Monday
September 15, 2008
by desertjim
Once again the National Student/Parent Mock Election (NMSPME) is providing free curriculum materials to schools who want to bring current events to their classrooms. This year their national mock election day is October 30, 2008. In 2004, over four million students, parents and teachers participated in their national presidential mock election.
The people who run the NMSPME feel that their process can turn the sense of powerlessness that keeps young Americans and their parents from going to the polls into a sense of the power of participation in our democracy. That may be wishful thinking. However, the United States does have one of the lowest percentages of voter participation in any of the world’s democracies. Perhaps allowing your students to be part of a nationwide straw poll will instill the habit of voting in them.
I realize that it is necessary for teachers to keep their personal politics out of the classroom. I admit that, when I taught US History, I did expand on the one page textbook summary on the union movement. That may be considered a political decision on my part, but I figured the textbook authors had already made a different political decision by pretty much ignoring the struggles of working people. I never did tell students who I was voting for though, and we did have mock elections in presidential years. I think it is possible to teach the political process without pushing your personal political beliefs. This would certainly seem to be a good year to do so.
I would be interested in knowing how many TEN readers are going to be using this year’s election as a teaching tool. Even if you are not going to use the NSPME mterials, are you going to have students express their presidential preference? Are you going to have student debates on the campaign issues? How much class time will you devote to the ongoing civic event that surrounds us in this presidential election year?
Labels:
Although I teach environmental science, I have already told my freshmen that we will have an election in each class. I am thinking about assigning different students to check on the candidates’ views on various environmental issues. Then everyone can report on those views just before we vote. However, I do not have an okay from my department head or my vice principal yet.
I like lapstrauss’s idea of tying a classroom election to the course itself. That’s relatively easy in an environmental science class, since so many current issues tie in. An algebra class might have students do some predictions on future budget deficits under each candidate’s plan for example.
I’m not sure that every other subject area can be tied to the election. However, we do have some clever teachers reading this stuff. Any suggestions for mock election assignments in subjects like Language Arts or Foreign Languages?
