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“It’s Just Propaganda” and Other Media Lessons for A 7th Grade Class

“Do you really want to think that someone with a contagious disease drank from your bottle?” read the advertisement. The ad, which used pictures of bacteria, urged readers to throw out their plastic bottles instead of recycling them. “Out with the old, in with the new!” it read.20110523 Greto 098

Very tiny print at the bottom identified a fictional plastics lobbying council as the ad creators.

Absurd? A bit. But also strangely persuasive. And that is exactly the point of the seventh grade exercise—create a piece of propaganda that is at once ridiculous and compelling.

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