The
Core
Exercises
The Core Exercises are the ones that we consider to be the most
important steps needed to become an informed, critically thinking voter.
We estimate that it would take a person about 3-5 hours to do these six
exercises.
1) Doing the “Know
Yourself Politically Exercise” in Part 7 of the
Course.
2) Doing
an exercise where you upgrade your quality of news:
You: a) decide your favorite means of news intake
(print, audio, visual, etc.)
b) examine your
current news sources and label them as socially conservative/liberal
and fiscally conservative and liberal.
c) examine and label
ten news sources d)
pick new news sources, from at least two different parts of the
political spectrum, and e)
create a reminder plan so that you really take in new regularly.
3) Look at least 24
links on our Knowledge Resources
page, to see what the sources are like.
Must inspect at least one source in each of the twelve areas.
4) Read about 11
common propaganda techniques http://library.thinkquest.org/C0111500/proptech.htm
5) Use the CEDAR
critical thinking questions or “Asking the Right Questions” list to
analyze at least three op-eds or editorials.
The CEDAR questions are:
1. What
is the CONCLUSION?
2. What
is the EVIDENCE that proves the conclusion?
(Reasons, and quasi-reasons like stories, analogies, etc.)
3. What
DISTORTION techniques are used?
Propaganda techniques, emotionally loaded words, and so forth.
4. How
ACCURATE or valid is the argument?
5. How
RELEVANT or significant is the conclusion to the overall issue, if true
or probably true?
[To help you recall CEDAR, think that you want the argument to be as
strong as a cedar tree.]
6) Learn and practice a form of advocacy that is new for
you. If you have never written an advocacy letter to Congress,
learn and do that. Or make a call on an issue. Or go to town
meeting and speak. (Going to a meeting alone is not enough.
You must prepare and present an attempt to positively influence the
political process.)
Or learn and try out some form of advocacy that is new for you.
You can find a fairly complete list of the kinds of advocacy in Part
12 of our course.
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