The main thought that I had while reading (that was actually brought up in the reading) was that we need to teach our students to always consider the other side of the issue. In the Hobbs reading, it mentioned a documentary about army recruiters and army deterrers (?) in lower income schools. However, the students creating the documentary didn’t think to include the point of view of the recruiter, the pressures and difficulties they have to deal with.
There are always at least two sides to a story, often more. I know a large fault of mine is that I will take what is presented to me at face value – as fact. This is something I’ve been trying to correct recently. And I think my struggle is one that my students will have as well – how do I question everything so I get the real story, but don’t be skeptical to the point of disbelieving everything. I don’t want to call people liars, but I want to get behind their biases so that I can see the whole picture without them standing in the way.
A good way to do this when writing or researching a story is to write down (either on the board as a class or have the students brainstorm on their own, though as a class may be more beneficial because others will think of things that one may now) all the different people involved in the situation or event being explored. Then, write down questions about each person concerning the topic. Always ask how they are involved and what their view on the subject might be. Caution the students to never put words into a subjects’ mouth. Always ask them what they think. If you can’t find someone in that area to interview, make sure that that gets mentioned so that people know that the other side of the story isn’t being represented.
There’s a saying that history is written by the winners. I believe this largely to be true. I think a great research exercise for students might be to research the “losers” and rewrite history as they saw it. A good example of this would be to read a journal from a slave in the ante-bellum southern states. Slaves were the subjugated group, so their perspective would be different than the owners of the same era that wrote many of the documents still surviving. The assignment could either be to simply write a piece from the “loser’s” point of view on the events that happened, or to write them as if the “losers” won. Either could be an interesting exercise on how things can change based on who is telling the story. (This could also be done with verbal storytelling instead of writing a paper.)
I feel like my role as a teacher is to ensure that my students at least try to consider other points of view while considering news articles as well as advertisements. Advertisements especially actually. They are even more likely to skew ideas based on their target audience in order to sell the product. I need to ensure my students are aware of this, and hopefully try to increase their confidence in themselves through other activities.
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I remember sitting with a group of girls when I was in Jr. High, going around in a circle and discussing what we hated about ourselves. In my defense, I was not the person who started this activity. When my “friend,” Heidi, first suggested we do this, I couldn’t think of anything that I thought was wrong with me, but the more I heard what other girls were saying, the more I realized that I had 3 chins, my nose was so ugly, my hair sucked, and I basically had an inner tube around my waist, I was that fat.
While I was reading the articles in Seeing and Writing, I couldn’t stop thinking about this experience. The culture that we are in is full of stereotypes that push and mold us into what we “should” be, without regarding the differences that make us all interesting individuals. Differences are what make our lives enjoyable and exciting, which is something that I think students (as well as adults), believe and agree with. I think though, that in order to help students be able to navigate the media that is continuously diminishing difference and encouraging a white bread society, we, as teachers, need to help students be able to read media appropriately.
Learning how to read this will help students be able to discern agendas that are being pushed by the media. Students need to learn how to think critically about the different messages they are receiving and be able to see the techniques that are being used to get specific ideas across. These ideas don’t only have to relate to body image or gender roles, but also with the different points of view that are expressed. Hobbs gave the example of students creating video games dealing with student flash mobs. Doing this activity helps students to really start thinking about the different aspects that go along with the flash mobs – the choices given to student, police, and pedestrians. Looking this deeply into any news story immediately makes things much more complicated – there are so many more things to think about and everything isn’t as black and white – but it also helps students to see how much deeper every incident in their life is.
Ever since I have started taking education classes and have started considering being a teacher, I have realized more and more that what is important to me is helping students know themselves well enough to be able to make their own opinions. I want students to be able to pick and choose what things they believe, and what things they will incorporate into their own lives/characters. Using media to help students explore the different parts of any given situation, especially news stories, they will be able to see how much diversity and how much bias is placed on certain parts of a story. I hope that as a teacher I will be able to help my students see the bigger picture and that they will be able to place themselves in that picture with confidence. I hope that I will be able to get them to feel confident with where they have decided to place their trust, and not blindly follow the media where ever it leads.
I think Heather makes a very strong argument in stating that we need to be more aware of the other side of arguments or controversial topics. Isn’t that what we teach little kids when they’re small? “How would you feel if Johnny stole a toy from you?” Everything seems to revolve around having a complete understanding of a situation before you pass judgment on it. However, at the very beginning of the reading, the first teacher that made the students create their own video games about the flash mobs actually seemed to give the students a very holistic review of what it meant to not only be a viewer of the media footage, but to actually be a participant of the flash mob. It’s entirely possible for us as educators to give students the whole story, but that means that we can’t be lazy.
I thought it was really sad when Hobbs said, “Low expectations create problems when teachers don’t expect that young people will care about civic issues. When this occurs, some teachers may rely on lecturing, explanation, and recitation, which one scholar has conceptualized as defensive teaching strategies. This happens when teachers control knowledge and classroom interaction, summarizing texts on behalf of students in order to guarantee a particular interpretation.”
We have to put a lot of work and effort into our lessons in order to magnify the differences and similarities in all the material we present to our students. By trusting that our students will understand complex situations with multiple conflicting perspectives, we are allowing them to be in control of their own thoughts and actions. It’s infinitely more powerful to give our students the tools instead of force-feeding them theory.
I thought Heather’s idea of a research paper is a really good idea. Making sure that students are writing down every possible viewpoint and verifying that the information they are synthesizing comes from a primary source will make students understand that they can be the ones to break the stereotype of one-sided news stories.
The first time I hear the phrase “history is written by the winners” was in the sixth grade from my history teacher. That was the first time I ever considered the idea that history books probably shouldn’t be held in as high as esteem as they currently are. A fun spin off of Heather’s idea could be to show history from the loser’s perspective, but create a new reality to show what would have happened had the losers won. While someone may think that this doesn’t have anything to do with exploits in media, I disagree. A lot of times in media, biased reporters and newscasters spin stories to make people believe outcomes are different than they appear to be. This happened recently on BYU’s campus when a local comedian black-faced himself and asked BYU students what they know about Black History Month. Several people quoted in the clip have come out and said that the clips shown in the presentation are completely unrelated to the answer they actually gave.
Examples like this can prove to students that media can be a complete misrepresentation of stories. When students understand the amount of time and effort it can take to gather the facts around a story, they can see how important proper representation in the media can be.
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