Is a 13-minute video of high school students from the South Bronx and their teacher talking about race, America, their hopes, and the Obama campaign.
It’s impressive for many reasons, among them: it actually engages with important ideas that matter to all of us (God forbid! In a U.S. political campaign?); it’s relatively unmediated (for all I know, the Obama campaign spent $100,000 focus group testing this video before they sent it out — oops, sorry, was that too cynical? — but I doubt they spent that on the production); and it uses YouTube: material like this couldn’t have been distributed by a campaign to a mass audience 10 years ago.
The most impressive thing about this video from a political perspective, however, is that it takes a risk. It is bold. It could not be more different from a traditional campaign ad. In my endorsement of Obama last December I wrote he, “has the decisive courage required to seize the day.” This video from the frontrunner and presumptive nominee with every reason to be cautious, in my opinion, underlines that conclusion.
Take a look and see what you think.
Record numbers are entering the Democratic side and showing renewed interest due to both candidates. The Clinton campaign is welcome to come into my classroom and film a similar commercial with a student body diverse in class and race who are talking about the nomination process with interest and lucidity. It was a thrill to hear two of my eighth-graders arguing over the margin of error in Texas polling, and whether it augured well for Obama or Clinton. The Clinton campaign is welcome to talk to some of my boys as well as girls who think she has “what it takes” to be president.
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p>I realize that this is a commercial for Obama, not a commercial for civics education. I realize that Camp Obama doesn’t want to show students being inspired by Edwards, Huckabee, Clinton, or any other candidate. I just hope that this teacher is giving these students equal time; that for women’s history month his students saw Hillary Clinton’s remarks to the U.N. 4th World Conference on Women Plenary Session. Hopefully the students wrote “yes we will” speeches. And yes, hopefully they are being exposed to the ideas and speeches of Senator McCain. Anything less is an abuse of position and a case of dereliction of professionalism.
My point was that this is an extraordinary video for a campaign to send out, and it indicates a candidate and a campaign that is willing to take risks. I like that.
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p>Senator Clinton is a very impressive candidate in many ways, but her campaign videos are very run of the mill: tightly scripted, well produced, no surprises. For better or worse (in my opinion, the latter, but that’s just a personal take) they look like they were overseen by a chap from Burson-Marsteller, which they were.
After I hit post, I once again rued that I couldn’t edit posts. The fact that Obama released a not-for-tv ad that barely shows the candidate is respectable, and a way to reach voters that aren’t touched by the 30-second spots that both campaigns are pouring most of their resourced into these days. It’s also heartening to see Obama start to turn toward education more and more.
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p>I didn’t mean to be negative about the teacher, but it always makes me uncomfortable to see a teacher so openly sharing political opinions. I’m in the “keep religion and politics to yourself” school…about half my students are convinced I’m a Republican.
The classroom should not be a place for political recruiting because students are a captive audience and the teacher has a lot of power over them. Maybe this was done after class … or maybe there was some juicy violation of rules about using school property for political activities. If the Clinton campaign is firing on all cylinders, I guess they’ll find out about that.
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p>As to the ability to edit comments, I long for that feature like a man dying in the desert longs for water.
self-identified as Democrats or independents learning toward Obama.
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p>Civic engagement, including discussions around political commonalities, take place in classrooms everywhere. I showed Obama’s speech on race to my Public Speaking class. Why? Two reasons: all 18 of them are self-indentified Dems and they wanted to watch it as an exemplar speech.
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p>If we don’t talk about political values in the classroom–and that means sharing, validating differing views–then civics education is nothing more than a buzzword topic. We have Republican teachers in my school, Dems (obviously), uninterested indies, and even a few Greens. Are there some teachers uncomfortable with these issues? Yes, and they are often the teachers who are not politically oriented. We talk about politics everywhere–in English with The Crucible, in science with environmental field labs, in Contemorary Issues (Social Studies), in Math doing problems on the delegate counts.
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p>Kids are interested in politics if you model interest yourself. Teaching kids how to talk about politics is just as worthy a lesson as any other in civic education.
To teach with academic integrity, modern politics and religion must be included in civic and historical discussions. I do hope, lightiris, that you’ve included some of Clinton’s material when discussing gender, or McCain’s when discussing veterans. Just as I hope that teacher — who the video says assigned an Obama video in class — did as well. Our students deserve to hear from every side in a highly emotional and topical debate such as this. Only showing one of the final three is not good or fair teaching.