Lesson Ideas

Inquiry Tasks

• First Televised Debate, a lesson from the Teaching American History Project, provide students the opportunity to compare the issues and candidates through audio versus visual means in order to evaluate the impact of television on  influencing voters. Ask students to assume the role of a newspaper editor, composing his editorial the following morning. Who won the debate and why? Conduct a class discussion, asking students to consider the extent that televised presidential debates influence modern elections. Have other forms of media, including social media, surpassed television's influence? 

• As television evolved to become the central form of family news and entertainment, ask students to consider how presidential campaigns relied increasingly more upon television commercials. Encourage students to examine a collection of Famous Campaign Commercials, provided by O.C.S.S. in order to evaluate the visual and propaganda strategies used to influence voters. How are such strategies used in modern campaigns?

Primary Sources 

Secondary Sources 

• Nixon-Kennedy televised debate, 3-minute videoclip of first televised debate, 1960; PBS Newshour.

• Nixon-Kennedy televised debate, full version, 62 minutes, provided by C-Span. 

• Debating Our Destiny, by Lee Banville, PBS Newshour; for student review.  

• About the 1960 TV Debates, 4-minute interview with historian  and political science professor regarding the impact of the first televised debate.

• Television and Modern Campaigns, article by Tim Walker, Close-Up Foundation; for student and teacher reference. 

• Eight Lessons for Presidential Debates, article from the Smithsonian Magazine, regarding the lasting importance of television and media on elections and voter behavior.