Good, on-subject material -- quoted from Jerusalem Post.
<<Teens learn about the power of election propaganda
By Allyn Fisher-Ilan
JERUSALEM (January 31) - "Look at those colors, the red and the black lettering, what are the hidden messages behind these words?" Moshe Ziv asked a group of eighth-grade pupils seated on the floor, as he pointed to a bunch of mudslinging campaign posters hanging over their heads.
Ziv, a retired teacher, had plastered the auditorium of Sieff High School in Jerusalem's Beit Hakerem neighborhood with part of his collection of election propaganda from past campaigns.
The idea, he explained is to get the pupils to think about some of the propaganda they and the rest of us are being bombarded with amid a rather heated campaign.
Youth are even more susceptible to the propaganda than adults, Sieff's vice principal, Leah Klatchko, said yesterday. "It's everywhere and you can't ignore it. The younger you are, the more na•ve, and it has an influence."
The posters and stickers put on display Monday were all from past elections, in keeping with Education Ministry regulations barring political propaganda from the schools this week.
Yet pupils had no trouble relating the slogans to the current contest between Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Likud leader Ariel Sharon.
"They're all so busy insulting each other. They should talk more about their own good qualities, rather than just talking about what's bad about the other guy," Omri Goldblum, 13, remarked as he looked at stickers from the 1999 campaign.
The candidates and the tone of their campaign have so put him off, that he would put a blank ballot in the envelope were he old enough to vote, he said.
Many pupils echoed his view, although some were clearer about whether they prefer Barak or Sharon.
Just as the general public, pupils are often so set in their opinions that classroom discussions about the elections, which the ministry has recommended, particularly in secondary schools, can get so volatile that many teachers shy away from the subject.
"We address the issue not so much because the volume of debate can get so loud and lead to shouting and noisy arguments, it's not so easy to handle," acknowledged Fanny Kraus, a Bible teacher who had brought her eighth graders to see Ziv's exhibit.
While most discussions about elections are held in social studies or civics classes, those pupils who didn't have civics lessons on Monday, were taken to see it by other teachers.
"I am not afraid to hold provocative debates in my classroom," social studies teacher Hillel Bar-Ad said, but added that he didn't expect to bring up the elections over the next week with the new eighth grade class he took charge of this week, maintaining it is too hot a subject to broach before he knows the pupils better.
"I'm bringing them a message that a teacher can't get across in a year," Ziv boasted of his ministry-sanctioned display. He explained that he started his collection after the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accord, when opposition to the agreement brought about the proliferation of stickers, flyers, and posters.
He complained that the American-style sloganeering caught on perhaps a little too much, replacing the more substantive debates over key issues which used to be held in homes and on street corners during elections.
The nation's youth, he said, "need to be taught now not to make judgments based on stickers alone."
A sign above his ministry-sanctioned exhibit read: "The power of the word." He pointed out to the pupils how the emptiness of the propaganda was reflected in how interchangeable the messages are.
The flyers accusing former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu of making "dangerous" concessions to the Palestinians are not much different than those used against Barak, and earlier against the late Yitzhak Rabin, he noted.
Ziv said he had posters featuring photographs of Rabin, Netanyahu, Barak, and former US President Bill Clinton wearing Arafat-style keffiyehs. "No matter who is elected next week, I can assure you that I'll be able to bring you his picture with a keffiyeh on his head in another two years," he said.
"This kind of a lesson can help develop the pupils' sense of judgment as citizens, make them a little more discriminating, to be more sensitive to propaganda techniques, particularly now at the height of the election campaign," teacher Shoshi Segal said.
Perhaps the display also helped to stir more interest about the campaign among some of the more apathetic pupils, Klatchko said.
"When we told them about the activity, many were against it, saying things like: 'We're not voting, so what do we need this for?' Afterward, many admitted they found it interesting," she said.>> |
