PROPAGANDA For High School Kids In 1948! Would They Show This Today?

Why post this?

Two reasons:

1.) We no longer teach kids how to think. Those that made it through high school in the 50s and 60s received a better education than today, and that can be backed with standardized testing where we can see the scores dropping over time, or the complete lack of knowledge in certain areas which once were taught.

Today we focus little time on what the fallacies are and how to identify them. We do not instruct much on formal or the mechanics of logic. Math skills are abysmal and math teaches one how to think. Finally, and what this film addresses, we do not spend much time on teaching kids how to recognize advertising or propaganda.

Our education system was never really designed to create thinkers, although for a time it did have fairly high standards. It was borne out of the industrial revolution and need to have semi-literate factory workers. Why do you think schools are M-F, 8-5? Socialize them to be use to a regular work week. That's not a bad thing since school should prepare one for adult/independent life and joining the labor pool.

2.) I would like to explain the nuance difference between propaganda and advertising. Propaganda is a pejorative usually used by someone in disagreement, and it is a term usually used in context with a foreign politician, nation, or opposition politician, party, etc. Advertising uses many of the same techniques, but it's when the private sector does this in order to influence a consumer. (((Both attempt to change perceptions in order to influence behaviors.)))

The term propaganda has become cliche. Nonetheless, it is used often in an attempt to make the listener or reader discount what they heard or read. Instead of arguing the facts, it is an attack on the source of the information. It would be the same as calling someone a racist and using this attack to make people reject what they heard from that source.

Interesting that they used to teach this.