High School Observation

For some reason I could not get this artifact to be uploaded in the proper orientation. Nevertheless, here it is. This artifact is from a high school government class which I have been observing for my GC350 class.  This day was the start to a new unit of government class. The students were first asked to walk up to the board and place a tally mark under the classification which best described themselves with the options: Strong conservative, weak conservative, moderate, weak liberal, and strong liberal. after the tallies were all accounted for, the students answered true or false to the questions on the handout above. The class reviewed the answers which provided a 'more accurate' indication of where their tally should have been, left or right. As the teacher had anticipated, from both the conservative and the liberal side, the majority of students went from strong to weak, or even moderate. I too was surprised that, according to this very unofficial evaluation, that I was classified as a moderate. I asked the teacher the source of the eval and he said he believes it to be from the Youth Leadership Institute. After follow-up research, I assume he meant the Youth Leadership Initiative. I did not like how he introduced the topic of political parties. I don't see the reason why students would need to  use an informal measuring devise to determine where their political views fall. Furthermore, I don't think it is necessary or appropriate for a teacher to ask a student what his or her political opinions are nor should he ask the students to inform the class where they are on the political spectrum.