An Appeal to Community College Students: Don't be Fooled!

As an educator who interacts constantly with college-aged students, and as a parent of three children who are in their early twenties, I am disturbed by President Obama's shameless attempt to manipulate young people by holding political rallies disguised as "official White House events" at community colleges.

In fact, the more I listen to this man on the campaign trail, the more alarmed I become. It is increasingly apparent to me that Obama's "power to persuade" is a deadly concoction of charm and fallacious reasoning, made all the more potent when presented to gullible students who, simply by virtue of being assembled together in a stadium or auditorium, are vulnerable to the insidious "bandwagon" fallacy. When the president of the United States mocks and ridicules people or ideas you might otherwise respect, either because of family tradition or personal convictions, and when everyone around you laughs and cheers and jeers, are you going to be among the few who "sit on your hands" or shout out a dissenting "boo"? Most twenty-somethings wouldn't. Most fifty-somethings wouldn't.

Again, the word "shameless" comes to mind. Obama, correctly assuming most of these students are either ignorant of or disinterested in facts and taking full advantage of social mores (what college kid would shout "boo" while a popular, witty, charming president is speaking?), is able to make overtly false claims with virtually zero accountability. And even if those claims are rightly disputed in the next day's right-wing news outlets who are vetting and fact-checking the president, little matter. He's moved on, the kids with their short attention span and Twitter and Facebook have moved on, the mainstream news outlets aren't interested, and the beat goes on. The 24/7 information cycle is all and only about image, not substance.

Critical thinking is in danger of becoming a lost art. The more time we (educators) spend focused on "diversity" and "tolerance," the less time we spend teaching students how to understand an argument, recognize and challenge logical fallacies, and refuse to be manipulated.

Here's an assignment for the English classroom. Rather than holding feel-good discussions about diversity, let's analyze campaign stump speeches, particularly Barack Obama's. We could practice on the 3-minute clip below. How many logical fallacies can you identify?

Here's a partial list: appeal to pity; appeal to fear; bandwagon; begging the question; confusing chronology with causality, either/or reasoning; equivocating; failing to accept the burden of proof; false analogy; hasty generalization; over-reliance on authority; oversimplifying; personal attack; red herring; slanting; slippery slope; sob story; straw man.

President Obama, speaking at Prince George’s Community College in Ohio, this week.