Attack on U.S. Embassy in Syria (A Think)

The New York Times is reporting that Syrian forces pushed back an armed attack agains the U.S. Embassy in Syria. The article begins:

Islamic militants attempted to storm the U.S. Embassy in Damascus on Tuesday using automatic rifles, hand grenades and at least one van rigged with explosives, the government said. Four people were killed in the brazen attack, including three of the assailants.

According to the article no Americans were killed.

Lesson Ideas:
1. Many younger students don't know what an embassy is. Explain the concept to them. The people who work in an embassy are the representatives of one country in another country. Ask students to develop skits in which they pretend to be embassy employees. Encourage students to consider what kinds of messages countries might pass through their embassies to other countries.
2. Ask students if they can think of any useful metaphors for an embassy. Have a contest between different groups of students in which they work to develop metaphors for embassies. (This would even be more interesting if classes challenged other classes via blogs and wikis.)
3. The terrorists who attacked the U.S. Embassy yelled "Allah Akbar" "God is Great." Ask students how they think that a fundamentalist belief in God might prompt people to try and kill others. Encourage them to write a thought piece on this question, perhaps a blog entry.
4. Tell students to pretend that they are the newly appointed leader of an educational system in a country that had previously been fundamentalist. For years and years people in the country have been taught that God is great and God needs to be revered and part of revering God means killing people who don't accept God and in the opinion of local citizens work against God. They have been asked to develop a plan for re-educating people so that they come to believe that murder is never an acceptable course of action. Ask students to develop the plan with at least five key ideas as to how they should do this.

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