THE OXEN:
RESEARCH PROJECTS

• Think of a lie you were told by some older authority figure when you were little. What are you going to do to get even with them? Investigate different accommodations at “cut-rate” versus “licensed” nursing homes to determine your appropriate response.

• imagine cows kneeling at Christmas while you eat a hamburger. Does it make you feel guiltier? Or hungrier?

• Study the difference between “cows,” “oxen,” “livestock” and “poets.” Find out which ones your school would rather have on their faculty.

• Research the causes and effects of the Mad Cow outbreak in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. Based on the evidence, do you think the disease was God’s wrathful punishment on animals who had ceased to follow His laws?

• Watch the film Air Bud, Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch, or Air Bud: World Pup. Explain the debt that the directors of these modern classics of the cinema owe to Thomas Hardy.