A teacher wrote to tell me that she had asked her high school students to evaluate the convention speeches by the two candidates. She had looked up the speeches shown on CNN and wrote “Obama's has a grand introduction with inspiring music, 5 minutes of thundering applause, and panning the cheering stadium. McCain's begins with his speech and a shot of a guy in the back holding a sign that says McCain does NOT support vets.” The sad state of the media is that stories like this are no longer unusual and you almost begin to expect this kind of biased coverage of the two candidates.
The writer then concluded “I try very hard to give a favorable introduction to both candidates, without bias, and also include the ideas that we benefit greatly from a 2 party system rather than a totalitarian 1 party system.” Wow. How disturbing is that? You would think that by high school the students would know about our history, our heritage as a democratic country and why this is better than a one party government. It is scary to think that the idea of America is something that now needs to be taught.
As for this election, I have no doubt that the majority of teenagers are supporting the young black man versus the old white guy. There is more than some truth in the old joke about being idealistic when young but becoming conservative the moment you get your first paycheck. When you don’t have any money it is easy to agree with Obama’s “spreading the wealth”. Anyway, I am sure the teens are very enthusiastic supporters of Obama and probably wouldn’t listen if someone tried to tell them otherwise.
Maybe this teacher has the right idea; to try to be unbiased and yet to expose the students to the blatant misuse of power by the media in favor of Obama. On one hand, you hate to disillusion the teens by showing them the seamier side of politics or even by helping them see for themselves that this is yet one more instance where life is not fair. So finding the bias on their own might make them more cynical and distrustful of not just the politicians but also of the supposedly unbiased media. Yet lessons like this will better equip them to make judgments about what they are seeing, and to learn to question even what “trusted” authoritative figures are telling them. And that might be a good idea after all.
The writer then concluded “I try very hard to give a favorable introduction to both candidates, without bias, and also include the ideas that we benefit greatly from a 2 party system rather than a totalitarian 1 party system.” Wow. How disturbing is that? You would think that by high school the students would know about our history, our heritage as a democratic country and why this is better than a one party government. It is scary to think that the idea of America is something that now needs to be taught.
As for this election, I have no doubt that the majority of teenagers are supporting the young black man versus the old white guy. There is more than some truth in the old joke about being idealistic when young but becoming conservative the moment you get your first paycheck. When you don’t have any money it is easy to agree with Obama’s “spreading the wealth”. Anyway, I am sure the teens are very enthusiastic supporters of Obama and probably wouldn’t listen if someone tried to tell them otherwise.
Maybe this teacher has the right idea; to try to be unbiased and yet to expose the students to the blatant misuse of power by the media in favor of Obama. On one hand, you hate to disillusion the teens by showing them the seamier side of politics or even by helping them see for themselves that this is yet one more instance where life is not fair. So finding the bias on their own might make them more cynical and distrustful of not just the politicians but also of the supposedly unbiased media. Yet lessons like this will better equip them to make judgments about what they are seeing, and to learn to question even what “trusted” authoritative figures are telling them. And that might be a good idea after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment