A little election story for you all. Today, I had to run mock elections for my classes today. (8th graders have social studies for half the year and health the other half...) Unfortunately I am admittedly not the most informed person when it comes to this sort of stuff. I have opinions, I pay attention to those issues that are of great importance to me, but I don't want to share those views with my students. I remain neutral. Like the grey states on the map. Or Switzerland.
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| Outside the library, where I dropped my ballot off today |
Any who, one of the social studies teachers printed up a comparison of the two major candidates (sorry
Rocky you weren't included) on some of the big points: health care, global warming, gay rights, Twitter followers etc. That way the kids who didn't have social studies would have a bit of a background before they voted. One student walked into my class shouting "Obama for President!" Knowing this student, I know he has some pretty conservative views (especially on abortion and gay rights which he states loudly without being asked...) so I was interested to see what he would do as we went through the comparison chart. He was very much pro-Obama at first: he is younger, has "hot daughters" more Facebook likes and Twitter followers... then we got to the big issues. I saw this student's face get less excited when he saw Obama supported civil unions and gay rights. It fell even more when he saw that Obama is pro-choice and Romney is anti-abortion. After the vote, I overheard him telling another student (quietly) that he voted for Romney. I think that kid learned a lesson about becoming an informed voter.
In other election news... I think I joined Twitter two days too early. I should have waited until after all this election stuff. Follow me. Maybe I will tweet something. @caseysadventures
I hope you had a great election day!
3 comments:
that is neat that they are learning that! we had a mock election at our elementary school and didn't go into much information since they are so young but it's crazy how many ideas they already have - mostly from listening to their parents!
i remember doing mock elections when we were in elementary school i believe it was bush 41 and maybe ross perot or could has been a bob dole in there somewhere. anyways being informed is very important regardless of party affiliation, i wish people would inform themselves instead of just being a uneducated follower
That is awesome, what a great learning experience. Let's hope he learned the lesson.. I am with you. Believe what you want, just have concrete reasons Why.
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