It is a horrible time. That time just before summer where debate fades out and you realize just how behind on everything else in your life you have become.

 

It’s also the time of year where I constantly worry that I have forgotten to make a hotel reservation, book travel, or register for something. I live in a state of paranoia about quiet, long evenings at home. Something is wrong, something has been forgotten.

 

But it’s an adjustment period, and by late May I will have fully embraced the summer life. But I am already thinking about next term. Walking home today I was thinking of how to re-arrange my speech course to make it more useful. I was thinking of eliminating an argument based assignment on identifying propaganda, but it’s too good to really dismiss. Here are the questions we had today:

 

What was the first official act of propaganda?

Is seeking such an origin useful?

Are toys propaganda?

What will you hand your child to play with when you are a parent?

At what age are you immune from propagandistic images? Is age a good determinant?

What are the systemic and surface modes of propaganda? (derived from watching a clip of the TV show “Jersey Shore” which I had never seen and was proud of, thanks for ruining it for me)

Is it ok to use propaganda to combat propaganda?

Is it ok to use something based solely on the rubric of effectiveness?

 

This has me thinking of some sort of assessment or some final examination project where students generate lists of questions as the result of the semester. For what else do we have of value?