“These two ads are reaching out to a certain group of people, trying to get votes,” Schumacher says to his students. “Obama’s is aimed at environmentalists. Who’s the target audience for McCain’s ad?”

The students dissect television ads about change, the economy, and ones that downright attack their opponent. Why does McCain talk about Energy Security and Obama about Energy Independence? Where was that quote pulled from? Why was a particular photo used? “It’s not like they reached into a filing cabinet and just pulled one out,” Schumacher says. “Out of thousands of photographs they very carefully chose this one. Why?”

One student is particularly struck by the use of real people in Obama’s ad about the economy. “It puts you in other people’s shoes. She’s saying she can’t afford bread and milk, and it just makes you feel bad for her.”

“Yeah,” chimes in another student. “It makes it more real to me.”

As always, Schumacher helps his students see the campaign ads through a critical lens. “Can we believe what they say? What makes you think they are real people?” He wants his students to think critically about everything they see, hear, or read, and to try to understand why people believe what they believe. He refers to it as media literacy and it’s a skill he makes them use all year long, whether studying women’s suffrage or WWII, or whether their looking at political cartoons or campaign commercials. “We’re just lucky this is an election year,” he says.