Exercise Number 3

I found an advertisement from the most recent presidential campaign - an ad sponsored by John Mccain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVLQhRiEXZs&feature=player_embedded

This is an appeal to fear. The advertisement says that Obama's only (educational) accomplishment is passing legislation that would teach comprehensive sex education to kindergartners. The ad then goes on to ask: "Learning about sex before learning to read?"

This advertisement of course, makes two wrong assumptions.

1) Children do not learn to read until they enter kindergarten.
2) Being taught about sex before some arbitrary time period (In this case, before learning to read or in kindergarten) is bad in some unexplained way.

I could be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure most kids know how to read by the time they've reached kindergarten.
Second, what's the problem with being taught about sex at a young age? Teaching kids no sexual education at a young age doesn't stop them from romping through cupid's groves as adolescents, so we know that teaching nothing doesn't prevent them from having sex. What's wrong with taking a different approach? (Assuming the accusation is even true, because the wording of sex education is so vague that for all we know the "sex education" could be about flowers being cross pollinated by bees or something)

So to break it down, the advertisement is an appeal to fear because it's essentially threatening parents by saying Obama will teach their kids about the birds and the bees as they learn their ABC's.