The one Twain text your students need to read for the 2024 election year.
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Relevance: Peer Pressure; Critical Thinking; Political Messaging and Decisions; Fashion Trends; Algorithms
After the June 17th assassination attempt on former President Trump, the last place you’d want to go isn’t to a political rally. It’s to social media. And yet, it seems like that’s where America (and probably the world, to be honest) ended up–including me. After Biden’s June 21st withdrawal from the presidential race, I was drawn back again.
While I didn’t and don’t jump into political arguments on social media, I am fascinated by some of the discussion. One comment from an intelligent, educated writer friend of mine regarding Biden stood out. “This is the media’s fault,” she claimed. When I asked for clarification, she implied that Biden’s decision was greatly influenced by party leaders who were greatly influenced by media spin.
With that one conversation, a certain Mark Twain text rushed to mind–”Corn Pone Opinions”. In this essay, Twain gets it right when he explains how opinions–individual or collective–are formed.
If you have space for only one Twain text in your curriculum this year, it should be “Corn Pone Opinions”. More than ever, our students need to beef up their critical thinking skills. “Corn Pone Opinions” will help students understand the role public pressure plays on opinion.
Twain’s essay claims that man (humankind) has lost the ability to reason. Society’s decisions aren’t made from careful thought and discourse, but through peer pressure. Man “must think and feel with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing and in his business properties…at least on the surface”. He goes on to say that the most important force behind forming opinions is a person’s desire for self-approval. You can see how Twain’s philosophy easily applies to social media, cyber bullying, cancel culture, and political rhetoric, especially during decisive political campaigns or times of high contraversy and conspiracy theories. Today’s students will understand these ideas, too. In fact, with social media, they live these ideas maybe even more than Twain’s compatriots did.
To prove his point, Twain uses examples from cultural areas that students can easily understand–fashion, manners, entertainment, politics, and religion. Don’t worry, though. In typical Twain fashion, the author remains an equal opportunity finger pointer. His views are strictly on how people form opinions regarding these issues, not the actual issues.
One more element of this essay that holds power is the source of Twain’s claim. Supporting his own protestation that there is no such thing as an original thought, Twain does not come up with the idea of the corn pone opinion. Twain’s source is admittedly problematic for a boy of fifteen in the 1800s. The idea is professed by a “young black man–a slave who daily preached sermons from the top of his master’s woodpile”. The setup in the first two paragraphs alone offers a great teaching moment– a comparison between how outside influences in Twain’s world and our own impact the way we encounter and value (or devalue) diverse cultures.
Because election time is a great time to help students understand how opinions are formed, here are the three best lessons from this Mark Twain essay for the 2024 presidential election year. After all, our job is not to teach students what to think, rather how to think.
- Do original ideas exist?
- Does self-approval outweigh public approval?
- Do emotions or intellect drive the formation of opinions?
The Lesson:
For students to form answers to the three lesson questions, they will need to understand key terms, practice effective annotation, and be able to make connections to modern societal issues.
- Start with key terms from the text. Make sure students understand Twain’s meaning of these words and phrases:
pretense bucksaw social standing corn pone hoopskirt reconciled consequence novelty sparingly standards conform outside the pale gaud canvass boon
It is also a good idea for students to understand these modern terms:
algorithm poll cancel culture infatuated peer pressure
Use this link for a Keeping Classics key terms worksheet.
- Annotation:
Use the following prompts to encourage effective annotation. I like to assign individual annotations first and then partners or small groups. That way students bring something to the table and are able to compare notes.
- Circle and note any ways in which Twain’s fifteen-year-old experience might be similar to the experiences of today’s teens.
- Underline and note Twain’s main and subsequent claims.
- Box and note Twain’s evidence in support of his claims.
- Star any norms, fads, or standards from Twain’s era and note in the margins a comparable norm, fad or standard from current society.
- As always, highlight any unknown words, phrases, allusions, or references. Note your best guess as to their meanings. Then look up the terms and correct them, if needed.
- Making the Connections
Set a timer for 3 – 5 minutes for each prompt. Ask students to write a claim and support it with evidence from the essay and from personal experience. If students are uncomfortable with personal reflection as part of a written assignment, ask them to use current events, pop culture, or even evidence from literature or cinema. If it is appropriate for your class, ask students to take the next step and apply these prompts to what they understand about current political rhetoric.
- Do original ideas exist?
- How might self-approval outweigh public approval?
- How might emotions or intellect drive the formation of opinions, individually or collectively?
Mark Twain’s “Corn Pone Opinions” becomes more and more relevant every day. Algorithms feed us news we want to see, making us feel right and righteous. AI plagiraistacially scrapes the internet to “create” everything from grocery lists to poetry. Political discourse spews propagandized sound bites more than it does thoughtful debate. Unfortunately, society repeats those sound bites without always thinking them through, threatening to divide our nation.
If you have never taught “Corn Pone Opinions”, the time has come. With another unbelievable election year facing us and the ever increasing heat of public opinion, we all need to consider where those opinions come from and how they are formed. If you aren’t convinced by me, consider Twain’s words:
“Men think they think upon great political questions, and the do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side; they arrive at convictions, but they are drawn from a partial view of matter…They swarm with their party, they feel with their party, they are happy in their party’s approval; and where the party leads, they will follow, whether for right and honor, or through blood and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals.”
As always, please let me know your opinion of this lesson (original or not).
Keep on keeping on!
