.jpg) Amnesty: More Than a Word
Ever yelled “fire!” in a really crowded theater? Don’t. It’ll probably get you arrested. Because language can inspire emotions (panic!) in addition to conveying information (the building is on fire), we have to be careful not to let words do our thinking for us. This lesson will teach students to identify when emotive terms, in this case “amnesty,” alter their perceptions and obscure the facts. Students will examine two advertisements, both of which claimed a 2007 immigration reform bill would provide “amnesty” to illegal immigrants. Students will also analyze polling data that show how the word “amnesty” affected public perceptions.
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 Combating the Culture of Corruption
It’s a classic American film: the young, idealistic new senator, Jefferson Smith, heads off to Washington where he finds that his boyhood hero, Sen. Joseph Paine, is accepting bribes. Worse still, Mr. Smith finds that none of the other senators really care all that much. In Hollywood, the solution is simple: Jimmy Stewart saves the day. Fast forward 60 years: The corruption is still around, and in a fundraising e-mail, the Democratic National Committee claims that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain is more Joseph Paine than Jefferson Smith. That charge has little basis in reality. In this lesson students will dig into a recent bribery scandal to assess John McCain’s real role in rooting out the culture of corruption.
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 Death and Taxes
Did you know that the federal government taxes dead people? Did you know that John McCain wants it to continue? Well, actually, he doesn’t. But that didn’t stop the conservative anti-tax group Club for Growth from saying otherwise. The ad contains a claim that may be literally true, but misleads the viewer by omitting crucial information. This lesson examines the ways in which the unscrupulous can use charged language to mislead casual readers. Students will dig beneath the loaded language to assess the truth of Club for Growth’s claims.
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.jpg) Dubious Adoption Data
Maybe numbers don’t lie, but they can certainly be folded, spindled, turned inside out and refashioned to support a different conclusion. In this lesson, students will analyze a graph from the New York City Administration for Children’s Services showing a significant increase in New York City adoptions after ACS was founded. They’ll see how the statistics were manipulated to show these results, and will learn to keep an open mind about statistical proofs and to analyze for themselves the numbers they encounter.
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.jpg) Facts of the Union
It's morning again in America! Jobs are plentiful, the deficit is shrinking, we're reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and all our children are above average. At least that's the impression you might have come away with if you watched President Bush's 2007 State of the Union Address. The facts are a little more complicated, and the picture not always as rosy. This lesson provides students with a good starting point for examining some of the crucial issues Bush laid out in his address. Students will research these issues, analyze the president’s statements and claims, and draw conclusions about how straightforward he was with the American people.
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 Hillary Clinton’s Record, Through the Looking Glass
Sometimes advertising is easy. Flash up a picture of Osama bin Laden and you’ve got viewers who are ready to be angry. Flash a picture of Osama bin Laden next to a picture of Hillary Clinton and you’ve got…well, you’ve got an ad sponsored by John Spencer, a 2006 Republican senatorial candidate from New York. Spencer’s ad stated that Sen. Clinton opposed the USA Patriot Act and controversial National Security Agency wiretaps, which the ad claims were vital in stopping a terrorist plot to blow up airliners going from Britain to the United States in 2006. Students will use Clinton’s actual voting record to assess the accuracy of Spencer’s claims.
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 Made in the U.S.A.
It seems like fewer and fewer things bear that label anymore. Toyota outsells two of Detroit’s big three automakers and may soon pass the third. Our televisions and DVD players are mostly made elsewhere. And Wal-Mart imports about 50,000 pounds of merchandise every 45 seconds. As if that’s not bad enough, American companies are shipping many jobs overseas. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards wants to stop U.S. companies from moving jobs offshore, and a group called Working 4 Working Americans ran an ad in support of his plan. But the story the ad tells doesn’t quite give the whole picture. In this lesson, students will examine the facts behind this potentially misleading ad. This lesson comes in a basic version, for classrooms without Internet access and/or students at the 8th-9th grade level, and a more advanced version, which does require Internet access and is aimed at students at higher grade levels.
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 Olly Olly Oxen Free!
You find the perfect hiding spot and you wait, hoping to hear that magical sound, to hear whoever is “it” call out in frustration, “Olly Olly Oxen Free!” You know that you’re safe, that your hiding spot – your sanctuary – can be used again the next time you play. But in debates about people who are in the U.S. illegally, the concept of sanctuary is considerably more controversial. In fact, some argue that providing sanctuary to people who are in the country illegally is decidedly wrong. This lesson focuses on an argument between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani over New York’s alleged status as a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants. Students will explore the meaning of the term “sanctuary city” and determine for themselves whether New York City ought to be designated a sanctuary city.
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 Survey Says...
Can 50 million Elvis fans be wrong? We often rely on polls and surveys to take the temperature of the population — how better to find out what people think than to ask them? But depending on how the polls are constructed and conducted, we might end up with misleading answers. This lesson examines two polls that asked Iraqis about the quality of life in their country, one which showed an alarmingly negative outlook and one a more positive assessment. Students will look at the conclusions offered by the organizations that sponsored the polls and their methodologies. They will also conduct their own survey and see how poll results can be skewed by how, when, where, of whom and by whom the questions are asked.
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.JPG) Suspect Sources at the Republican Debate
If you’re looking for a job, you’d better hope you’re doing it in the U.S. and not in Europe because job growth is a stunning 17 times higher in America than it is in the old country. Perhaps that’s because Americans are all working as tax preparers, something they spend $140 billion a year on. Those “facts” are according to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain of Arizona. And they even had sources for their numbers. Unfortunately, those sources aren’t actually very good. In this lesson, students will cross-check the candidates’ claims against available data. They will then question whether bias may explain the conflicting data.
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 U.S. Generals ...Support the Draft
Being drafted hasn’t been much of a concern for anyone born on this side of the Age of Aquarius. But rumors of the return of the draft abound. Those rumors are especially scary when they seem to originate from U.S. military commanders. This lesson examines an anti-war advertisement sponsored by Americans Against Escalation in Iraq asserting that military officials plan to continue the war in Iraq for an additional 10 years and that that plan will require reinstating the draft. Students will examine whether quotations from Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute really do support AAEI's claims.
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 Wikiality
“Please help me. I got an ‘F’ on my paper because I cited Wikipedia.” Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, recently lamented that he gets 10 e-mails of this sort every week. And yet, despite Wales’ own stated views that Wikipedia provides “good enough” knowledge, students keep using it – and teachers keep giving out Fs. This lesson illustrates the potential pitfalls of Wikipedia. Drawing on two controversies – Stephen Colbert’s on-air altering of his own entry and his call for viewers to alter a second entry, and the false biography of John Seigenthaler – students will discuss the ease with which false or misleading information can be added to Wikipedia, and they’ll search Wikipedia entries for inaccuracies.
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