Highland Park High School
Political Awareness Survey Home Page
This survey has been conducted entirely by Roger Wolfson, of HPHS. It is not officially sponsored by the school, which is not responsible for the content or opinions of this poll. I, Roger Wolfson, am entirely the creator of this poll, these essays, and this Web site.
These articles express strong opinions by me, the author, and are intended to be thought provoking (quite literally). For this reason, these web pages will be littered with places to click to send me e-mail, so that whenever the mood strikes, you will have any easy way to retaliate. If ther is enough good mail, I may just include a page of these debates. So, here's the first chance: Send e-mail to: RogerW7979@earthlink.net
Overview
On Sunday, October 27, 1996, I was reading an old issue of the school newspaper when I came across an article stating that some students would be conducting a mock election on Tuesday to encourage future participation in our electoral system. I thought about this, and realized that our country does not simply need more voters, it needs informed, aware voters. That is, it does no one any good for people to randomly check boxes off on a ballot. I was considering a similar problem as part of my independent study in statistics, so it occurred to me to combine the two subjects, and take a poll to see if these student voters knew anything at all about politics in America. I myself am not claiming expert knowledge about what each candidate represents, though I have a general idea based on some reading, and based on knowing their party affiliation. Do others?
Monday
Sunday night I had created a preliminary quiz form, and Monday morning I presented it to Mr. Goldberg. I made small corrections and then asked Ms. Parks, in charge of the election, if I would be able to participate. She agreed, and so I made 600 copies of the survey. I also came up with a grading system.
Tuesday
The election was held during 4th, 5th, and 6th periods, and I stayed at the table for most of that time to supervise my section of the election and to discourage collaboration on the survey. The election went off well, with nearly all of the survey forms being used. That afternoon, my Physics class helped me to sort the surveys (thanks, AP Physics!) and that night I began grading.
And since Tuesday...
It has taken until Thursday night to finish all of them, but now they are input into the computer, and I can start data analysis. Since it was already in there, I got the idea for this page, with most of the information coming from either the original data, or essays I will be writing for various sources. Hopefully I can talk to some people at Shoreline, and although most of there space is reserved for staff writers, I hope they will let me publish some of the excerpts from this site in there. I also hope that some of the related classes might provide the information of this site to the students, so they (you) can see this. Of course, if you're reading this, you must have gotten the info somewhere.
This page and all others in this web site Copyright 1996 by Roger Wolfson, all rights reserved. This site is not sponsored by, funded by, endorsed by, affilliated with, permitted by, banned by, or maybe even acknowledged by Highland Park High School or District 113. Why are you reading this? Send e-mail to: RogerW7979@earthlink.net
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