Analyzing an Anti-Mask Pamphlet: How to Teach for the Real World

The other day, a student arrived to class excited to tell me that she walked by an Anti-Mask rally on the weekend. Her excitement initially caught me off guard. I had never associated Anti-Mask sentiments with excitement. Regardless, I patiently listened. It turned out, she wanted to show me a pamphlet from the rally. Apparently, it had "like a million logical fallacies." Now I felt excited too!

That student's story inspired our primary activity for the following class. I scrapped what I initially had planned, and went with something infinitely more meaningful. I googled "Anti-Mask Pamphlet" and got to work.

The previous week we had explored logical fallacies and their prevalence in internet meme culture (stay tuned for my next blog). Therefore, reasoning, or a lack thereof, was on my students' minds. My google query proved successful and I found an authentic Anti-Mask group's pamphlet ready to be analyzed. How would my students fare? Would their learning, and by extension my teaching, stand up in real world situations? Only time would tell.

I prefaced our pamphlet analysis by showing my class a news headline about an Anti-Mask Rally that occurred in close proximity to two Kelowna schools: Rutland Middle and Rutland Secondary. Students immediately communicated disdain for the demonstrators and questioned their motives.

 

"Why would Anti-Maskers protest at a school? That's messed up."

I responded, "Well some people believe teenagers are impressionable and lack critical thinking. Maybe they thought they would have an easier time convincing students your age..."

I thrust the gauntlet down. My class readily accepted.

 

 

Step #1 (Annotating Anti-Masker Pamphlet): Students, in groups of 2-3, annotated a photocopy of an authentic Anti-Masker pamphlet. They highlighted logical fallacies, questionable "facts", and any other problematic sections that caught their eye. I gave them twenty minutes to work through the pamphlet. They proceeded with utter zealousness; a symphony of excited chatter and highlighters meeting paper met my ears.

 

 

Step #2 (Class Discussion): As a class, we discussed our findings section by section and column by column. Though our discussion focused extensively on the logical fallacies featured in the pamphlet, students identified several other sections of the pamphlet that defied reason: dubious statistics, suspect claims, etc. Students were excited to share their findings aloud, which isn't always the case. It was almost like they were competing against the pamphlet's authors and the stakes were high. By the end of the discussion, students had discovered issues with almost every line. One student exclaimed, "Why can't we do stuff like this every day?"

I began asking myself the same question. How can I bring more real world activities into my classroom? 

Reflection: This was one of my most rewarding experiences as a classroom teacher. First of all, it was proof my teaching could withstand real world challenges. But even more importantly it was proof my students had the tools to make their way in the world. A world where real-world activities will cease to be a classroom novelty and will become my students' every day realities.