“Unless the discussion of ideology in the media is related to students’ own experiences and identities, it will remain a purely academic exercise.”
We have discussed the distance between home and school in class. Historically, people generally attend the movies to “escape” (i.e. The percentage of people who attend the movies weekly rises during the economic down times, like the Great Depression in the 1930s [65%]. We should ask Darl about current recession and box office trends.) I am not a fan of escapism because I think we have trained ourselves to compartmentalize ourselves into multiple lives that do not intersect. I was complaining about a classroom exercise we did in school that didn’t really have any application outside the classroom, but my wife pointed out that it did help me with my “school life.” My boss at a job I worked this summer told me that when his father, who he loved dearly, died tragically, no one at work knew or could tell anything was different because he was so “good at his job.” The idea that our personal lives shouldn’t interfere with work or school is a fine idea, but have we taken it too far? What is interference? Why must we be so definably different? Amy discussed her first cohort’s attempt to liberalize their students despite their conservative home lives.
“Only one truly critical reading is privileged in the classroom - and that reading tends to be that of the teacher.”
“The notion that students can be given a voice by the teacher and that they will then use this to speak some kind of subjective truth is… an illusion.”
I feel that the conversation naturally (and should) leads to production. These assignments are often in personal voice. The students are required to use their personal voice, which means they must blur those lines between school and home. It is no longer a purely academic exercise. Once we have production, we can do as Buckingham suggests and create “a constant [shift] between different forms of learning – between action and reflection, between practice and theory, and between passionate engagement and distance analysis.” True understanding and analysis of the media (or another subject) will fall short if not coupled with production.
2 comments:
I'm reminded of something I once read by Neal A. Maxwell who wrote about the need for consistency in our lives - not being a chameleon, blending with our surroundings or changing to have a "work life" and a "home life" among other things. The same could be said that our media cannot, nor should it be, separate from our "non-media" lives. Just because we go into a darkened theater or turn on the television doesn't suddenly mean we have a different life. Pulling some concepts from Buckingham, I see that he believes in us engaging both the personal and scholarly parts of our lives together, not apart (as I believe you are alluding to in your post). I believe that the production is meant to be a tool for better understanding of the medium and a means to gaining greater insight into the media we find exciting and frequently delve into. As he puts it, it’s not meant to be an end to the dialogue.
Jeff, one way that I think you are actually really good at encouraging getting rid of the school/home divide is the way that you encourage our students to bring in media artifacts--photos, clips, etc.-- that are meaningful to them. This helps them acknowledge what they like, and helps them think academically about why they like it.
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