Can your students identify the logical reasoning within a persuasive argument and evaluate it for legitimacy?
A pair of documents from the Library’s Mass Persuasion Campaigns primary source set — one on each side of the women’s suffrage debate — offers students an example of how some organizations tried to sway public opinion using persuasive arguments. “True Democracy” presented a pro-suffrage argument, while “Some Reasons Why We Oppose Votes for Women” argued against. Analyzing these primary sources can help students sharpen their information literacy skills, by examining some of the ways persuasive arguments are constructed.
Begin by inviting students to conduct a high-level comparison and contrast of the documents. Student comments might include:
- Each document is one page.
- Each includes a series of short, repetitive phrases.
- “True Democracy” begins each phrase with “We Believe,” while “Why We Oppose” uses “Because.” (Ask: what impact might this word choice have on readers?)
- Each argument appears structured to appeal to reason.
- The pro-suffrage argument stresses principals of democracy; the anti-suffrage piece stresses expediency.
Next, challenge students to go deeper, by identifying the logical structures that underpin each argument. If necessary, explain to students that the writers appear to be using their phrases to set up deductive, conditioned arguments. In other words, first a “preliminary condition,” or antecedent, is established. Then, if the reader accepts this condition, they are presented with an inevitable conclusion, or consequent. Ask students to identify specific examples of this technique and document them, re-phrasing the arguments as “if-then” statements to make the logic evident. Student responses could include:
- Pro-suffrage: “If democratic government derives just power from people who are governed, and if women are people who are governed, then a government that does not allow women to vote is not democratic.”
- Anti-suffrage: “If suffrage is not a question of right and justice but rather of policy and expediency, then women don’t need suffrage.”
- Anti-suffrage: “If voting has not been a cure-all for evils effecting men, then it is not likely to be a cure-all for women either.”
Encourage students to test both the “if” and “then” components of each argument. Is the “if” antecedent statement truly a condition on which we all agree? (for instance, does voting really have nothing to do with justice?) Or, if we do agree with an antecedent, is its “then” consequent statement the only logical conclusion to draw? (for instance, voting might not cure all women’s problems, but can’t it still address some of them?) When students have completed their analysis, ask which document presents a more compelling case, and why?
Similar analysis strategies can be used with other primary sources from the Library’s collections. Students may even find conditional “if-then” logic embedded in non-textual primary sources, and it can be useful to write the implied “if-then” reasoning so that it can be evaluated. If your students use this strategy, either with these primary sources or others, let us know what new insights they come up with!