Teaching (How to Think) in the Wake of Obama

The American Thinker ^ | 11-5-13 | Mindy Schiller

[afraidfortherepublic]

This past election season, I tried an experiment with the twelve 6th-graders in my history class: I challenged them to develop a fictional candidate and persuade the rest of us to vote for him by creating a commercial. My hidden agenda was to find out which of the kids' political positions were influenced by their parents and whether, if given the opportunity to evaluate their positions from scratch, they might choose differently.

The students were ready -- dare I say waiting -- for it. See, our school happens to be in Hyde Park, that ivy-covered, venerated neighborhood otherwise known as the Land of Obama.

The lead-up was slow going. First we had to learn about rhetorical strategies -- pathos, logos, ethos. We watched beer commercials, listened to PSAs for seatbelts, dissected newspaper ads. It took at least a week, but by the end of it, my students could smell a rat within the first few bars of a campaign commercial's soundtrack. "I hear the scary music coming on," someone would call out. "That's pathos."

I was really proud of them.

Then came week 2: getting to know the issues. First I gave my students a list of statements, each reflecting a candidate's stance. I asked them to indicate which candidate they believed had made each statement. The idea was to see how accurate their knowledge was and perhaps dispel some misconceptions. Only it didn't work exactly the way I had planned. When I passed out the worksheet, a girl named Rachel scanned the paper and said, "But this is all the issues. I don't know this stuff; I know the OTHER stuff." I swiveled around and looked at her, puzzled by this young woman who usually thinks so clearly. "What other stuff?" I asked.

[afraidfortherepublic]

This is disappointing.

[freedumb2003]

Check out this exchange in the comments (lol):

Etickets • 6 hours ago
It's most often genetic. Studies show that even adopted children as adults are more likely to share the political opinions of their biological parents than those of the parents that raised them.

2 •Reply•Share › Avatar JamesJ Etickets • 2 hours ago −
No, people can change. My father was a staunch republican conservative. He died in 1978. He's been voting democrat ever since.

[DarkSavant]

I did something similar in the 5th grade. Only I lived in a very conservative community and most everyone "voted" for George Bush I.

Other than some environmental nonsense in Middle School, they never really pumped up the indoctrination until High School. There I learned that the Nazis were "capitalists in the extreme". Luckily by then I realized all but a couple of my teachers were absolutely clueless.

[Conservative4Ever]

Could not this teacher have taught his students the Constitution and Federalist Papers instead. Just asking