On a particularly gorgeous October Friday, I decided to reward the students who came to my afternoon class by giving them a "can't get it wrong" assignment. Everyone who is in class and submits an answer gets credit, and I use the responses to gauge where to target pieces of my upcoming lectures.
This particular day I asked a two part question:
1) Is the US a Socialist country? 2) How do you know?
15 students nailed it.
Here’s a sampling of the rest.
- I think the US is socialist because the government allows people to do things like start their own businesses.
- I think America is pretty social with other countries and does a better job talking and dealing with them.
- The United States is socialist. We tend to lend things. But we aren’t under a dictator.
- I have no idea if the US is socialist. But I’m going to say yes.
- No idea. I’d guess C. C is always the answer.
- I’m going to go with “no” because I have a 50/50 chance of being right.
- Yes, we are socialist because we get our arms from importing and exporting.
- Yes we are socialist in the US because we talk about things and our opinion is supposed to matter.
- Yes? I’m guessing…. Something about Obama?.... I don’t know.
- US is not socialist. I know this because when someone says “socialist bastards” they’re talking about other countries.
- No, the US is not socialist because we are better than any country since we are not like any other country.
- Yes, the US is a socialist country. We have the public media and what spreads by word of mouth.
- Yes. I have no idea what socialism is but we do it with other countries.
- The US is not socialist. The US is a country. We have people.
- Sure we are socialist. And I’m basing my answer on the firm principle of guessing.
