The Smart Aleck's Guide to American History includes several assignments. Under "No Reader Left Behind" we have to include these along with several standardized tests, but we're not too picky about #2 pencils. Use a crayon if you feel like it. And chew yourself some gum!
ASSIGNMENTS:
CHAPTER 2:
Write a rambling poem about Prescott or Dawes, the OTHER guys who made midnight rides that night, but failed to become American heroes because their names didn't rhyme with "you shall hear," like Paul Revere's did.
CHAPTER 3:
Most of us agree that "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was a better song than the one it was based on, "John Brown's Body Lies a Mouldering in the Grave," which was one of the solid gold smash hits of the 1850s. Your assignment: write a catchier song about mouldering.
CHAPTER 5:
Just before Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, was hanged, he wrote for the occasion entitled "I'm a-Goin' To the Lordy." It was awful. The full text is in the book. Your assignment: using only stuff from this chapter, complete this sentence: "'I'm a-goin' to the Lordy' sucks even more than______"
Some of our suggestions include "being a capitalist at one of Leon Czolgash's dinner parties," "sitting downwind of Taft on three bean casserole day," and "getting Woodrow Wilson's dental bill.
CHAPTER 6:
Make a propaganda poster for your teacher.
CHAPTER 7:
Convince your congressman or senator to back legislation to lower the voting age.
CHAPTER 9:
Make a diorama based on the song "Blood on the Risers"
CHAPTER 11:
In the back of the book, we came up with a mnemonic to remember ALL of the presidents in order by replacing their name with a word that starts with the same letter, forming a more of less coherent paragraph (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams ---> Well, Actually Just My Main Activity.....). Your assignment: come up with a better one!
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