One of the biggest obligations of educators today is to teach social responsibility and to help create productive, informed members of society. As a result of that charge, the political and economic climate cannot be ignored. Our government classes, politics classes, and econ classes (maybe even math classes!) are trying to address today's issues with some measure of objectivity. Hence, there has been quite a scuttlebutt over Michael Moore's
SLACKER UPRISING video. This piece of media advocates a particular party and is definitely not objective, but is being used with great appeal in classrooms because it speaks directly to and about our new voting age population - many of whom are still in schools.
I have started a collection (which grows by the day) of good links for addressing the election in our classrooms, one of which is the
SLACKER UPRISING video (by the way, the entire movie can be currently downloaded at no cost in the United States and Canada), which can be nicely used as a teachable moment on target audiences, personal agendas, yellow journalism, and objectivity (or lack thereof).
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2 comments:
I think these are all fantastic. It just reflects the partisan nature that has existed in this country for the last 232 years.
Come to think of it, a spoof of the 1996 election between Adams and Jefferson would be pretty darn original.
Great links on election issues! As far as politics in education goes, "objectivity" is an issue that will always haunt the classroom. In all of the political science (and related) classes I have had in college and high school, I have yet to encounter a teacher that didn't insert his/her opinion as "fact" while ignoring information/topics they deemed fit. Unfortunate for the students, fortunate for the opinionated in power.
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