Speaker: Lawrence Lessig
TED2013
Date: February 2013
Location: Long Beach, California
Description from TED website:
There is a corruption at the heart of American politics, caused by the dependence of Congressional candidates on funding from the tiniest percentage of citizens. That’s the argument at the core of this blistering talk by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig. With rapid-fire visuals, he shows how the funding process weakens the Republic in the most fundamental way and issues a rallying bipartisan cry that will resonate with many in the U.S. and beyond.
My Review / Notes / Thoughts
Being a Political Science major (from my undergrad years), I have to say that I love this talk! I think it’s an excellent talk for high school and college-level courses in the area of history, political science, legal studies, or even social work. I think that it is imperative that we teach our young people about our government, its history, why our founding fathers made some of the decisions they made. And it needs to be placed in context. Too many of us take a fact out of context and have a tendency to blow things out of proportion. It’s just a fact of our humanity…we all do it! That is why it’s important for students to watch such talks and engage in thought-provoking assignments around such material.
Of course, you know I’ll always say that discussions are a great way to encourage students to engage after watching such a talk. Another way to get students to engage would be to pair this talk with a quiz. Or use it to start a paper assignment. What about a debate? That might be interesting.
I would love to hear some ideas from others about ways they would get students to engage with the content from this talk! So feel free to reach out or leave a note with your reflections!
Until next time … live long, life-learner!