Given that we are entering the season of heightened political marketing, I am often tempted to joke with my friends and colleagues that Moses must have tripped as he came down the mountain with the Commandments and knocked the bottom off one of the tablets with the 11th commandment, Thou Shalt Not Market! I can’t imagine a commandment that includes an application of all the other commandments so well that it would have slipped God’s mind. It seems to me that the most protected form of lying is the political marketing that happens during our election seasons. In Indiana, you can be protected from almost any nuisance call during your dinner time, except political messaging calls.
I think it must be so bad, that I am now hearing the call for K-12 teachers to do a better job of battling misinformation through helping students develop better literacy skills. Having students develop critical thinking skills while evaluating various sources of information they glean is a great idea. My question is why isn’t it a higher priority? I think that if the part of the tablet with the 11th commandment had survived the trip down the mountain, we would be hearing about the evils of marketing more from the pulpit. Instead, we get government sanctioned lying during the election season, or messages telling our kids that if you toss your dad a breakfast sandwich after an all-night party, all will be good. Of course, it is very important to have the right credit card in your wallet, even though it might have a high interest rate. Or placing a bet on the number of assists Caitlin Clark gets or interceptions by Joe Burrow is like a video game with no consequences. Marketing can not only be annoying, but dangerous.
Like so much these days, the belief is that we can throw a few thousand bucks at some programs to fix the problem while political campaigns, marketing firms, lawyers, and accountants spend and make billions of dollars on manipulative messaging, not for the good of society but to sell goods, services, ideas, and lies. Unfortunately, I fear that the job of reeducating our young people to overcome the evils of marketing has come to rest with teachers. It is amazing to see all the damage undone by great teachers. I guess this is just job security. At least until we find that part of the tablets left on the mountain and know that the 11th commandment is Thou Shalt Not Market!
Chris McGrew is a Past President of the Indiana Council for the Social Studies and a methods instructor at Indiana State University. He is a former secondary social studies teacher at Carroll J/S High School and a former state social studies specialist with the Indiana Department of Education.
