, section 3, but I just looked that up; I couldn’t have given the citation from memory in 1967, and didn’t. But back to the story).
Blank stares from the class.
“It’s the one crime defined in the Constitution.”
More blank stares.
“You’ve got to know this!” I said; “You’ve all just passed an exam on the Constitution.” And indeed they had.
Posted under Current Events, Education
This post was written by Global Village School on March 8, 2010
