Lesson Plan For

Documentary Lens Lesson Plan for The War for Men’s Minds Page 6

Documentary Lens Lesson Plan for The War for Men’s Minds

By Maureen Baron, M.A. Ed. Tech.
United Talmud Torahs Schools of Montreal, QC

Curriculum Connections

This lesson is most appropriate for senior secondary school in these courses: Canadian History, with a focus World War II; Media Education, in particular the use of verbal and visual language; and Communication Arts, with a focus on the creation and delivery of a message through the documentary genre.

Lesson Objectives

The War for Men’s Minds looks at World War II from the perspective of propaganda. Students will need to keep in mind the historical context in which this film was made: 1943, during the Second World War. The learning activities focus on how public opinion can be swayed through media, and how propaganda was used as a weapon of war.

Outcomes/Expectations for Student

· To understand how verbal and visual language is used in creating a persuasive message.

· To recognize propaganda as a deliberately constructed and biased portrayal of information.

· To understand that propaganda is a weapon of war used by all sides in their efforts to win the war.

Canadian Social Studies Themes in The War for Men’s Minds

You can use this film to explore several major themes, strands or key concepts in the current Canadian Social Studies and Social Sciences curricula.

Theme/Strand/Key Concept / Connection to The War for Men’s Minds
Discussion Points/Guided Questions /
Identity / · Whose stories are told in the film? Who is shown as fighting for freedom and democracy?
· Whose stories are not told in the film? Does this exclusion dehumanize the enemy? Explain.
· Why are there so many scenes of large crowds and mass rallies?
Citizenship / · How did the text/narration of the film describe what a good citizen should do to help the war effort?
· How did the narrator characterize the good German citizen?
Multiple Perspectives / The film talks about all nations working together and singing the same song in the fight for freedom and democracy.
· Which visuals emphasize this message and why?
· Why does the viewer not hear anything from a German citizen or German official in the documentary?
Power, Authority, Governance / · How did the filmmaker portray, through words and images, those governments that were fighting for “just” causes?
· How did the film portray, through words and images, how the German command was able to exercise and maintain its authority over its people?
Culture and Community / · How did the text and images distinguish the “good guys” from the “bad guys”?
· What images showed that the German people had accepted the Nazi ideology?
· For Canadian audiences in 1943, would these images have evoked feelings of confidence, security or fear? How would German audiences have reacted to these images?
· The war effort brought about changes in gender roles in industry. How do the text and images show the confidence that society had in women’s ability to work outside the home in traditionally male areas of work?
Global Connections / · What national symbols and icons (belonging to different countries) did the filmmaker use to evoke patriotism?
· How might these same symbols and icons have offered comfort and reassurance to the viewers?
Time, Continuity and Change / · The narrator of the film states that there has been a change in the German people’s support of the Nazi regime. What is this change attributed to?
· Why do you think the filmmaker shows the French man crying for so long rather than use a quick cut to and away from such an emotional scene?
Economics and Resources / · How do the narration and images justify the need for economic cooperation at an individual, national and international level?

Assessment Strategies

There are several assessment opportunities in this lesson. For Activity 1: 1) you could use your standard writing rubric to evaluate the position papers. You might want to adapt that rubric to take into account how well the student presents his/her position, how strong the evidence for the position is, and how persuasively the opinions are expressed. 2) Students can help create a checklist to judge their classmates’ performance in a debate about propaganda.

For Activity 5, you could use your customary classroom writing checklist or rubric to assess written work.

Materials and Resources

To fully explore the verbal and visual language of this film, you can distribute copies of the following documents from the Documentary Lens Web site. From the “About the Film” section of The War for Men’s Minds site:

· Transcript of the entire film (download the .pdf file).

· Quotation from John Grierson, found at “Critical Comments” from “About the Film” (see the worksheet appended to this lesson).

· “Shot List” for the film (download the .pdf file).

Here are some other informative articles on Web sites:

· “Democracy at War: Canadian Newspapers and the Second World War—Information, Propaganda, Censorship and the Newspapers,” from the Canadian War Museum. http://warmuseum.ca/cwm/newspapers/information_e.html

· “Government’s Propaganda Machine Is Now In High Gear,” from The Toronto Telegram, 26/07/1940, which is available as a link from the above War Museum Web site. See the links under “Information, Propaganda, Censorship and the Newspapers.”

· “The Nazis produced numerous propaganda leaflets aimed at Allied troops. The following small collection comes from shortly after D-Day in 1944.” (© 2001 by Randall L. Bytwerk) http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ww2leaf.htm

· Biography of Canadian Lorne Greene, the narrator of The War for Men’s Minds, from the Museum of Broadcast Communications. http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/G/htmlG/greenelorne/greenelorne.htm

· Debating rules and procedures from the Quebec Student Debating Association. http://www.qsda.net/current_rules_scripts.htm

If your students can work on-line, Microsoft’s OneNote program will be helpful.

Activities for The War for Men’s Minds

Introductory Activities

ACTIVITY 1: Individual Position Paper and Subsequent Debate

Step 1: Distribute the worksheet “The Nature of Propaganda” (appended to this lesson and taken from the Documentary Lens site). Ask students to read the quotation carefully, noting any questions or comments in the Notes section provided.

Step 2: Lead a class discussion using some of these questions.

· Is propaganda good or bad?

· Should schools use propaganda to teach about citizenship, patriotism and nationalism?

· If so, who should create these teaching materials?

Step 3: Have students write their own personal position paper on the quote and the issues involved.

Step 4: Explain that you will be holding a debate on an issue related to their discussion. With the students, draw up a checklist for judging their performance. They can visit the Quebec Student Debate Association Web site for debating procedures and rules. http://www.qsda.net/current_rules_scripts.htm

Students can also include these points for their checklist:

a) content and evidence

b) argument and reasoning

c) organization, presentation and delivery

d) refutation and rebuttal.

Step 5: You could then choose the authors of the most interesting, provocative and articulate position papers to be leaders and coaches for a debate on the following:

Be it resolved that the public school system should use propaganda to instill nationalism and patriotism in future adult citizens.

Step 6: As students listen to the debate, ask them to assess the performance of the debaters. If you have a large group, assign each person an assessment partner. The partners could judge each other’s performance.

ACTIVITY 2: Timeline

Making a timeline of critical events should help illustrate why wartime governments felt the need for propaganda. Students’ timelines should list key events for the years 1941 to 1944, with intervals of three months depicted on the timeline. You may want to discuss which themes they should include, for example, Canada, the home front; Canadian military abroad in Europe and in Asia; popular culture (films, music, fashion).

Students can work in pairs or small groups for this activity. These articles from the Internet can help in research:

· “Remembrances: Canada and the Second World War,” from the Royal Canadian Legion. http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Militaris/

· The CBC Archives, where students can search for events that happened during the war. http://archives.cbc.ca/index.asp?IDLan=1

· The Canadian War Museum has extensive information on Canada’s role in the war. http://www.civilization.ca/cwm/cwme.asp

· “History World War Two” from the BBC includes commentaries from people who lived through the war. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/

Students will need to make judgments about what constitutes a critical event during this time period. Display the completed timelines in your classroom.

Developing Concepts Activities

ACTIVITY 3: Emotional Trigger Words and Images in Propaganda

Step 1: Before showing The War for Men’s Minds in class, ask students to brainstorm a list of emotionally charged or attention-getting words that they hear or see in advertising (for example, free, new, improved, larger, super). Emphasize that the success of propaganda depends on the ability of the message creator to emotionally connect with the intended audience so that they accept an idea, attitude, belief, ideology or position. The creators of propaganda skilfully connect words, images and sounds. Recognizing these trigger words, sounds and images, and understanding their emotional connection to the audience, enables the viewer to deconstruct the propaganda message.

Step 2: Show The War for Men’s Minds, asking students to watch for emotional trigger words and images.

Step 3: After the film, lead a class discussion on how each side in the war used propaganda. What trigger words did each side use? What images?

Step 4: Give students time to read this on-line material to prepare for the next class (Internet addresses are listed in the Materials and Resources section of this lesson):

· “Government’s Propaganda Machine Is Now In High Gear”

· “Nazi propaganda leaflets aimed at Allied troops. The following small collection comes from shortly after D-Day in 1944”

ACTIVITY 4: Narrative Voice

An important element in documentary film is the “voice” of the message. Who speaks the message on the screen and how does the audience perceive this voice? Encourage students to learn something about Lorne Greene, the Canadian actor who was the narrator. One source of information is the Museum of Broadcast Communications. http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/G/htmlG/greenelorne/greenelorne.htm.

Ask the class to describe his voice — its tone, timbre and pitch — and how it contributed to the success of the propaganda message in The War For Men’s Minds.

· Why do students think the National Film Board choose Lorne Greene?

· Would the film have been as successful if the narrator had been a woman with a high pitched voice, or a voice like Mr. Dressup’s or Elmo’s?

Application Activities

ACTIVITY 5: Analyzing Persuasive Techniques in The War for Men’s Minds

Step 1: Give each student a copy of the transcript of The War for Men’s Minds, and ask them to highlight emotional trigger words for men in one colour and for women in another colour. Some words may attract both men and women.

Step 2: Have students compare their choices in small groups and then as a class.

Step 3: Give each student a copy of the shot list. Ask them to link the selected trigger words with the screen images. Each student must choose three words and their associated images. Have them write a paragraph on whether the image and word would have created the emotional trigger in the target audience.

These writing assignments could be graded according to your usual classroom writing rubrics.

Step 4: You could have students share their ideas in small groups. Then each small group could choose two to share with the class.

Worksheet for The War for Men’s Minds

The following quotation is taken from “The Nature of Propaganda,” in Grierson on Documentary, edited by Forsyth Hardy (Faber and Faber, London & Boston, 1979, pages 109-110).

There are some of us who believe that propaganda is the part of democratic education which the educators forget; and that is what first attracted us to study its possibilities. Education has always seemed to us to ask too much from people. It has seemed to expect every citizen to know everything about everything all the time – a patent impossibility in a world which grows wider and more complicated every day. We believe that education has concentrated so much on people knowing things that it has not sufficiently taught them to feel things. It has given them facts but has not sufficiently given them faith. It has given them the three R’s but has not sufficiently given them that fourth R, which is Rooted Belief. We believe that education in this essential has left men out in the bush without an emotional map to guide them; and when men are starved of belief they are only too prone to believe anything…

So we may usefully add a new dramatic factor to public education – an uplifting factor which associates knowledge with pride and private effort with a sense of public purpose. We can, by propaganda, widen the horizons of the schoolroom and give to every individual, each in his place and work, a living conception of the community which he has the privilege to serve. We can take the imagination beyond the boundaries of his community to discover the destiny of his country. We can light up his life with a sense of active citizenship. We can give him a sense of greater reality in the present and a vision of the future. And, in so doing, we can make the life of the citizen more ardent and satisfactory to himself.