Bringing Critical Thinking to the Classroom: Introducing the “InfluenceWatch Educational Guide”

I’m a former public school teacher of 15 years who believes in the power of teaching students how to think critically and independently. In today’s educational landscape, where indoctrination is more common than proper education, we must teach our nation’s children how to think instead of what to think. That’s why I created the “InfluenceWatch Educational Guide,” a resource that helps students explore who’s shaping public policy in America while building important research and analysis skills. With so much noise in today’s world, tools like these are critical for teaching the next generation how to separate fact from fiction.

What Is InfluenceWatch?

At its core, InfluenceWatch is an encyclopedia-like website with detailed profiles of over 12,000 public policy influencers, including nonprofits, politicians, labor unions, and more. It’s constantly updated, and the goal is simple: to help people connect the dots between public policy issues, the people behind them, and the organizations pulling the strings.

When I first encountered InfluenceWatch, I realized the site is a game changer for the well-informed classroom. Students today are bombarded with opinions, agendas, and narratives, and often they have no clue who or what is behind them. InfluenceWatch lifts the veil on these influencers, offering unbiased, well-researched information that creates a more accurate picture of what these organizations, unions, and policymakers truly represent.

Why I Created This Guide

I designed this guide to make InfluenceWatch easy to use for both teachers and students. It’s broken down into simple assignments that walk students through using the website while sharpening their critical thinking skills. The assignments are hands-on and practical, and they have clear instructions—the types of lessons I loved as a public school teacher.

Here’s how the guide works:

1. Explore the Website. The first activity introduces students to InfluenceWatch.org. They watch a short video, answer some basic questions, and get a feel for how the site works.
2. Analyze Profiles. In this section, students read two profiles from the site, paying attention to the writing style, structure, and details. The goal is to teach them to analyze the information they read and understand its purpose.
3. Evaluate Credibility. Students learn to analyze an online source for credibility—something so many adults don’t even know how to do! This assignment was created to empower students to take a deeper look into a source’s author, biases, and accuracy instead of simply trusting any source and using it in their assignments.
4. Write a Profile. In the final assignment, students get to create their own InfluenceWatch-style profile on a public policy influencer of their choice. This is a way for them to blend research, writing, and the new skills they learned in previous assignments from the guide.

Why It Matters

One of the most important things we can do as educators is teach students how to think critically. We don’t tell them what to think; we give them the tools to do so themselves. InfluenceWatch is perfect for this because it is unbiased and fact-based—refreshing in today’s echo-chamber media landscape.

The guide also complements many skills students need, such as research, note-taking, analysis, and writing. It is aligned with Common Core standards, making it easy to incorporate into existing lessons. This guide can be used in history, political science, journalism, and English classrooms in high schools nationwide.

The Role of the Capital Research Center

Capital Research Center launched InfluenceWatch in 2017 after identifying a need for more fact-based, accurate descriptions of the various influencers of public policy. Many so-called watchdog groups are actually opponents of the outlets they monitor. Armed with 40 years of research and data on advocacy organizations, foundations, and donors, CRC uses a universe of well-trained contributors to help build the individual and organizational profiles that populate the website.

CRC also has a perspective on the public policy process, but this resource is more important than that. We let the information speak for itself—information that is frequently not cited in external reports about these individuals and organizations.

Today, hundreds of journalists and policymakers use the website as their go-to source for information on advocacy organizations, wealthy foundations, labor unions, and nongovernmental organizations, and it is often cited in news outlets.

Education for the Next Generation

When I think about the kind of education I want for our nation’s children, it’s one where they leave the classroom armed with tools to take on the world. Take the indoctrination out of education, and you will have assignments and lessons like those in this guide. That’s precisely why I created the “InfluenceWatch Educational Guide.” It’s not just about learning facts. It’s about learning how to uncover, analyze, and use them to form their own opinions.

Whether you’re a teacher, parent, college professor, or just someone who cares about the next generation, I encourage you to check out InfluenceWatch.org and this guide. It’s a small step toward creating more informed, independent thinkers ready to engage with the world around them.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/bringing-critical-thinking-to-the-classroom-introducing-the-influencewatch-educational-guide/