May 26, 2006

Daily Show Justified


I know most teachers are at the end of our year and the last thing on our minds is planning. That said; If you love the Daily Show and find yourself thinking, "Man I might be able to use this in the classroom but it would be a hard sell to the admin" then this little write up is for you.

Paul Brewer of The Public Brewery shares a paper he recently co-authored outlining the content and (I think) the potential educational value of the Daily show. In order to get the jokes students have to understand what's going on in the world and in some cases a little history maybe some economics and who knows what else. Things like,
A content analysis examined 52 episodes of The Daily Show from early 2005. Of the 222 news stories in these episodes, over half addressed political topics; a fourth did so using issue frames. Almost half of the stories addressed world affairs.
may get an administrator to raise an eyebrow of understanding as you explain why this is an excellent addition to your civics and current event discussions.

If you already use the show I would love to know how and if it worked.

4 comments:

QuakerDave said...

You know Stewart has really made it when Bill O'Reilly is blaming him for things. Talk about cred!

Smithie said...

O'Reilly dis = instant success, true, true. Look what it did for Michael Moore!

WTOTW said...

Not only do I study TDS, I use it in the classroom, too. In fact, that paper came out of an undergraduate class on mock news; my co-author was a student in the class (and is now a grad student).

Smithie said...

Dude, I SO want to take your class?!