Mock Election Curriculum Resources

Political Cartoons
Objectives: To analyze political cartoons; to evaluate political cartoons as indicators of the public response to candidates’ stands on particular issues.

Procedures:
1. Access various political cartoons on the national election from local sources
(The Concord Monitor, The Union Leader, and other area newspapers) and national newspapers (The New York Times and The Washington Post among others).

2. Using the overhead projector, discuss several selected cartoons as a class. Students may need assistance in understanding political satire and in relating the election issues to the cartoons.

3. Divide the class into groups of three. One student will serve as a group leader, responsible for directing the discussion. One will serve as the recorder. The third student will serve as the detail analyst, responsible for pointing out details in the cartoon relating to the overall theme. Each group will take responsibility for examining and interpreting one additional cartoon.

4. Allow time for group work. Then ask each group to present their findings to the class.

5. Students should note the names of the cartoonists and the newspapers, as well as the themes of the cartoons, during the presentations.

6. When the presentations have been completed, list the cartoonists, newspapers, and themes on an overhead. Discuss the response of the cartoonists and newspapers to the candidates and issues.

7. Each group will have the standing assignment of culling political cartoons from these current news sources and creating an annotated scrapbook analyzing the cartoons that the group collects. Cartoons should be mounted on construction paper and kept in a file.

8. As election day approaches, create a bulletin board of political cartoons, organized by issue.

9. Each student will write an analysis of the political cartoons on one issue. Based on the cartoon presentations, students should evaluate the public reception to the candidate’s stand on the issue, predicting the candidate’s success on that basis.

Text/Materials: Current newspapers, local and national, with political cartoons; web sites on political cartoons, cited in the bibliography.

Evaluation: Student answers to discussion questions; student analysis of political cartoons, in groups and individually.

Enrichment: Some classes may wish to follow political cartoons about state races as well as the national election. The same techniques may be used.

U.S. history classes may use historical political cartoons to compare and contrast the candidates and the public reception to their stands in the 2000 campaign and in past campaigns on similar issues. As an alternative, students may research historical campaigns (1896 and 1932 are two of particular interest), then discuss the campaign materials from those time periods. They should also evaluate how and why election issues in other years vary from contemporary ones, based on research into the historical campaigns from the Internet and their school library/media center.

Political Cartoon Web Sites:
Daryl Cagle’s Professional Cartoonists’ Index
Includes daily editorial cartoons from newspapers around the world. The site also includes teacher guides.

A Brief History of Political Cartoons

Herblock's History
Online exhibition from the Library of Congress featuring editorial cartons from Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Herb Block.

Political Cartoons
Article from Grolier on the history of political cartoons.

Dr. Seuss Went to War: A Catalog of Political Cartoons by Dr. Seuss
Online exhibit from the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of Southern California Davis.

FDR Cartoon Collection Database
Political cartoons from the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.