I decided to poll the students with a question related to how far would you go to extract information from a suspected terrorist if there was a possibility of saving American lives.
Here is the poll and the results which showed that 50% of the students would resort to waterboarding. I even had one of the students describe what waterboarding is. I then explained to the students that if I were presenting my case against using any form of torture, including waterboarding, I would have to provide evidence that waterboarding and other methods aren't effective in extracting the truth. Here is the poll. It is live so you can text in your response.
Get a free sms student response system at Poll Everywhere
We then did a journal entry on an interrogation of a 10-year-old boy who was pressured into confessing to a crime he didn't commit. It brought home the point that these kinds of methods often lead to false confessions.
Check out the video.
We then moved into a group exercise in which students had to answer questions on the two assigned readings: Alter's Time to Think About Torture and Porter's Now the Talk is About Bringing Back Torture
I was not pleased with this groupwork activity where I assigned a writer, a resource person, a presenter, and an observer. Everyone was taking out their books when it was the resourcer's job to be in charge. There was little talking and from what the observers said on their sheets, the talking that did go on was chitchat about stuff not related to the assigned task. I think the biggest problem was that the students were not sitting face to face looking at one another. If I did this activity again, I would have printed out the task and made the students face one another to do the task. One student mentioned that the task was "boring." It probably didn't challenge the students because everyone identified the thesis, came up with a decent definition of torture in the context of Alter and Porter's essays, and came up with a list of ways that they feel tortured.
Based on the results of the poll, I think that next time I will have the students debate using extreme measures like waterboarding to extract information. Since 50% of the class said they would do it, I would divide the class into groups of 4 (pro and con) and work on their case and then have a few present.
The video we had to watch about the boy getting mentally tortured was very interesting. It is interesting to see how our criminal justice field works, and will do anything to get the answer THEY want. I believe the boy was tricked into saying what they wanted, and that was very wrong. I really like this class a lot, I feel that a lot of assignments we do are about issues in our world today, which is great because it is something that we can all relate to.
ReplyDeleteSo true...if you can't relate to what you are reading about, why do it??
ReplyDeleteWatching this video made me feel very uncomfortable. I believe it should be illegal to interrogate a child like that. It turned out to be that the child didnt even kill the girl. I think their should be laws with interrogating because they took it way too far with the little boy and for many hours of the day.
ReplyDeleteYou guys are very right about your angst to a child being questioned in such a vial manner. I think that what needs to be thought on too, are two things:
ReplyDeleteHow we also seem to think it is okay, as a country to interogate a child from a country we are fighting in the same manner, and
How we seem to think in the same light that questioning late teens, and early adults in the same manner, both on our home turf and also in the areas of our battlers.
It is easy to sit here on a blog for a composition class in college, and say oh, that is wrong, I would never support that. Yet when we go to vote for certain people to be elected in office, or we go tobuy certain products, we are saying "yeah, I am down with this, I think this is a great idea". Sometimes our actions speak louder than our words do. Sometimes we like to believe so much that we have nothing to do with things like this occuring when in reality we have everything to do with it, and are the instigators of such maltreatment.
Movements like the orange movement, and other movements within politics and the military even, that don't appear to be to "popular" are the actions being taken place by normal people who saw things like this happening for real, and decided to do something about it. Even if it means they do something as small as changing where they shop, and what products they buy, that just so happen to support instances in war, and in daily life like these.
Please do your research if matters like this really bother you, and you would like to take action against them.
This video that we watched about the young boy being harassed was disguiting! I hate the way police take advantage of their authority. My mom's cousin was shot and killed by a 12 year boy in chicago. The police questioned a suspect, who was innocent, and they tormented him and questionedd him so much. they gave him scenarios and reasons why he killed him and wouldnt give up. the innocent suspect finally gave in and confessed to a murder that he did not commit. he told the cops who the real murderer was but the cops refused to believe him. Just last year, they found the real killer. the innocent suspect who was convicted with murder, spent the last 20 something years in prison. That disguists me!
ReplyDeleteThat video is awful ! I cannot believe that actually took place and actually worked out in that way. I thought that this class discuassion about torture was interesting becasue i never thought about either choosing long terms in prison or having some kid of pain inflicted in me. I would rather stay in a prison for ife than have my leg or an arm cut off.
ReplyDeleteI liked this assignment but I also hated it at the same time. It was so hard to sit there and watch something that terrible take place in our country. I thought we would never stoop that low. I liked it though because it made me more aware of bad things that are taking place in America. I realize that other countries plot ways to sabotage us so we need to find some sort of way of preventing those things from happening but I do not think that physical torture is the least bit right or the moral thing to do.
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