I really liked the lesson plan at the end of chapter six as a way of teaching my students disciplinary tools they need when it comes to the media. What I’ve learned over my years as a media user is to never trust just one source or sight. You have to pull information from all different resources to really create your own informed opinion on a subject. In addition, I have learned the importance of sight blockers. There are things that people put online that are not in line with my morals, this doesn’t mean that I want to force my morals on my students but they do need to understand the consequences of their actions. The subject of porn is a risky thing to teach students about and I am not quite sure how I would bridge that topic. It is something that I believe needs to be addressed when media becomes an integral part of a class. The more a student, or any person for that matter, is exposed to the media the more they are prone to be prey for pornographic websites. Students need to know what they are up against. I think it would also be beneficial to do what Hobbs suggests and “disrupt students’ pleasure with advertising and popular culture” by showing how media is a form of manipulative persuasion.
Overall, I think that the best disciplinary tool that really encompasses all others is self-discipline. I can tell my students all day that pornography is bad and that not all media is good media, but unless they understand for themselves and gain their own self-discipline all I’ve taught them would amount to nothing. Students need to understand the importance of self-discipline, but I’m not sure how to go about teaching them this. I could maybe use art or a theatre activity such as mime to teach the effects of self-discipline—how art is born out of it. It would be a risk, but it might end up helping my students in more ways then one.
The Seeing and Writing article “Regarding the Pain of Others” really touched my heart. It made me think and analyze what it is that I am looking at when staring at a magazine. Hobbs mentioned the impact of the media as a type of superpeer, but I would like to unpack that peer and show what it is really made of. There is this video that a teacher once showed me of a model who took a few photographs for a magazine. The video began with her showing up onset, then the added makeup, and later the added computer work to make the model look like the end product—the magazine cover model. I remember the impact that that particular video had on me as a high school student. When the façade is revealed the audience’s eyes finally open—I could see for the first time that beauty wasn’t all society made it up to be. I think that doing this same thing for my students would be really helpful, and serve as a way for them to better understand the media and it’s goals. Namely, to advertise and sell products or ideas to those who are willing to listen. I want to impact my students in a way that will give them a critical eye in the future, which is what I believe Hobbs to be trying to help teachers to do. We need to inform our students so that they don’t blindly follow what is presented, but rather that they should desire to know for themselves if something is true or real.
1 comment:
Media is everywhere. For an adolescent they are constantly bombarded with media from every direction even if they are trying to separate themselves from it. Media can be a great teaching tool but to quote my mother all great things can turn evil when they are not used in moderation or for a good purpose. The first step to helping my students to reflect on the media in their life they have to acknowledge the presences of it. I would challenge my students to take note of all the different media sources they encounter on a day to day basis and then make additional note of how long they participated in or with this media source. This will hopefully bring to attention the large amount of time they spend with the media. Once this observation has been made I would want to make clear that media can show only one side of the picture. This next activity could be a weeklong project our even longer if needed. I would make a list of current topics in the news, sports, entertainment. A group of students would be given a topic and the assignment is to take that topic and show how the media correctly represents it or how it doesn’t. As well as making connections of how different media sources might take different interpretations on the topic. This lesson will teach the overarching idea that when we are dealing with media we need to consider more than one source to make a correction assumption.
A main disciplinary tool you mention is self-discipline. My main question is how do you teach and asses self-discipline in the theater classroom? Does it go further than seeing your students on task and turning their papers in on time? Your connection to pornography is an important point to think about. Before reading your post I didn’t think about students using the internet for sexual pleasures but it is an important issue that more boys interact with then we think. Teaching students about the negative impacts of interacting with porn is a sticky subject because as a educator are you allowed to bring it up in the classroom, how would the community react to this—is it too much of a moral issue to address in a public school, and lastly the media does not show the negative side effects of people interacting with porn. It actually does quite the opposite it glorifies the benefits of it by showing the cool kids watching it and still having the typical glorified high school life. Is there a play that we could do scene work with to explore this issue more in a less evasive setting?
The articles in Seeing and Writing showcase the hidden messages and intentions of the creators in media especially advertisements. There are so many shows now a day that show these “everyday people” as these beautiful people. They try to make the viewers feels as if they are naturally gorgeous. This is a false idea. Yes, people have natural beauty but the workings and editing of a camera does not highlight a person without makeup on as a natural beauty that is seen as a person without a face. Mackenzie your connection to the video your teacher showed you is an excellent example. I think a way we can implement this idea of constructed beauty into the theater classroom is teaching the idea that those acts are a performance. This could lead into an interesting discussion of what is a true honest performance. Is there such a thing? Where did it happen in history and where does it happen today if it does.
We need to prepare our students for the harsh realities of the media. They might see the glorified side of it by the prom pictures being posted to Face book or the concert from last weekend being tweeted about but as my mother told me as a child, all great things can turn evil when they are not used in moderation or for a good purpose. Give our students the tools of knowledge to protect themselves against the world of media.
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