Ok....it's the end of the six weeks and I'm grading unit tests. I teach Texas History and we've been studying Native Americans, and the Cattle Kingdom era. We've discussed the Trail of Tears, destruction of the buffalo, cattle drives, the invention of barbed wire and the difference between tenant farmers and sharecroppers to just name a few things. We've spent 4 weeks studying this and I really thought I'd done a pretty good job of sharing my vast knowledge about cowboy life. So naturally, I was quite perturbed when I read some of the following answers.....
- The purpose of a cattle drive is to help the cowboys stay in shape.
- The cattle drive is when we ride a cow from Texas to Louisiana so that the farmers can take their cotton to market. I'm not sure why they had to ride cows--what was wrong with their cars in the 1880's?
- The cowboys went on cattle drives so they could go somewhere fun and it was faster and cheaper.
- A cattle drive was the only type of transportation before railroads were invented.
What's really sad is these students are often pretty bright, and can "spit out" answers that I've given them, but when I asked them to think or to apply the knowledge, they can't do it.
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