Classroom Temperature Check: Six Weeks until Election Day

[smccormack]

Following the Harris/Trump presidential debate on September 10th I hoped to chat with my students about what they saw, heard and felt after listening to the candidates. Few, unfortunately, had actually watched the debate. What was more common was for students to share what they had learned about the debate from social media. The conversation was therefore about what other people posted about the debate. And consequently, our “discussion” was a sharing of which snippets of the debate were trending as memes.

By now we recognize that social media has a huge impact on our lives as educators and human beings. As a historian I’m a bit nostalgic for the days when everyone watched the debate to learn about the candidates. I can’t help but wonder if the televised presidential debate format that was so consequential in previous decades is no longer relevant for Gen Z. For the current generation of college students it’s as if the “debate” is happening hourly on their social media feeds. From listening to my students’ views, I have to wonder if that barrage of information and mis-information may, in fact, lend to their feelings of apathy toward the political process. Is this trend reversible? Not likely.

More obvious is that my students are paying attention to celebrity endorsements. Female students specifically pointed to the Taylor Swift endorsement of Kamala Harris as an interesting development in the days following the debate. One student was able to give us exact figures on how many people had registered to vote within 24 hours of Swift’s Instagram post. And while it is sometimes difficult to know how students really feel when discussing political topics with classmates, the fact that several brought up the Swift endorsement leads me to believe that it caught their attention in a way that endorsements from well-known Republican politicians simply did not.

As we approach the October 1st debate between the candidates for vice president, how can we best prepare our students to be critical observers? And, what about voting? Are faculty talking about it with students? Do you feel comfortable encouraging students to vote? Or is the topic off-limits? With just six weeks until the general election, what’s happening in your classroom? Please share! Comment here or email me at suzannekmccormack@gmail.com