Can it be done? Are human high school students (are there any other kind?) capable of thinking critically about the media? I don’t know. As one of the concerned parents of a student in the program detailed in Renee Hobbs’ Reading the Media: Media Literacy in High School English expressed concern about student examination of the media in English 11 building cynicism, and as I am somewhat critical/skeptical of mass media and mainstream culture and am also way more cynical than I’d like to be, I think I tend to agree with that parent. But, I’ll just hope that students will do more with their critical literacy skills than my cynical self has. The two most telling parental concerns about the media literacy program at Concord High School in New Hampshire were about building cynicism and the class discussions being too political. Honestly, I don’t see how you can critically analyze the media in any environment inside the free states without the discussion becoming politicized and having students get engaged and excited. Isn’t a call to action the ultimate beginning to enacting social/global change and the desired outcome? Obviously, political discussion and action isn’t the explicit goal of a media literacy program, but it’s a platform for questioning the contemporary media, and it’s a great start.
I like that literature, particularly novels, can still have a place in the media literacy curriculum, but as Hobbs states, “Several people began to talk about the issue of relevance. And was it time for us to really face up to the fact that we were not here to make kids potential English majors. Instead, we were aiming to help students become critical thinkers in responding to the world they live in” (27). As many of my readers already know, I couldn’t agree more. I love The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It’s one of the greatest books ever, and I think it will always be important, but teaching it and other classic novels alone is not going to “help students become critical thinkers in responding to the world they live in” in a complete and contemporary fashion. Huck Finn’s social message is, unfortunately, still relevant, and there is a lot to be learned from it, but we also need to get our students thinking between the lines, behind the scenes, and past matters of clear cut black and white, not concerning just matters of racism, classism, sexism, but how they are portrayed in modern mass media and how these images affect their lives and their thoughts, as the media literacy program that Hobbs details is shown to do.
Building a media literacy curriculum seems taxing, among other things, but as the teachers interviewed by Hobbs reveal, their is a great payoff: gratification, pride, a sense of accomplishment. I tend to get bored with things pretty quickly, and honestly, one of my most pressing fears about student teaching in the spring concerns myself getting bored with teaching the same lesson four or five times per day possibly, especially if I’m required to teach my host teacher’s lesson. When the text studied remains the same and the possibilities for discussion are limited, to an extent, I can see myself getting bored. But, the idea of bringing media literacy into the curriculum and having students contribute media texts of many genres and many tastes about many subjects is invigorating and seems like it is likely to remain that way. Just today I came across this Human Brain Cloud, a site which has a word association game and plugs the words into a huge, searchable brain cloud for users to explore. It’s a social experiment, says the creator. The “game” is quite fun and interesting. You learn a good deal about the way your brain works in a short period of time, or at least you have the potential to. It’s very likely that many people play the game thoughtless of the associations they are making, but I’d love to create an environment where potentially a student could come in and show the Human Brain Cloud to the class and examine the way that mass media and, particularly, marketing iconography and slogans have taken over our consciousness. In fact, the creator of the cloud presented some of his own findings on the brain cloud blog:
“It is scary how certain words appear to trigger loyal marketing message recitation / product related association or whatever:
- lego -> my eggo
- tiger -> tony
- have it -> your way
- snap -> crackle pop
- subway -> eat fresh
- this is -> SPARTA!
- (there were a bunch more I’m not remembering - anyone see any good ones?)”
The game seems like a great place to examine the ways that media affects our consciousness and decision making. It also has the potential to be inappropriate and vulgar (the most popular word in the game is “sex” according to the creator), but it’s a great place to examine advertising and propaganda, and ultimately, it’s just another part of the seemingly boundless world that our students are going to encounter and which they should be able to “read.”
10 responses so far ↓
mandygrl101 // November 1, 2007 at 3:14 am
Andy: I agree that the kind of classroom discussions that Hobbs is calling for are going to be extremely political in nature, regardless of anyone’s best intentions. This excites me, but I can also understand how it could become a controversial situation with administrators and/or parents. Reading this book, I also made the observation that the high school classrooms Hobbs describe appear more intellectual and challenging than many of my undergraduate classes as a college student. This could be a very good thing, in that kids are becoming more prepared for the world that awaits them at a younger age. But at the same time, I wonder if they will be able to fully appreciate the depth and importance of the discussions they will be having. I was very self-absorbed in high school, but I like to think that lively topics, such as Hobbs presents, would have captured my attention.
-Mandy
PS- Love the word game. I am thinking of some… How about…. easy, breezy, beautiful: cover girl?
sunyprof // November 1, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Andy, very interesting post. Re: political nature of media literacy. What’s apolitical about what I call the “book” curricula????? That’s a stumper.
Mandy, re: kids being able to “fully appreciate the depth and importance of the the discussions they will be having?” Are they fully appreciating the depth and importance of “Hamlet?”
Nice dialogue here. Andy, the game is cool. And I agree it would be a very useful tool to examine mass media messages. A little semiotics here. KES
amandayac // November 1, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Thanks for the link to this game, Andy. Neat stuff.
In reading your post and thinking back to what some of the more resistant parents said about this Media Literacy curriculum, I have to wonder what isn’t political. Some of the most engaging, relevant, and important discussions that emerge in our classrooms will undoubtedly be political. The issue of media literacy creating a classroom that is “too political” seems more like an issue of the parents’ own politics and values feeling threatened in the event that their children might be exposed to broading their thinking.
When I was an 8th grader, I took an English class that was grounded heavily in media literacy, and it was one of the most eye-opening, exciting educational experiences I ever had. We read Shakespeare, too, but with an eye for some of the same issues that we interrogated throughout the academic year. To let the classic lit stand alone while we just assume that these texts have some greatness and widsom to be poured into the heads of kids simply isn’t enough; I’ve gotten that much from both my experiences as an adolescent and now as a grad student wanting to teach. Sadly, about that media-literacy driven ELA class I was in as an 8th grader–it was only open to a handful of honors-level kids. I think about how valuable that course would have been to everyone else who, thanks to tracking, was barred from even having the option of taking such a course.
Amanda
ajmorabito // November 1, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Wow, lucky you, Amanda. Well, not luck, I mean–you earned a spot in that class–but, that sounds like a great class to be exposed to at an early age.
As for politicized discussion in the classroom, I definitely think that even the most benign sort of it can be dangerous for the teacher. We are living in a time when the ruling class seems to shun the truth and frown upon questioning the government or the media–it’s unpatriotic–and much of the population is bombarded with so much propaganda that they forget the truth or despise the truth or put the truth out of their heads. So it’s certainly a great time in history to incorporate media literacy, but…
amandayac // November 1, 2007 at 6:20 pm
You’re totally right, Andy, that any kind of classroom discourse that could be construed as political can be risky territory for educators, mostly because of the potential reactions that can (and often do) arise in parents who want to shelter their children from forces outside of the home (and ultimately from thinking freely in some cases). But I’d argue that just about anything we do, even in the traditional sense of one classic lit title for the whole class, is politically loaded. We need to decide what goes into our curricula in terms of what is best for our students and their needs in an ever-flattening world, even if we run the risk of stirring up things that make some parents scratch their heads or protest. I sometimes think that there will always be voices of protest, no matter what you’re doing in your classroom. I think back to one of my host teachers last year, who told me that a parent of one of his 8th graders vehemently protested The Outsiders being read in class. The Outsiders. And, of course, this parent hadn’t even read the text. The thing I love about what we’re reading in the Hobbs text is that there seems to be quite the balance of objectives and ways to meet those objectives in the English 11 curriculum, many of which have the power to please not only us and our goals for our students, but for some of the more reluctant parents and adminstrators who want to be sure that students are reading literature that they think they’re supposed to read (note that the curriculum did not exclude classic lit but, instead, integrated it meaningfully) and that they’re equipped with “the basics” of reading and writing (which clearly these students are getting a lot of practice with).
Amanda
jmdegan // November 7, 2007 at 5:28 am
Language, Foucault says, is always political. How can the study of it not be? I think we like to imagine that the “Great Works” of western literature are somehow apolitical, but, as we’re all pointing out, that isn’t the case.
I certainly want to agree with Amanda that Hobbs is refreshingly balanced.
As for being cynical, I would argue that there is a good deal to be cynical about. But, cynisism aside, how can we perform meaningful critique without questioning the authority of a text?
I wonder how seemless the integration of literary works are in this curriculum. Some fit very nicely; some seem forced. What’s sad is that even a text like AS I LAY DYING can offer students both an aesthetic experience (which is still worth while- even for non-English majors) and an opportunity to critique the text (authority of the novels many narrators, class/gender representations). It could be argued that this is the kind of project we should be doing with aesthetic texts- so don’t give up on Huck yet.
J. Degan
jmdegan // November 7, 2007 at 5:30 am
Uh, I meant to say “I wonder how seemless the integration of literary works IS in this curriculum.” Noun-verb agreement! Ouch!
J. Degan
sunyprof // November 7, 2007 at 1:47 pm
And Mr. Degan that’s “seamless” not “seemless.” Blogging fogs the normally very astute brain. I make these kinds of errors routinely and hope I catch most of them before I hit “send” or “submit.”
Well, Andy, now that your blog has become a site for such a scintillating discussion about language, what say you my man? KES
jmdegan // November 7, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Mea culpa.
ajmorabito // November 9, 2007 at 6:18 am
Don’t worry, Jerry. I haven’t completely given up on Huck or any of his Great American pals. But, I definitely see their place in the curriculum in a different way than I did as an English major hoping to get into teachers’ college.
As for As I Lay Dying, it’s just as good as any text at presenting an aesthetic and critical challenge, and I think that that should always have a potential spot in any curriculum that wants to push students further.
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