Blog on Chapter 1

I could not agree more that media studies needs to be more respected. The majority of my students express that they don't like to read (dagger to my heart), which means that they get most of their information from non-print media. I'd guess TV, movies, and the internet. It is absolutely critical that they learn how to process the information that they get.

I think one step towards legitimizing the study of all forms of media is the National Council of Teachers of English's (NCTE) new definition of text (well, not exactly new - it's from 2006), which I have posted in my classroom. It reads, "A text is any segment of language or symbol that creates a unit of meaning including print texts, spoken texts, visual representations, and lived experiences." Clearly, based on that definition, anything a student experiences through media counts as a text - as, I think, it should.

I love the reference on p.1 of the text to Britain's requirement of a national exam on media studies including a portfolio. Yet another example of how the U.S.'s education standards lag behind other countries'. It's not what text is being taught, but how the students are taught to engage with that text.

Ah yes, page 2. That's the scary thing. Scary maybe isn't the right word for it, but the really striking and significant thing: the new media might actually affect the way my students' brains are growing. The physiology of their minds might actually be different from mine. No, scary is the right word, because I truly fear that this difference creates a gap between them and me that I can't bridge. I hope I'm wrong, but it's a frightening prospect.

Video games are another form of text that I have only limited experience with and I feel creates a huge distance between myself and my students. I'm into pop culture in general, so I catch references to the latest games, but I have no idea what they're like or how to play them. I don't have a common frame of reference with my students, which I think is so vital in instructing them.

The question becomes, then, how do you get students to appreciate these alternate forms of texts on anything beyond a superficial level? How do you go from a comic book to Shakespeare or from Transformers 2 to Amadeus? You know, I teach three sections of boys-only English 10, and many of the students identify themselves as reluctant readers. It's not that they aren't good readers. It's that they are picky readers. I realized this early in the school year when they devoured a short story that they liked. Much the same way that picky eaters will wolf down pizza or junk food; it's not that reluctant readers refuse to read; they simply don't want to read what they don't like. Put something that interests them in front of their eyes, and they'll gladly read it. The converse is true with movies. Students won't watch any movie. If they're bored, they'll whine and complain about being shown a movie in class.

So another key question is how do you spark their interest. How do you help them to find interest in something besides explosions or robots or curvy women (I'm talking mostly about boys here, but I can speak in general terms - how do you get students interested in text beyond the superficial level)? That's really the question that language arts teachers have grappled with forever. They have to get students to appreciate the subtleties of what they are reading, so maybe one day they will enjoy reading Dickens or Hemingway or Steinbeck as much as that Stephen King novel or Twilight.

On to other topics: helping students understand how media constructs reality. Good topic. This is such a meta-idea, I think we adults are unaware of how manipulated we are. The news is so slanted, it's frightening. My wife is a nurse, and the local news stations definitely wanted to portray the stories in a specific way regardless of what the issues really were. Obviously, the ongoing teacher contract issues have been similarly slanted. It's probably too cynical to say, but it sure seems sometimes as if there's no objectivity.

Interesting sentence: "One major limitation of much of the media effects research is that it assumes a direct cause/effect relationship between viewing and adopting certain attitudes or behavior." You know I used to work exclusively, and still dabble part time, in the movie business and it's an ongoing issue: how much does what Hollywood puts out there influence its viewers? Does all the violence (I'm a liberal, so I'm more concerned about the violence) and sex affect the people who watch TV and movies. A good friend of mine points out that it's hypocritical for studios to load up their movies with so much product placement and then claim innocence when there is a copycat crime or a kid that hurts himself by imitating some stunt or incident from a film. Obviously, there's an effect. The question is how much? You can't make media a scapegoat, but you can't discount it completely either.

And I think I'll leave it at that for now.