Extra! Extra!
For Laughing Out Loud

Innovator: William Ray Heitzmann, Ph.D.

Job: A Villanova University faculty member and political cartoon specialist, Heitzmann has developed a model that uses cartoons to teach critical thinking skills to students of all ages.

Bright Idea: As presidential candidates vie for position in the high-stakes Election 2000, few would say politics is a laughing matter. But instructor William Ray Heitzmann sees the coming presidential election as a unique opportunity to challenge students to think critically in the classroom. And to help do that, cartoons are key.

“Political cartoons in America have a long and healthy tradition of criticizing intolerance, injustice, political corruption, and social evils,” says Heitzmann. “Political or editorial cartoons are a wonderful springboard to classroom discussion, and there are numerous ways you can use them across the curriculum to engage children at higher levels of thinking.”

As Heitzmann defines it, a cartoon is “an interpretive picture that makes uses of symbolism and most often bold and humorous exaggeration to present a message or point of view concerning people, places, or situations.”

While the use of editorial cartoons in social studies and history classes is nothing new, many educators have experienced frustration when they find their students “just don’t get it.” Heitzmann—who teaches in the Department of Education and Human Services and has been involved in teacher education for more than 20 years—has developed a special form of comic relief for teachers with this complaint. He prescribes a hierarchy of subskills that are necessary to promote thinking through cartoon interpretation.

“One of the great values of cartoons,” says Heitzmann, “is that they come in all different types—some are sophisticated, some are very simple. You can actually introduce some concepts like symbolism and caricature very early, in first and second grade.” For example, an elementary school teacher can show a caricature of a popular figure, ask students to identify the person, and have them compare it to a realistic image or photo to see what features have been exaggerated. The class can discuss whether the caricature is positive or negative and then try to draw a caricature of a famous person they know.

Next steps involve teaching students the significance of symbols. While McDonald’s “Golden Arches” or Nike’s familiar “Swoosh” find instant recognition among even the youngest students, he says, few will understand, for example, the Democratic Party elephant. Beginning with known symbols, teachers can build students’ knowledge of how cartoonists use visual “short hand” by having the class suggest common objects and asking what they stand for. Such exercises in symbolism allow teachers to build interpretive skill levels in their students and assess higher order thinking skills in a way that’s, well, as easy as pie.

“These kinds of lessons are perfect because you can have great discussions and inject lots of humor. If you want to do group work, you can provide a cartoon without a caption and let students come up with one. If you want to do a lecture, you can. You can let students generate their own cartoon as a test or a homework activity. If you want to introduce multicultural education, you can find a cartoon about that.”

By fourth and fifth grades, he says, teachers can lead students through a series of small steps to help students master the art of interpretation such as describing the use of stereotypes, explaining the issue in question, comparing the messages of two or more cartoons, and judging the cartoonist’s bias in relation to each student’s own point of view. Older students benefit most by knowing background information about the context of a cartoon. But with some cartoons, such as Benjamin Franklin’s Join or Die severed snake (stimulating support for the Albany Plan of Union in 1754), even teachers need a little help. With no lack of inexpensive and Web-based resources available, he suggests that teachers develop a political cartoon library of their own.

“Start collecting them from newspapers and magazines, keeping the name of the artist, the source, and the date.” His own collection of 50 Political Cartoons for Teaching U.S. History, available through the Social Studies School Service, includes printed reproductions and historical commentary that can be used to make transparencies, spirit duplicator masters, or bulletin board art.

While using cartoons in the classroom can meet a wide range of instructional objectives, says Heitzmann, another compelling reason to consider them is that “a growing number of political cartoons are appearing on standardized tests of all sorts, and student s are doing poorly on those questions.” Students enjoy lessons built around political cartoons, he says, and cartoons provide teachers with a creative way to both educate and motivate their students.

“We are constantly looking for panaceas in teaching,” says Heitzmann, “and this comes pretty close.”

Impact: In a paper published by the National Council for History Education, Heitzmann states that editorial cartoons: “Empower teachers to demonstrate excellence in lessons in which they’re being evaluated; promote critical thinking; develop students’ multiple intellengences, especially of special needs learners; and build lessons that aid students in mastering governmental and professional learning standards of excellence for language arts, history, and more."

For More: ray.heitzmann@villanova.edu.

A number of excellent Internet resources provide educators with links and project ideas for using political cartoons, among them: Let America Speak: Examples of Political Cartoons on the Web and Daryl Cagle’s Professional Cartoonist Index, which includes a teacher’s guide.