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Alpha Stage
Walter Reed
March 6, 2007







On February 18, the Washington Post broke a story on the decrepit
conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The article  stated,
"the outpatients in..Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic
battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced
overseas."

Today, the Washington Post is running a story entitled, "Dole,
Shalala to Head Health Care Probe."

The article quoted President Bush as saying, "Listen, I am as
concerned as you are about the conditions at Walter Reed Army
Medical Center..My decisions have put our kids in harm's way, and
I'm concerned about the fact that when they come back they don't
get the full treatment they deserve."

Read a Related Article!!


Discussion-Starters for Younger Children

  • Ask your students if they think it's important to take care of
    people who are sick. Encourage them to explain their
    answers. Ask them what they can do to help sick people?
  • As a class consider creating get well cards for
    children in a local hospital.

  • Ask your students to recall a time when somebody did
    something nice for them. What did the other person do for
    them? Why did the other person do this? Have your students
    ever done something nice for this person? What did they do?
  • Consider challenging your students to do something
    nice for at least two people before the end of the day.
    (Note: Try and make sure that every student has
    something nice done for him/her.)

  • If a peer hurts them, do your students think that they can
    hurt the other person back? Why/why not?
  • Consider asking students to write a couple of
    sentences in response to this question.

  • Can your students remember a time when they have been
    sick? How did other people help them when they were sick?
    Do they think it's OK for Mom and Dad to do more for them
    than usual when they are sick? Why/why not?
  • Consider asking students to make a list of things that
    they can do for themselves on a regular day. Then
    ask students to make a list of things that they still
    even when they are sick. Consider using a T-Chart
    for this activity. The entire class might also develop
    one T-Chart together.


Discussion-Starters for Older Students

  • Vocabulary terms to discuss: Commission; Bureaucratic;
    Squalid; and, Reconciliation.

  • According to the article, senior officers in the military have
    been held accountable for the decrepit conditions at Walter
    Reed. Do your students believe that officers who did not
    work at Walter Reed but instead supervised those in charge
    of Walter Reed should be held accountable? Why/why not?
  • This set of questions might make for an interesting
    class discussion. Consider also asking, What can a
    supervisor who does not work on-site do to ensure
    that things run smoothly? For a more specific
    example you might ask, what can the owner of ten
    restaurants do to ensure that the restaurants run
    smoothly even when she is not present?

  • Ask your students what they think the purpose of
    bureaucracy is. Do they think that things could run smoothly
    without bureaucracy? Why/why not?
  • Consider asking students, in groups of three or four,
    to list five bureaucratic rules of the school. For each
    rule they should explain either the importance of the
    rule/what might happen if the rule did not exist or
    why the rule is not necessary. If they choose the
    second option, students should be sure to
    thoughtfully back up their statement.

  • Ask your students to respond to the following statement. "It
    makes sense that senior officers in the military did not do
    much about the conditions at Walter Reed before the public
    became aware of them. For, people tend to do things that
    will accomplish their own goals. When soldiers are seriously
    wounded they lose the ability to help the military accomplish
    its goals. They simultaneously become unimportant.
    Therefore, senior military officials saw no need to devote
    much attention to their cause."
  • Students might respond to this quotation in persuasive
    essays.
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