Why are voting laws so different from state to state? What's a poll watcher, and how can you become one? Derek Cressman of Common Cause, a voting watchdog organization, answered some frequently asked questions about the U.S. election system on the P.O.V. companion website for Election Day, a film that chronicles the 2004 presidential election in 11 cities and towns across America. Election Day premieres this week on PBS (check local listings).
The good news in Election Day is that more and more Americans are bringing their passion for democracy to the polls, drawing unprecedented numbers of voters eager to make the most of their right to cast a ballot and have it counted. Taking place in the long shadow of 2000's bitterly contested presidential vote, the 2004 election also brought more scrutiny of polling-place practices from citizens as well as international observers. The bad news in Election Day is that close scrutiny of American elections finds a surprisingly antiquated system, which often works as much to frustrate voter participation as to encourage it and which harbors wide disparities in access between rich and poor neighborhoods.
If you have a question about voting, check out our FAQ, and if your question isn't there, submit it in the comments below. At the end of this week, we'll pick one (or two), Derek will answer it, and we will add it to the Election Day FAQ feature.
Added July 15, 2008: Derek has answered two of the questions posed in the comments on the Election Day FAQ. Visit the FAQ to find out why he thinks voting is a duty, and how much your vote really matters.
Speaking of P.O.V. flashbacks and film updates, I finally got the chance to check out a link that fellow staffer Eliza Licht sent around the office a couple weeks ago. Shelby Knox, the central character in The Education of Shelby Knox (P.O.V. 2005), recently became a blogger for the Huffington Post. Her beat, not surprisingly, is "sex education, women's rights and youth empowerment."
Since 2005, Shelby has graduated from college and traveled the country, speaking to young people at screenings of the film about her view that comprehensive sex education is what's needed in America's high schools. Over at the Huffington Post, she's been logging about one post a month. If you are a fan of the film, or are interested in this issue, I'd recommend it. She continues to be a young woman worth watching.
P.O.V.'s Community Outreach and Education department participates in a range of conferences and workshops throughout the year. In an effort to explore using media in classrooms — even those where you might not expect to — Jessica Lee and Irene Villaseñor attended the Radical Math conference at Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY last week. Jessica reports that the event was a great success.
Last week, Irene Villaseñor and I presented a workshop at Radical Math's Creating Balance in an Unjust World conference. Radical Math is the brainchild of educator Jonathan Osler, who, in 2006, started the website as a way to encourage and support math teachers who wanted to incorporate issues of economic and social justice into their curriculum. The conference was attended by nearly 400 people from 26 states and 37% of its workshops were facilitated by youth.
Since math isn't exactly the most obvious subject to be showcased in a social issue documentary series, it was very heartening that the conference organizers accepted our workshop proposal. Their decision reflects a positive trend: more and more educators are looking to engage their students by using media in their classrooms — and they look to programs like P.O.V. to help them make that transition.
Math teachers discussed how to inspire students to study algebra with Roger Weisberg's Waging a Living at the Radical Math conference in Brooklyn.
Though math isn't really an overt element in many of our films, we have broadcast many films that showcase injustice. In the Community Engagement and Education Department, we want educators to be able to use our films as examples of academic concepts embodied in real life. Irene and I decided to show our workshop participants clips from Roger Weisberg's documentary Waging a Living (P.O.V. 2006), which is about hard-working Americans struggling to make a living wage. Irene and I showed clips from the film and presented the companion lesson plan and discussion guide. Given that we're not math teachers, we wanted to give the group ample time to brainstorm with each other. In our department, we strongly believe that organizers, educators and those who borrow our films know their constituencies best and like to think of ourselves as a resource that can help meet community needs. As we were getting breakout groups together, one teacher said, "I think this would be a great introduction to algebra for my students. Does anyone want to talk about how we can use the film to talk about algebra?" Several teachers joined her group and they began a lively discussion on how concrete mathematical skills could be drawn out while still emphasizing the film's social justice message.
It's easy to assume that social issue media might be better matched to subjects like Language Arts and Social Studies, but the enthusiasm that we saw at the Radical Math conference proves that there is a diverse group of educators out there willing to further develop their teaching techniques and expand their repertoire. It's a natural fit for our films, too — in a sense, it's a pretty logical idea. Documentary filmmakers are educators, illuminating information deemed relevant and necessary, and they want audiences to learn something new each time they tune in. And it's fun for us to be part of process, too!
