A few months ago, I was talking to my younger sister about media in schools and she mentioned that she had a few teachers who would probably drive me crazy. I asked for an example, and she said that after doing a unit on the Middle East her teacher had shown them Disney’s Aladdin as a reward. (She was right about my being annoyed; I hold this practice on par with giving the winner of a weight loss contest a lifetime supply of Twinkies.) This experience (and the many like it that I have in my own memory) demonstrates the vital need for media education in the classroom: simply bringing media into the classroom is not enough. In fact, using media in this way—as a treat rather than a text—engenders a culture of passivity for young people, as if media is something to engage with after the ‘real’ work is done rather than treating it as the large influence on modern culture that it actually is.
The Buckingham reading is simultaneously inspiring and frustrating for me. I'm in agreement about many issues that he presents, but I also find it a little frustrating how few actual answers Buckingham provides to some of his own questions. I fully acknowledge that the forthcoming chapters do provide some answers as to pedagogical strategies, but to this point in the reading the most common note I have written in the margins is, “How do we do this?” While this might just show that I need to work on writing more helpful notes to myself, it also points to the main point of Buckingham’s book thus far: Media Education is desperately needed in theory, and somewhat complicated in practice.
The initial difference that Buckingham sets up between democratization and defensiveness is quite helpful, especially when use them to find our own motivation for pursuing media education. On one end of the spectrum we have defensiveness, which seeks to protect or ‘inoculate’ youth from the perceived (and real) dangers of media. On the other we have democratization, which recognizes that students use media regularly, and that media should be incorporated into the classroom in order to make education relevant to the students’ out of school lives. One camp asserts that youth need to be sheltered from media influences, and the other asserts that they should be allowed to roam free within the media landscape.
If we hold that virtue is the midpoint between two vices, then the ideal pedagogical standpoint seeks to reconcile these two tendencies (as Buckingham points out). This sounds great on paper, but actually making this work in practice is much more difficult (perhaps it is only difficult for me). Even though I always try to remember that “MLE is not about revealing to students the ‘true’ or ‘correct’ or ‘hidden’ meaning of media messages, nor is it about identifying which media messages are ‘good’ and which ones are ‘bad,’” (CPMLE 6.3) when teaching media analyses (especially to younger students) it is always tempting to try to find the “hidden” meanings, to point out the ways that we are being led to believe what we believe about a text. It is also especially challenging to not try to find the “right” answer, as there tend not to be right or wrong arguments, only supported and unsupported arguments.
One overwhelming thing that I feel while reading Buckingham (and the Core Principles, and the Jenkins reading) is that media education is bigger than one subject; it is a teaching philosophy and practice that needs to be integrated into all aspects of the curriculum. Going back to my initial example, in the same amount of time that it took the teacher to allow the students to watch Aladdin, they could have instead had a discussion about American portrayal of Middle Eastern culture, replete with other examples, treating Aladdin as the text it is rather than a treat merely for consumption.
This reality—that media education is a pedagogical strategy rather than a specific subject— makes it slightly difficult for me to see clearly where I fit in the picture. I approach media education from a film background (as evidenced by Hands on a Camera’s focus on filmmaking), but media education encompasses multiple media forms and their various uses. Ideally in Hands on a Camera we will discuss other forms of media, but the process can only go so far if students do not then engage with that material within the context of other school subjects.
2 comments:
I’m sorry, but it is teachers like your sister’s that give the rest of us a bad name. First of all, showing any sort of film as a “reward” violates almost every copyright law in the book, unless specific permissions have been given. Secondly, Disney is a dangerous one to mess with, as their lawyers have absolutely no problem coming after teachers for breaking copyright. But finally, and definitely more importantly, is the absolutely absurd implication that Aladdin is, in any way, an accurate representation of all that the class had just studied. The very fact that the teacher chose to show it make me wonder if he/she has an actual clue about anything that was taught in the unit. This is the very thing that Jenkins made note of when discussing “Negotiation.” Using media, “new kinds of cultural understanding can emerge. Yet just as often, the new experiences are read through existing prejudices and assumptions.” It’s tragic that a professional educator would be facilitating these types of misconceptions. What needs to be done to prevent this kind of thing?
I confess, Erika, that I sympathize completely with your plight. First of all, the whole of the educational system seems to need a revamp (in my very narrow-minded estimation) that goes beyond media education. Second of all, trying to wrap my brain around the enormity of the whole theoretical, philosophical desires for a more media literate, educated student-body (and faculty, I might add) requires what appears to be a monumental task. My gut feeling though, as I’ve thought about it, tells me that minor adjustments here or there can actually make a big difference. I think you point up to one of those things when you talked about what the teacher should have done – how much more interesting and profound such a discussion would have been! The approach is only a minor difference, but it reflects a huge shift in philosophy about the use media in the classroom. This thinking even is a shift for me from some of my earlier responses to other posts this week. The question for me then becomes, how do we help shift thinking about media? Which leads us back to square one and perhaps the point of all our education here.
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