“How might you engage your students in reflecting on the media using disciplinary tools that you are familiar with?”
Right from the get go I want to talk to my students and discuss the different morals and standards represented in the media. Together we will discuss that we have the ability to choose our own morals and standards and cannot chose them for others. At the same time that means that media cannot choose them for us. I like the activity on page 110 that has the students come up with a Venn diagram of two famous people and discussing risk and responsibility with the examples of their two celebrities. By having students discover the principles of risk and responsibility they will see their own risk and responsibility within their artform. I would love to then gear the conversation to risks and responsibilities we have in our theatre department. I would ask if we should do certain shows and split the class into two sides one that is focusing on the risk and the other focusing on the responsibilities. By having both together as a class we can come up with the pros and cons of each, and at the conclusion of the activity we will be able to declare where we stand and why.
Students will understand why we choose to view and produce that which we do if we address it with a moral compass rather than a moral panic. They, just like adults, want to know the reasons why or why not. They need to be told the positive and negative consequences, not just a person telling them no, without reason or explanation. With this, we need to direct our students with the disciplinary tools that Hobbs suggests. I liked the example of the lesson that Hobbs did using the scary maze YouTube videos. By asking the students what they thought and felt rather than telling the students that they are harmful and bad, the students were able to discover that by themselves. Even if kids felt that they were totally innocent and just humorous, they were able to see the reactions of their classmates that it did affect. The key principle is to put the responsibility on the students. If their art affects others negatively then they need to man up to the fixing of the situation. By telling the students that, they will know their boundaries. We can’t expect them to know that without guiding them, because the media seems to have no boundaries now a days, and that is all that the students know. Along with video and TV media, our students are faced with online media where others not only post personal things about themselves but about others. Hobbs’ diagram on page 136 is very helpful in helping students realize that whether they like it or not, there are 3 different types of people that they are “performing” for online: the author, the audience and the subject. Very often online, other people are the subject and they are soliciting others without permission to the audience, which is usually the entire internet world. If our students realize that there are others that are experiencing our posts and that it affects them, we will be more conscious of our responsibility and not run the many risks of offending, affecting, exploiting and thrashing. We need to just teach and remind rather than chastise and guiltify our students. They need to be taught in order to change bad habits that this higher technology has created. I will make it my goal to inform, teach and constantly remind my students the relevancy of morals and responsibility.
1 comment:
First: kudos, my friend, on your use of the word “guiltify” – very nice :P
You make an important point regarding the need for students’ recognition that “we have the ability to choose our own morals and standards and cannot choose them for others. At the same time that means that media cannot choose them for us.” I’m not too sure, though, that the Venn diagram activity as laid out by Hobbs is really a very good way to aid students in truly acquiring that recognition. In my experience, the second you hand a roomful of high school kids a worksheet (or worksheet-type assignment), their brains tend to shut down higher functions and engage auto-pilot. I think the principle of the activity is sound, but it seems to me that a more effective method might be found: maybe something like having two students work together and each take on one of the celebrities as characters, discussing their similarities and differences in-role. I also think we need to take care in crafting such lessons that we lead students to that place of connection where they can make the leap from the abstract of “other people” to a concrete awareness and comprehension of the responsibilities they have and the risks they take in their own lives; we cannot expect them to make that shift from understanding outside themselves to personal application unless we teach them how to make it and clearly and consistently show our expectation of that application.
“They, just like adults, want to know the reasons why or why not. They need to be told the positive and negative consequences, not just a person telling them no, without reason or explanation.” As I read this, I was reminded of an experience I had when I was a teenager. I wanted to go out with some friends (I don’t recall now what the activity in question was, but I do know it was a perfectly normal and reasonable type of thing, not out of the ordinary at all), and my mother wouldn’t let me go. I remember being so frustrated – not because I wasn’t allowed to go, but because my mom would not explain to me why I couldn’t go. All I wanted was a reason. She got mad at me because she felt I was being insolent or something, but that wasn’t it at all – I just needed to understand why I couldn’t go. I absolutely agree with you that we need to trust our students enough to be open with them and enter into a conversation where all aspects of a question can be discussed. It’s well-known that the quickest way to generate interest in a book, film, TV show, etc. is to try to get it banned; denying others access to any content is sure to generate interest in that content. I think, as human beings, many (if not all) of us are pretty much hard-wired to be contrary enough to want to taste whatever fruit happens to have been forbidden. We owe it to our students not to send them leaping headlong into something potentially dangerous through well-meaning but short-sighted and misguided attempts to protect them.
Before I sign off, I would like to add that I really like Hobbs’ idea of using the Golden Rule as a guideline for students in assessing their media responsibilities. It’s a solid guide, easy to follow, and generally considered socially acceptable. I think students will have very little, if any, resistance to adopting the Golden Rule in their journey through cyberspace.
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