A Teacher's Journal 39: Limiting Our Understandings

All of these skills are essential for developing readers, especially in a world where bias is everywhere! Commercials, advertisements, political speeches, and even news articles all seem to be heavily slanted at times. Without an awareness of how bias is used to influence an audience, children would be woefully unprepared to effectively participate in society.

To teach these objectives, I have begun sharing political cartoons with my students on topics related to the current events that we study each day. We've looked at cartoons related to the recent outbreaks of the avian flu in Europe, the struggles that the world community is currently having with Iran, and the continuing conflict between Hugo Chavez and the United States.

Besides providing unique opportunities for my students to identify attempts to influence others through the use of bias, political cartoons have proven to be incredibly motivating to my students. This excitement was probably best captured by one of my students who recently wrote, "Current events is, to me, addictive…I read the back of the News and Observer every day now (or at least the days the newspaper dude comes.) I have been going home and wasting ALL my computer time on political cartoons and trying to make inferences."

What my students seem to enjoy the most is seeing the different perspectives held by artists around the world on the same issue! I intentionally show students cartoons that express viewpoints on opposite sides of the same issue. "I like how every day we look at political cartoons," said one student, "because it shows how other countries feel about events that are happening in the world."

On Friday, we looked at a cartoon that my students found particularly engaging. In it, George Bush was portrayed as a mechanic trying to fix a car that was painted in a stars and stripes pattern. Unfortunately, the tool that the president had chosen to fix the car was a hammer and his efforts were doing more damage than good. A door labeled "deficits" had fallen off, the engine labeled "Iraq" hung by a thin cord and a tire labeled "floods" was cast aside.

Immediately my students broke into smaller groups to infer the artist's bias and to identify the ways that he was conveying his message to the viewers. Animated conversations happened in nearly every corner of my room and hands shot up quickly. The resulting conversation was nothing short of remarkable for a group of twelve year olds. It began when I asked, "Jim*, what did your group come up with?"

"Well, we think the artist is being critical of the way that America is trying to solve problems."

"How do you know? What in the illustration tells you that?" I pressed.

"George Bush is using the wrong 'tool' to fix the car in the picture," Jim replied. "We think that means that the artist believes he's using the wrong 'tool' to fix problems in Iraq too -- like he could have used compromise instead of war."

"And the engine is hanging by just a thin cord," added Paul. "Do you think that means that the artist thinks the situation in Iraq is about to totally fall apart?"

"Yeah!" said Rich, "and the sun is setting in the background. That probably means that something is coming to an end too. Maybe Bush's popularity?"

Then I pushed my students further. "Hey guys, what if this artist wanted to praise America's efforts in the world -- what would he have drawn then?"

Answers came immediately from every direction, "Oh, I know! He would have drawn a super nice looking car with a picture of the whole earth on it."

"And George Bush would look strong and brave and proud, too!"

"Or George Bush could have been drawn protecting the earth with a big USA shield and all of the problems could have been like missiles blasting into the shield."

For a teacher, moments like these are electric. Watching my students unpack a difficult topic with ease is exciting. More importantly, I was convinced that my students could identify bias, recognize how authors use analogies to share a viewpoint, and understand that pieces -- both written and drawn -- are often designed to persuade and influence, rather than objectively share facts.

What frustrates me, however, is that these same students have yet to "demonstrate mastery" on these objectives on the multiple-choice assessments that we regularly use to gauge progress over the course of the school year. In fact, looking only at the results of these practice assessments you could reasonably conclude that my instruction of these objectives has been faulty as our classroom average on such questions hovers at just above 50%!

How does this happen?

How can children who engage in deep and meaningful classroom conversations about bias and the use of analogies to express a viewpoint struggle to answer similar questions on multiple choice reading quizzes?

There are probably a variety of reasons including:

1. The level of background knowledge that students have about a particular topic: My students are deeply aware of current events because it is a significant part of my classroom instruction. This level of awareness helps them to "tease out" the underlying messages that authors are trying to share. Students rarely possess this same level of background knowledge about reading selections presented in standardized assessments designed beyond individual classrooms.

2. The level of motivation that students have for a particular activity: I never have to worry about the level of motivation that my students have when working with political cartoons. In fact, in a recent classroom survey 100% of my students agreed with the statement, "I enjoy looking at political cartoons about current events." Students rarely possess this same level of motivation about reading selections presented in standardized assessments designed beyond individual classrooms.

3. The "shades of gray" answers presented by standardized reading assessments: Have you ever taken a multiple-choice exam and struggled to choose "the best answer" from the options given? Inevitably, there will be two possible answers that seem to make sense, right? Determining which of these two selections is the correct answer is incredibly challenging for twelve-year olds!

I sometimes worry that we limit our understanding of what knowledge and skills a child has mastered when we place a disproportionate emphasis on standardized assessments as a measure of achievement.

And I often wish that others could see what I do nearly every day -- because there is little doubt that my students are learning regardless of what "the tests" say!

* Editor's note: Students' names have been changed.