The
theme song played as the kids entered the room and quieted down. It was the
last days before the big exam; the final that would determine if they would
pass American History or not.
“You
have a choice today.” Mr. G. exclaimed with his deep male voice. “You can do
the review on your own for the test tomorrow or play Jeopardy. Which one will
it be?”
All
the kids yelled back: “Jeopardy!”
The
kids are divided into groups of four per team. Each team captain writes
something down quickly on his small erasable board using markers after
discussing it with the members of his group. When Mr. G. says, “Time’s up,”
they all lift them high over their heads.
“Okay,
here we go! The first question is…” Words project onto the screen in front of
us from his computer and say: “What is the UN?”
“Peace League!” says team number one, headed
by Hector.
“Peace
Corp!” scribbles Christian from team number two.
“D/K!”
writes Bubba from team number three.
“?”
pens Cory from team number four.
“Answer:
United Nations!” yells Mr. G. as the screen lights up with the correct
response.
“Oh,
yeah, that!” mumbles Hector as he erases his board.
“Yeah,
that,” responds Mr. G. with a slight smile on his lips.
Next
question: “What is the zone that separates North and South Korea?” pops on the
screen.
“I’ll
give you a clue,” Mr. G. remarks. “It’s three letters.”
All
of them look clueless. Finally, they hold up their boards.
“The
ABC!”
“The
CBS!”
“The
I-Don’t-Know!”
“The
DDT!”
“And
the correct answer is: “The DMZ” or the Demilitarized Zone,” says Mr. G as the
word flashes on the screen. “Folks, you gotta do better than this! You’ve got to
study a little harder when you go home tonight.
Okay,
here’s the next question:”
“Who
was the assassin of JFK?”
“Lee
Harvey!” wrote teams 1 and 4.
“Barney!”
scribbled team 2.
“Don’t
know!” penned number 3.
The
answer once more popped onto the screen.
“Lee
Harvey Oswald is his full name but I’ll give credit to teams 1 and 4 for the
correct answer since they got part of it.”
Teams
one and four cheered.
The
next question comes up: “what was the name of the government agency that shot
up rockets at Cape Canaveral, Florida?”
Mr.
G. gives a hint: “four letters, folks, if that helps any.”
Team
1: no idea…
Team
2: MNBC…
Team
3: ABBA…
Team
4: NASA…
“Team
four, you got it! Good for you!”
Corey
just grins sheepishly. His other team members glowed with pride.
“Now,
let’s go on to Civil Rights for 300 points.”
“Who
was the lawyer for the NAACP who later became the first Black Supreme Court
justice?”
Team
1 and 2: Malcolm X…
Team
3: MLK…
Team
4: Thurgood Marshall…
“And
Team 4 gets it again!” exclaims Mr. G. as the correct answer once more appears
on the screen.
Finally,
after many more questions, Mr. G. is ready to add up all the points. Team four
won because of Cory, a boy with shoulder length wavy brown hair that
half-covered his face. He likes history, he told me later.
Yeah!
There’s hope yet for the younger generation!
What
about you? Are you smart enough to win at Jeopardy? Really, you don’t need to
be. You don’t even need to know all the facts of history. You just need to know
that Jesus died on the Cross for your sins and was resurrected from the dead.
That’s the central fact of history you don‘t want to miss. He will lead you
into all the knowledge, truth and wisdom you will need to lead a productive
life down here and one that will prepare you for eternity in heaven. It’s all
in his history book - past, present and future - the Holy Bible.
Study to show thyself approved; a
workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth… 2
Timothy 3:16.
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