The Best Assassins Have Middle Names

March 8, 2008 in Lesson Plans
Tags: american, assassin, assassination, barack, classroom, clinton, education, election 08, government, hillary, history, john, lesson, mccain, middle names, mode, obama, plan, president, ron paul, student teaching, teacher

The Onion has a nice little piece on how the candidates have been pandering to a crucial voting bloc. I’ve included the infographic. 

This would be perfect as an introduction to a bunch of topics. In American government, you can move on to:

 1. Presidential succession.
 2. Voting blocs.
 3. Pandering.
 4. Swing states.
 5. Campaigns and nominations.
 6. Third-party candidates.

When teaching American history, there are a few more obvious threads:

 1. History of presidential assassination.
 2. Motives behind presidential assassination.
 3. Shared fates of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Presidential assassinations don’t end there, either. Stephen Sondheim has a marvelous little musical on the subject, and there are a slew of books, too. Excerpts from either would fit marvelously, especially if you hit this as a thematic sort of unit.

My favorite excerpt from this article:

One assassin told pollsters that he is still hopeful that Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) will be elected in November. However, even if Paul fails to win the presidency, the respondent fully intends to carry out his plans to stab Paul to death in December.

Moral of the story? Never leave teacher mode. You’ll never know when you come across something useful.