Has anyone done something like this in their courses? Where you pick a political party and run a mock leadership debate? i.e., research your party’s platforms on issues like healthcare, environment, foreign policy, taxes, education, budget deficits, etc etc. Doesn’t matter which country this applies to; have you guys done something like this? Please if you have, let me know. Thanks in advance.
will reply to your post in detail later Nadia, but I've run debates in my courses in the past... mostly dealing with Government's Business Development and Technology Advancement issues.
Ask away if you have specific questions...
I once had what I thought was a very progressive teacher who did something real cool.
The class was divided into about 5groups. Each group was to design their own Utopia and needed to come up with policies that would cover five or six important things we were studying. An economic system, defense policy, health care, education, taxes, etc.
After several weeks of working up something, each Group was given a day to present their Utopia. When the designated guy from Group I would present his Utopian economic system, a representative from each of the other 4 groups got to pepper the presenter with questions designed to show the flaws in his proposed utopian system.
Each group came up with very different policies for how they thought things should be handled. The questioning part was great and when all groups were done presenting, I think we all came away pretty much knowing there was no Utopian solutions and having a better understanding of the good and the bad in a lot of different alternatives.
Fictionalizing the process enabled people to explore a much broader range of alternatives and I think it helped eliminate bias and stupid partisan debate because we focused on the ideas rather than on which political party(ies) might advance them.
**
wow. That does sound wayyyyyyyyyy better than what my prof has planned, to be honest. Very very interesting. :k: Got to be better than regurgitating a party’s existing policies.
Umar Talib,
Well basically it’s like this - the class will be divided into four groups (Bloc Quebecois, Conservative, Liberal and NDP). Role: one party leader of each group, two aides/speechwriters for each leader, one overall moderator, then about four people as media journalists to ask the questions, then 4 people representing one interest group each. (It’s a small class, gotta make do with the numbers we have - it’s only a spring course that’s why).
It’s basically going to run alongside the real federal election campaign that some are predicting (not confirmed yet) is going to be called by PM Martin soon. i want to do the interest group, will probably choose to represent Aboriginals and/or Greenpeace. (No one laugh 
).
WORST part is, we have to bloody well present this entire leadership debate infront of the public - general public, at the uni, on 19 June. There’s going to be actual media, probably my family, and about 5000 other folks who have been invited to an “open house” at the uni i’ve already started to get nightmares about this. Why do profs insist on doing these stupid oral presentation thingys - don’t they appreciate it’s like a nightmare for some students. Not all of us can get up and speak infront of 5000 people. Scares the sheesh kebabs out of me to be honest.
great opportunity to learn.
I took a Grad course in Political Marketing by mistake.
The class was asked to write papers about the current election
campaign in Umreeka.
case study:
be a consultant and develop successful campaigns.
all research and lots of writing. no speech weech.
kher I learned a lot.
[quote]
The class was asked to write papers about the current election campaign in Umreeka.
case study: be a consultant and develop successful campaigns.
[/quote]
That sounds very interesting.
So it's confirmed... i'm representing Aboriginal First Nations.