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History Lesson Idea: Election Debate

 

 

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The following excerpt comes from Eyewitness to the Past: Strategies for Teaching History in Grades 5-12, by Joan Brodsky Schur (Stenhouse Publishers, 2007). The book is available on the Stenhouse Web site.

Read another excerpt from this book: Teaching History With Real Artifacts: Six Strategies. Also see Education World's review of the book.

This excerpt outlines how staging an election from the past can inject partisanship and passion into the study of candidates and the issues they represented. When engaged in this way, students can learn about fundamental themes from American history that formed the present-day election process.

More than any other genre, speeches are carefully constructed arguments aimed at convincing an audience to make a choice. The primary sources I use as models for this strategy are speeches written by the candidates themselves or their contemporaries on important issues of the day. Nowadays the Web provides a wealth of ways to actually listen to some of the great oratory of the twentieth century.

Organizing an Election Debate

There are multiple ways to organize an election debate. My choice of debate model depends on a number of factors. First, how many students do I want to participate in the debate itself? What will be the role of the remaining students in the class? What debate format do I want to follow? Who will judge which side wins the election, and on what basis will this decision be made? In general I like students to work in teams of four to seven people.

In some models of presidential debates, students re-enact the presidential candidates themselves, with the rest of the group playing supporting roles. I prefer not to use this model because I don’t like to elevate some students to “starring roles.” If the candidates don’t make appearances in most of my election debates, how do they work? In effect, students become local supporters of their candidate, out to convince their friends and neighbors to get out and vote. Each member of the team is assigned to take on one aspect of his or her candidate’s platform. A student on the opposing team will take on that same issue from the perspective of the opposing candidate’s platform. In other words, there may be five one-on-one debates, each one about a specific aspect of the candidates’ platforms. Each mini debate is a timed exchange of constructive speeches, in which students set forth their arguments alternating with rebuttal speeches in which they refute their opponents’ arguments. But together each team must strategize, present a variety of campaign literature and paraphernalia (cartoons, buttons, and posters), build a unified line of argument, and support one another in a variety of ways. In the end, the team that has convinced the audience that its candidate deserves to be president is the winning team.

 

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Sometimes I replace rebuttal speeches with a question and answer format. This works especially well in three-way races. Speakers for candidates A, B, and C present their constructive speeches on a particular topic. Then a member of team A and B each pose a question to speaker C that C answers. Next, speakers B and C pose questions to speaker A and so forth. Alternatively, questions can be asked by a moderator or by students role-playing members of the press or the “voters” themselves. All of these models have precedents in recent times, and students may have watched a number of “town meeting” style debates on television. I like these formats because they emphasize the role of citizens in probing the issues.

If only some of the students participate in the actual debate, what do the others do? They can become the voters or judges, but this does not necessarily take much work or give them experience debating. So I might supplement their roles as voters by asking them to create classroom materials for our bulletin boards, such as time lines of the candidates’ lives or maps of states included in the Union at the time of the election. Or I might not give the rest of the class any extra work until later in the year, when a different group of students gets to stage an election debate from a later period of U.S. history. In general, I want every student to learn how to write a speech and debate an issue by year’s end.

Staging an Andrew Jackson vs. Henry Clay Election Debate

Many enduring issues are relevant to the election of 1832, which pitted incumbent President Andrew Jackson against Senator Henry Clay. There were fierce rivalries between these two Westerners—both had been candidates in the four-way race of 1824. Textbooks and collections of primary source documents invariably devote major coverage to the Jacksonian period, including Jackson’s introduction of the spoils system, the Bank War, Indian Removal, the Tariff of Abominations, and the nullification crisis. In addition, this is the time period when many of the campaign tactics we take for granted today first took root, a legacy of the ever-widening franchise for white males. For all of these reasons I like to set an election debate in this time period.

In the following model of a presidential debate there are seven students on each of two teams, one team arguing that we should re-elect President Jackson and the other team backing his opponent, Senator Henry Clay. Each of the seven students on each team is responsible for presenting a speech on one of the subtopics in the first column.

Andrew Jackson vs. Henry Clay, Election of 1832

Subtopic

Issues Raised

  The Credentials of Each Candidate:
  What
Makes a Good President?

  • How does the prior experience of each candidate equip him to be a good president?
  • How does the character of each candidate ensure that he will be a good president?

  The Bank War

  Jackson wants to destroy the Bank of the
  United States; Clay wants to preserve it.

  • It was declared constitutional by the Supreme Court.
  • What role should the federal government play in regulating the economy and what is the most prudent and fair way to go about it?
  • Did the bank favor the rich?
  • Did the bank play politics?
  • Was the bank beneficial to the economy of the United States?

  The Role of the Common Man in
  Government

 

Jackson instituted the federal spoils system beginning in 1828.

  • Does the spoils system increase the participation of citizens in their government?
  • Is every person equipped to participate in government?
  • Does the system lead to patronage and corruption?
  • Should all government jobs be divorced from politics?

  Internal Improvements

  What is the proper role of the federal
  government?

  • Clay developed the “American System,” which promoted spending by the federal government on local projects, whereas Jackson was generally opposed.
  • Does Clay’s “American System” benefit the entire country or merely strengthen the hand of those in power?

  Tariff of Abominations and the
  Nullification Crisi

South Carolina is threatening to nullify the Tariff of Abominations.

  • Does the tariff benefit the whole nation or only Northern manufacturers?
  • How would each candidate handle this growing crisis?
  • Is it better to compromise on the tariff or stand firm on principles of federal power?

  Indian Removal Polic

Jackson supported westward removal of the Cherokee Indians. Clay opposes it.

  • Was the policy constitutional?
  • What would be the consequences of the policy?

  Summary Speaker

  Andrew Jackson: Man of the people or tyrant?

  Henry Clay: Friend of the rich and powerful or
  the Great Compromiser?

  (Here was a time for each team to restate its
  important points and to argue for their priority.)

All students in the class read about Jacksonian America in their textbooks, whether they are in the debate, judging the debate, or assigned to a supplementary role such as creating time lines. There is plenty about Jackson’s first term in office in any textbook. My job is to fill in information about Henry Clay and to help the debaters locate primary source documents. Collections of relevant documents are easy to locate in Richard Hofstadter’s Great Issues in American History: From the Revolution to the Civil War (1958), the second volume in his series, which devotes an entire chapter to documents of the Jacksonian Era. In class—before I assign teams—we go over possible arguments on each side of every issue. Once I announce the teams I create a schedule of work due dates and set aside class time for teams to meet as a group. The Summary Speaker acts as group leader because in order to summarize the team’s viewpoint, he or she must know what each speaker will say and help the team stay consistent in its arguments.

Although team members read and improve one another’s first-draft speeches, I also work with each student to elicit the best work possible. In order to stay evenhanded, I never make myself a judge of the debate itself.
 

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Last updated: 9/28/16