are you smarter than a 3rd grader?

Guest blog from Ryan (Dad I'm still waiting for your pictures & guest blog entry! hehe):

So a friend of mine who is a teacher in Macon told me about an experiment that some of her teacher friends held. The two friends (Teacher A and Teacher B) are 3rd grade teachers in Macon, GA. They teach classes of lower-middle class black children.

Teacher A told her class that they were going to make campaign posters for the candidates of their choice. The children got to choose between McCain and Obama. Every one of the children made an Obama poster.

Teacher B told her class that they were going to make campaign posters for the candidates of their choice. The children got to choose between Candidate A and Candidate B, not knowing who was who. The only thing they found out about the candidates was their policies. The policies were explained in a non-bias manner to the children. They then chose their candidate and made their posters. 50% of the class went with candidate A and the other 50% with candidate B.

The children in Teacher B's class were "polled" before the project. 100% of the third graders indicated they would vote for Obama if they could. After they were told who candidates A and B were, the children kept with their findings, and 50% of the children, who had blindly liked Obama, decided they would vote for McCain if they could.

50%? Doesn't sound like that big of a number does it? That still means 100% of the other class AND 50% of this one would be voting for Obama. Think about it though. If 100% of the Obama supporters in this nation sat down and listened to the issues and policies, and 50% changed their mind, we would have a landslide of an election for McCain.

If only people would think instead of following blindly.