The story of Ahmad Al-Qloushi, a college freshman from Kuwait who was reportedly told by a Marxist political science professor to get “psychotherapy” for writing a pro-America essay, has been kicking around for more than a month. It got renewed attention this weekend when Washington Times spotlighted Al-Qloushi on Sunday. In response, a number of bloggers and commenters (see Wizbang for a great round-up) went beyond the justifiable outrage over the professor’s alleged behavior and examined Al-Qloushi’s essay on its merits.

Discerning poli sci professors were not impressed. Al-Qloushi may have had his heart in the right place, and his prof may be a moonbat jerk, but the prof-bloggers note that Al-Qloushi simply didn’t do a very good job of answering the actual essay question:

Professor Joyner: F
Professor Taylor: Low D

Tough assessments, but points well-taken, don’t you think? By the way, I winced at the essay’s bad grammar and creative spelling, too, but do keep in mind that Al-Qloushi has only been in the country for 5 months.

Any other graders out there?

Update: History and civics teacher Betsy Newmark writes…

I tell my students to think of John McEnroe screaming “Answer the d*** question” at the line judge whenever they address an essay question. They might not have seen McEnroe at his height of obnoxiousness, but after chanting a cleaned-up version (Answer the dang question!) several times in class, they get the point. Last year, they even got in a circle before the AP exam and screamed out the lesson. Perhaps that helped them average 4.6 on the exam.

Not answering the question is the single most common mistake that students make in writing essays on tests. I can well imagine that this is not a lesson that the student learned in his Kuwaiti schools. This was a learning opportunity for this student, but, unfortunately, he learned an entirely different lesson.

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