QUESTION: Utilizing Documentaries to Teach Persuasive Writing

[Ashley Tice]

Currently, I am taking a grad class that exposed me to incorporating documentary films into my language arts curriculum.

 

I would like to use documentaries to help my students with their persuasive writing unit.

 

Does anyone have any ideas or thoughts that would help to get me started?  Are there any documentaries that embody the concepts of persuasion?

[Frank W. Baker]

Ashley,

You are in luck. I have devoted an entire page to teaching with docs on my Media Literacy Clearinghouse web site.

Here is the link: http://www.frankwbaker.com/using_docs_in_the_classroom.htm

Frank Baker

[Ashley Tice]

Frank - Thank you!  What a rich website - so many resources to use when I begin this doc/persuasive journey!

[Mike Gange]

Kids all too often think that documentaries have no bias, are written from an objective point of view. In addition to the excellent suggestions from Frank Baker, you might look at Mike Moore's docs, which certainly have a bias. If you watch Moore, you would think all Canadians can leave their doors unlocked all night, and the keys in the car in the yard. Canadians aren't as lily white as Moore paints us to be -- just look at the unnecessary riots in Vancouver last week, done not by some rabble-rousers but by middle class kids, on the loose, with too much pot and booze in their systems. I suggest you check out Mike Moore's films, which all have a persuasive language to them. Even his segments from TV Nation, if you can find them. One of those that is both comic and tragic is called the African American Wallet Exchange. Moore skewers the police in it, all with persuasiveness that is hard to argue against.  

[Ashley Tice]

Yes - we looked at a segment from Fahrenheit 9/11 yesterday in my grad class.  From the visual to the audio to the text, Moore definitely has an agenda!

[Ryan Goble]

On a somewhat related note - you should check out the incredible threads from this older crowdsource question as there are lots of tools that can help you with your goal there...QUESTION: What is an interesting way to show a documentary in class...

[Tim Crane]

There are tons of documentaries about the food industry (fast food, factory farms, etc.) that could work. Food Inc. and Supersize Me probably the two most famous films in that genre. A friend of mine at University of Illinois built her freshmen comp course around a food theme and showed Food Inc. in the process. It definitely made an impact on her students.

[Ashley Tice]

I do want to view both of these documentaries - thanks for the suggestion!

[Ryan Goble]

There are a million posts on this here but you can get a lot of bangs out of short docs - esp. the content at the Media that Matters film festival. Here is a post about their fest from someone who worked for them and this page collects all their films - I use it so much it is in my top 10 bookmarks!

 

 

[Ashley Tice]

Interesting - I think that I am going to share this with the rest of my class.  Thank you!

[Faith Rogow]

PBS' Frontline series posts their episodes (each a documentary), downloadable for free on their website.

There are also a bunch of possibilities on the POV website.  For teens, those featuring young activists might be best.  The Education of Shelby Knox (on getting sex ed rather than abstinence-only education into schools) or If a Tree Falls (that tells the story of the Earth Liberation Front) or Better This World (that looks at entrapment of activists accused on plotting to set off a bomb at the 2006 Republican National Convention) would be great for assignments related to persuasion.   

If you want to link up with earth science folks, you might look for the recent doc On Coal River, which looks at mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia.  And if health is a better match, there is Under Our Skin, a controversial doc about treatment for Lyme Disease.

 

 

[Ashley Tice]

Faith - I love the cross-curricular connections!  I'll look in to both of these. Thanks!

[John Golden]

Hey Ashley: 

In my mind, even more important than the content of the docs used for persuasion (actually, we probably ought to get used to used using the word "argumentative" writing in light of the term used by the new Common Core State Standards) is what we ask students to DO when they are examining a doc that uses persuasive techniques. Here's a section that I pulled from Reading in the Reel World that focuses on persuasion; the clips are a bit dated now, but the ideas are still pretty sound: 

Specifically, I introduce students to Pathos, Logos, and Ethos in print and nonprint texts. I ask them to write a series of short persuasive pieces using a scenario they may have themselves faced. To confirm their knowledge of these further, I ask them to imagine that they were going to write a persuasive essay that explores both sides of a controversial topic, say capital punishment, and to think about what logos, pathos, and ethos information they might include in their pieces. Their charts might look something like this:

Type	Pro-Capital Punishment	Anti-Capital Punishment
Logos	Facts and evidence on how the penalty reduces crime rates	Statistics on numbers of minorities and poor people on death row
Pathos	Recount the details of a story of a brutal crime for which the offender was sentenced to death	Recount the story of a condemned mentally retarded man who confessed to a crime after the police had beaten him
Ethos	Include interviews with death penalty opponents and even condemned prisoners	Acknowledges the human nature of an “eye for an eye” approach

 

 A Scenario: You arrive home one hour after your curfew and your parent or guardian has decided that you should be grounded for a week as punishment. Try to persuade your parent or guardian to change his or her mind by using the three types of arguments.

 

• Argument 1: Appeal to your parent or guardian by showing that you are trustworthy and that you care deeply about the situation and its effect on them. You should use “I.”
• Argument 2: Appeal to your parent or guardian by telling a story with lots of details in order to create pity for yourself and your situation. You can use “I,” though you may refer to other people as well.
• Argument 3: Appeal to your parent or guardian by giving statistics and commonly held beliefs. Refer to experts and facts that can be supported and explained. You should not use “I.”

Now, look over the following descriptions of each of the persuasive appeals. How did you use each in the pieces that you wrote?

• Logos (Logical): This type of appeal uses inductive or deductive reasoning by citing statistics, facts, experts, and evidence. When using this type of argument, you offer your audience examples that are similar to this subject and convince them to draw the conclusion you want. (Argument 3)
• Ethos (Ethical): This type of argument requires that you establish yourself (the author) as trustworthy and respectful of the audience. You do this by demonstrating that you have taken the time to research your topic, which establishes your credibility on the subject. (Argument 1)
• Pathos (Emotional): This is when you appeal to the emotions of your audience by describing in detail the effect of a particular situation. You should try to arouse a sense of pity, anger, fear, or other emotion in your audience. (Argument 2)

The next step I take with my students is to show them a few clips from documentaries (see recommendations below) and ask them to try to identify these appeals. Usually, I assign students only a single type of appeal to identify for the first clip and then add more as we go on. After they watch the clips, students evaluate how persuasive the section is and which appeal was most effective for them. Before moving on to the next clip, I ask them to think about what other information the filmmaker might have included, using each of the three types of appeals. Clips that work well are:

 

War Comes to America (final film of the Why we Fight series, Frank Capra)

1:36:00-1:40:30

Prior to showing this, you might want to tell (or remind) your students about who the US was fighting in World War II and that before Pearl Harbor, it had a policy of neutrality that evolved into greater support for the Allied nations. This clip, from a series of films intended to attract support for America’s involvement in World War II, begins with a newspaper headline announcing Germany’s invasion of Poland. From there, we hear an ethical appeal from the British Prime Minister about how German leaders cannot be trusted and we see emotional images of preparations for war, including an infant being put into a gas mask. The narrator uses a logical appeal by referring to a Gallup poll stating that most Americans felt Germany was responsible for the war, and some Congressmen use logic to try to change the official neutrality policy of our country. The sequence ends with another Gallup poll about America’s changing feelings about Japan.

 

Fahrenheit 9/11: (Michael Moore, 2004)

1:23:08-1:30:16

This scene about military recruiters begins with interviews with soldiers in Iraq who are unhappy with the way the war is going. Pathos images of wounded soldiers are added to the logos charts and statistics about declining military enlistments. Moore uses the ethical appeals by casting himself as the champion of the poor and disenfranchised. Pictures of people in poverty support Moore’s central point that the military preys on the poor, as well as a group of young black men who say that they are constantly targeted by recruiters. He also includes a military TV ad that itself includes each type of appeal. The last section of this clip shows a pair of Marine recruiters on the prowl, to the sounds of a Saturday Night Fever-ish song on the audio track. After showing the two recruiters make promises, cajole, and gather information, Moore cuts back to the group of young males, one of whom says that he would love to experience college life without the risk: a statement that uses both logos and pathos appeals.

Fahrenhype 9/11 (Alan Peterson, 2004)

0:51:20-0:54:59

This is an “answer” film to Michael Moore’s that is determined to “unravel the truth” about Fahrenheit 9/11. In this sequence, three people – conservative columnist Ann Coulter, former Democratic Senator Zell Miller, and actor Ron Silver – offer reasons why Americans should support Bush Iraqi and homeland policies. Each one offers readily identifiable pathos, ethos, and logos appeals in each of their persuasive statements.

 

The next step is to have students begin constructing their own arguments using these techniques.