Related to Simon‘s and Amanda‘s recent posts about failing to get the results one expects, here is a very simple example.
My first writing assignment prompt this semester for my course on economic development and environmental change read as follows:
Purpose of this response: learn about the nature of poverty and perceptions of the poor.
1. Read the rubric below.
2. Read/watch:
- MRU: Basic Facts of Growth and Development.
- Easterly, Ch. 1 and Intermezzo, p. 5-19.
- Emily Badger and Quoc Trung Bui, “In 83 Million Eviction Records, a Sweeping and Intimate New Look at Housing in America,” The New York Times.
- Hans Rosling, “The Magic Washing Machine,” TEDWomen, December 2010.
Answer the following question:
- William Easterly writes “When those of us from rich countries look at poor countries today, we see our own past poverty.” (p. 19). Is this an accurate view of poverty outside and inside the USA? Why?
My intent in asking the question — which I thought was obvious from the “statement of purpose” that prefaced it — was to get students to think about the differences between how they think about the poor at home and about the poor in countries that they’ve probably only seen on the news, if at all. In other words, I wanted them to start thinking about why our perceptions of the poor often depend on where the poor are located.
Instead students wrote about wealth and poverty from a historical perspective — that the USA once had a low level of economic development, as measured by GDP or income per capita, and that’s where other countries are today. The USA developed into a high-income, industrialized society, so probably other countries, even the poorest ones, will eventually do the same. There was no real discussion of the nature of poverty in the USA or why it exists.
So I need to a better question, something like “Are the causes of poverty in the USA the same as in other countries? Why?” or “If the USA is an economically-developed country, why does it still have poor people?”