Seventh graders emerged in mock election campaign
These seventh graders just found out what their political map looks like for the day. The Republicans (seated in the forefront) realized their campaign has not been gaining them as high of a percentage of votes as their Democratic counterparts. Pictured (from left) are Mani Watson, Duke Scherf, Faith Meyer, Dom Tanner, Joseph Ruskey and Syler Wall.
The Democratic Party, including campaign manager Lily Kregel and presidential nominee Eva Keene, focus on seeking support from interest groups while their social studies teacher Josh Rabbit prepares to video a dinner party speech.
Speech writer Faith Meyer and vice-presidential nominee Joseph Ruskey go over a speech just before Ruskey shares it with his classmates. An updated political map and some of the students’ propaganda hang in the background. (Photos by Correne Martin)
Political posters, many of which reflect issues of the true national election, hang all over Mr. Rabbit's room.
By Correne Martin
The seventh grade students in Josh Rabbit’s social studies classes at Bluff View Intermediate School are as perplexed about the 2016 presidential election as the adult electorate. They’re in the home stretch of attending rallies, spending money on and appealing to voters’ emotions through advertising, focusing on winning key states, and reciting their views on the most controversial points of this election. It’s the end of a full campaign and, just like the rest of the United States citizens, they will realize the impact of the election’s conclusion Nov. 8.
In Rabbit’s fourth-hour class, Eva Keene and Dom Tanner are running on the Democratic ticket to become the next president, while Syler Wall and Joseph Ruskey are vying for the seat for the Republican Party. These candidates have classmates serving as their campaign managers, speech writers, financial managers, advertising managers, etc., and they’re all learning strategies surrounding how elections are won, in addition to practicing leadership and teamwork skills.
Over three weeks ago, the election unit began, following typical civics education. All of Rabbit’s seventh graders took a political ideology survey, which determined how each group would be split in terms of Democrats and Republicans. In the fourth-hour class, both parties ended up with seven students. Presidents and staff were selected by their peers and, since, their job has been to get them into office.
“Using fake money, they are holding rallies, giving speeches, making propaganda, holding debates, giving tv interviews, and raising money for their campaigns,” Rabbit explained. “They also have to plan their candidates’ movement and ad placement around the country to earn enough votes to win the election. As their work is turned in each day, they see the political map change to their colors in ‘real’ time.”
Every day, they discuss current events of the true United States election, including tough issues like climate change, abortion and legalization of marijuana. They also hit briefly on scandalous news like Hillary Clinton’s emails and Donald Trump’s disparaging comments and temperament.
“It’s been kind of hard to keep my opinion out of it. You don’t want to twist the election. But teaching them about the Trump scandal was one of my hardest days ever teaching,” said Rabbit, who is in his second year at Bluff View. “It’s been really challenging considering how inappropriate a lot of the discussion could be.”
The students have created posters, letters seeking interest groups’ financial support, video and print ads and more. They receive funds based on their fictional letters to interest groups, which they research themselves, such as the National Rifle Association, Families USA and the National Organization for Women.
They study the 50 states and which parties those states each tend to support.
They have read about the different types of advertising; for example, play-by-play, appealing to fear, personal attacks, repetition, card stacking, false cause, and quotes out of context.
“I noticed some of them went very negative right away, because that’s what they see on TV,” Rabbit noted. “The way they’re spending their money is also interesting. Most of them are spending their time and money in Ohio. I expected them to spend more time in Wisconsin than they have. But I had one group spend $9 million in California.”
As the teacher, now that the civics instruction is out of the way and the full campaign is underway, Rabbit’s role is to simply facilitate the learning process.
“I want to step in sometimes, but I have to leave it up to them so they can learn from their mistakes,” he commented.
Since the campaign managers’ jobs are to keep their staff working, Rabbit watches to ensure and encourage those students to keep their teams on task. He also keeps track of each group’s money, calculates states’ potential vote percentages based on how good the students’ ads and speeches are, helps print digitally-made posters, and takes videos of their speeches and debates that can later be used as propaganda.
When a few of the seventh graders were asked about the issues, most said they found themselves to be most passionate about illegal immigration, abortion, gay marriage and global warming.
“The hardest part was figuring out what I believed in,” Syler Wall said.
Eva Keene said she’s enjoyed writing her own presidential speeches but has also found it difficult to choose which issues might mean the most to the voters.
Lily Kregel felt it’s been hard “being in a group with people who don’t want to listen.” She said, “Sometimes, people just go on and on about issues like abortion.”
On Nov. 8, Rabbit is certain his students will anxiously await the results of the country’s newest president and vice-president.
“It’ll be interesting to compare our results,” he said. “We’ll also talk about the interest groups and how they may have persuaded the election, and what each campaign did well and what they did not so well.”
Joseph Ruskey seemed to be having the most fun with the campaign. He has the nature of national elections figured out pretty well: “I don’t really believe everything I say, I just say everything a Republican would say.”
