Catching the Fire of Social Change

Catching Fire is a film that I’ve looked forward to for a long time. It’s by no means a perfect film, but it definitely captures a fear in the American public in an interesting and dynamic way. I believe it shows a similar fear to that which Adorno and Horkheimer described.

“Each single manifestation of the culture industry inescapably reproduces human beings as what the whole has made them. And all its agents...are on the alert to ensure that the single reproduction of mind does not lead on to the expansion of mind.” (Horkheimer, Adorno 100)

Katniss and Peeta are threatened because they must act as the Capital will have them act. They are an image of the culture industry. They must smile and be in love. At one point Haymitch points out that this will be their entire lives (being an image for the Capital) so they might as well become the image instead of just acting like it. This is a terrifying thought. They will be entertainment prostitutes for the rest of their lives. Is this what famous actors and actresses are? Are they tricked into believing they are free, when they are really being taken advantage of? It’s a scary line of thought.

            Before society was unalterably connected by phones and the internet, social movements often needed a head, a leader – Martin Luther King, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Mahatma Gandhi to list a few. Even scientists, like Galileo, had to die for what they knew to be true. Nowadays this no longer happens, at least not nearly as often. With digital technologies, leaderless movements occur based on the zeitgeist of social opinion. “The horizontality of networks supports cooperation and solidarity while undermining the need for formal leadership” (Castells 225). In an earlier post I discussed Kony 2012 and that the biggest weakness of their movement was their leader. I implied that the strongest social movements are the ones that are leaderless. The more I think about it the less sure that I am. I think that it depends on the movement and it depends on the leader. Leaders, like the ones listed at the beginning of this paragraph, can rally people in a way that cannot be done so easily with movement based on zeitgeist. In Hunger Games, the rebellion wants Katniss to be the image of the rebellion. This is similar to but not the same as leading the rebellion, the movement.

            People often need something outside of themselves to push them to action, a call to arms. Often in this modern age, call to arms are mistrusted or ignored. Society has become as cynical as Adorno and Horkheimer. This is one of the reasons that we don’t change things anymore; we’ve become cynical of the effectiveness of action, of many small voices joining to be heard. In Hunger Games it is much more obvious what the government is trying to do, how it subjugates its people and forces them to watch the murderous hunger games. It is not so easy to spot the biases and ulterior motives in our world. This makes change difficult. What do we really want? It’s obvious that the people of Panem want to have more freedoms and want to not have their children killed. What the people of the US want? We are not so united. As we fight and bicker amongst ourselves. People in power do what they want.

The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno.

Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age by Manuel Castells.

Teaching Experience

            I was really afraid to go into a high school classroom to teach and discuss topics that are very important to me with a group of unknown teenagers. Teenagers are at an age where they are figuring out who they trust and don’t trust, who they will listen to, and how to judge what they are being told. As an outsider coming into an established class with an established rapport between the teachers and students, it’s difficult to stand up and demand their listening ear when I feel I have no right to. I remember being in high school and how I felt about outsiders like that. Occasionally it would go over well, but that was often because the person had really good people skills, or they were obviously an expert who knew everything about the topic she or he talked about. I don’t have these skills or that wealth of knowledge yet, so I did the best I could.

            Chris Workman and I did the best we could, and if I’m being less critical of myself, we did a pretty good job. We tried really hard to get them to interact and talk; we wanted to hear what they had to say. As the lesson went on, we heard more from them and that was really comforting. The problem at the beginning was that I asked the wrong question. I’m coming from the mindset of a college student. When we discuss personal matters in class it is often stuff in the past, maybe even from high school days. Regardless, when we talk about life it’s a bit ambiguous as to when it happened. In high school it’s happening here and now, and if they talk about it everyone in class will hear; this can give other students ammunition to use against the student who spoke. Anyway, I didn’t think about this. It was difficult to get in a high school mindset, and I didn’t give myself enough time. So, asking them the question, “When was a time when someone judged you incorrectly?” was asking for too much trust, it was too personal, and it was too soon. It’s possible to create a trusting atmosphere and slowly move to questions like that, but I asked it very early on in the lesson.

            One thing that I thought went really well was the assignment we had them do. We asked them to write a journal entry about someone they cared about (we were going to ask them to write about themselves, but we realized that not all young people are kind to themselves), but this entry had to be in the perspective of a villain. The villain could be a nameless antagonist, someone they knew, or a fictional character like Megamind or the Joker. With this activity we wanted them to think about another’s perspective. Villains are not normally thought about; they just exist to be stopped because they are evil. In reality there are few if any humans who are actually pure evil. Another thing we wanted them to notice was how they were kind to the one they cared about. Even though they were trying to be someone else, a villain, they couldn’t help but have a bias towards kindness. With this noticed, we asked the class to research before they create caricatures of people. They are much more likely to be charitable to a character the more they know about his or her race, religion, and up-bringing than if they know nothing. It’s easy to dehumanize someone you don’t know.

            One kid was willing to share his story about Snape, but most of them were hesitant to put themselves out there. It wasn’t ideal, but from looking from afar it seemed that many wrote a lot. I was really glad to have them write a story. When planning the lesson we weren’t sure at first what to have them do, but we knew we wanted them to create something – it is the second half of literacy. We knew we wouldn’t have much technology so we decided to stick with a medium we knew they would have: pencil and paper. I believe this was the correct decision and the best activity we could have them do.

One last note about something I would change. We didn’t use media examples because we want to have more of a discussion with the class, but the discussion didn’t go as well as planned. Next time I would use more pictures or YouTube clips to discuss what I’m talking about. Young people like visuals, and I should have realized that. It could have added interest and depth into our discussion. Talking about films and other extraneous examples would probably be easier to discuss than their own lives.

It was really enjoyable to try to utilize my own teaching philosophy, though it is much easier to write than to enact in a classroom. I enjoy hearing and learning from students, bringing up topics that are important to me, and having them create something by themselves. I have a lot to learn, but there is definitely ways to do it that are better than the banking method. Students are not empty, and we mustn’t treat them as if they are.

Teaching Philosophy

I don’t know much about teaching media literacy education, but I have been a student to it. My education in media arts at Brigham Young University has shaped my view of media greatly, and it has influenced how I view education and how I would teach media if I ever did.  Some of the principles I have learned and believe in are – viewing and discussing many points of view, creating an atmosphere of discussion and equality between teacher and student where the teacher gets to know the students, encouraging literacy – both viewing and creating, and having a positive but critical point of view for the future of media. I vehemently don’t believe in protectionism. Students will become functional working adults, and they need to be able to stand on their own two feet.

Viewing/reading and discussing many points of view is one of the most important principles in my opinion. For example, in this TMA 458 class we read Adorno & Horkheimer and we read Henry Jenkins. These two texts were very different and in many ways opposite, but they both have important and valid things to say about media and culture. Watching documentaries like Digital Nation and Is School Enough? is another way to get view points on media, education, and how they do and can work together. But viewing and reading all the different scholars is not enough. Even the most educated person cannot understand all the information and perspectives set forth in a text. The best way to unpackage a text is through a teacher-led discussion.  Discussion allows students to talk through what they read. Reading something and being able to verbalize it are two different skills. Another benefit to discussion is that it allows for new view points on a text that even the teacher didn’t think of. Teachers should of course lead the discussion so that it doesn’t get too off topic and so that it benefits the course as a whole. This type of learning encourages reflection in preparation for the discussion.

One thing that can facilitate a better atmosphere for discussion is if the teacher will become, as Freire calls it, “teacher-students” and allow the students to become “student-teachers”. My favorite classes growing up, were the ones where I felt most understood and appreciated as a person with a voice. Teachers who know my name and want to know what I think. This encourages engagement and learning. People cringe from learning when they are told or forced to do it. In Is School Enough? students took part in a social game to gather data for school board decision makers and to push other students to be better. They felt their voices appreciated and heard. These students were allowed to show their true colors when they were given a voice when they were allowed to become more than a student, more than an empty head ready to be filled. Media cannot be taught through the banking system (Freire). You can’t just watch a certain amount of films to become literate, though some classics can become an important part of education. Teachers must know their students.

Literacy is made up of two parts, taking in text and putting out text. Reading and watching things is crucial to becoming more rounded in critiques and theories, but then making media is the next step in processing what you know and then utilizing it. Earlier I stated that reading an idea and verbalizing an idea are two completely different things. It’s the same here. Knowing lots of theories, how they interconnect, and which ones you agree with is different from actually trying to create something in the spirit of those theories. While reading the texts and watching the documentaries, teachers can also show projects done by previous students, and they can discuss how well they used the theories and how they could’ve done better. This will give them a more realistic perspective, and ambition to make their own projects. In their essay on critical media literacy, Steinberg & Macedo stated:

“While not everyone has the tools to create sophisticated media productions, we strongly recommend a pedagogy of teaching critical media literacy through project-based media production (even if it is as simple as rewriting a text or drawing a picture) for making analyses more meaningful and empowering as students gain tools for responding and taking action on the social conditions and texts they are critiquing.”

Any school can allow students to create; there is no barrier to entry these days. Getting technology into the hands of students is easier and easier. Now we just have to know how to use it best. Creating and producing projects can expand on knowledge and theory in beautiful ways.

                And that’s just it, I think media and media education have a bright and beautiful future.  I believe that having a positive outlook is really important while working with students. Creating a mood or mindset of cynicism is damaging and debilitating. So while Adorno and Horkheimer have important things to say, make sure that they aren’t the only source used in a media class. I don’t want to be like the people in Digital Nation; I don’t think grouchiness and pessimism helps anything. Yes, some young people have destructive habits with technology, but this is a place where they can learn new ideas and decide for themselves what habits they will make for themselves.

                A last note on protectionism, I do believe that some material is in appropriate for young audiences. They must learn and grow before they can choose for themselves what is and isn’t appropriate to read or watch. The kind of protectionism I dislike so much is the kind sees media and popular culture as an enemy. Media and popular culture has its fair share of problems, but it also contains a lot of material that is valuable. “The protectionist stance leads to an instructor-focused classroom, where the teacher tells the student the “facts”…and the student listens quietly and takes notes for the test,” (Hobbs, The Seven Great Debates). This is everything I stand against. I want the classroom to be an open environment where students learn from teachers and teachers learn from students, where many perspectives are analyzed and discussed, where students are encouraged to be literate, and where an atmosphere of optimism can go hand in hand with well researched critique. This is my ideal classroom.

I Don't Know About India

                The questions brought up this week seem to be, should media be incorporated in to school more? And, is the current education system the best we can do? I believe the answer to both of these is yes. The follow up question would be – how? The film Is This Enough tries to tackle this question by exploring four situations of different educational attempts. One was in a big inner city school, one in a smaller country school, one after school activity, and one self-driven education. It gave a really great look at a lot of different perspectives.

                In Giroux and Simon’s article it asks a question that all teachers should ponder, “What relationship do my students see between the work we do in class and the lives they live outside of class?” There is often a disconnect here, which is very obvious to see when students graduate college and struggle to get into the work force. The educational sphere and the working sphere are very different, but I don’t think we should focus more on careerism. Focusing on careerism is so ambiguous and causes many of the problems I think. Giroux and Simon don’t say career though; they are talking about life. This is where the focus of school is wrong. It is also why I think that the film making after school activity should stay an after school activity. If students only focus on one skill to make money with that would be a real disservice to them. School is about educating for life. It is about teaching a multitude of topics even if you don’t like them all. You should learn about math, science, English, and history if you want to be a upstanding and qualified citizen. There was a girl in the video that didn’t want to do the normal education system because she didn’t care about that; she cares about natural healing, yoga, and India. This type of education would not work for most people. There aren’t enough people for each student to be taught one on one, most students don’t know what they want so young or have enough drive to do it, and I worry that there will be areas of her education that will come up short of other students her age. Even if you don’t like math, it is very useful if you want to do any kind of finances, whether for yourself or for a business. I think that there is a way to make information more useful in daily life, but sometimes the base principles for higher learning are not useful in daily life (that doesn’t mean that they are unimportant).

                I really liked the two examples given that were set in school systems. I thought they fought against some of the stigmas of public school teaching. Leistyna stated, “the education system – obsessed with standardization, high stakes assessment, and careerism – often do little to help students or teachers understand how media influence our ideas and values and informs public opinion and debate.” I forget where the school was, but in the film they showed students in a large city school using a gaming platform to gather data on what changes students want in schools. I thought this was the perfect way to engage students, inform rule makers, and teach students how influential media can be. I really loved this idea, and I think it could be implemented in schools nation-wide. Not all students will get excited about it, but it gives them the chance to be heard if the school boards are willing to listen. I like to think that they would listen, that they would want to know, but you never know until you try.

                I don’t think that letting you kids do their own thing and travel to India is a good option, and I would never let my child do that, not that young! It’s drastic in my opinion. I think that have after school programs that teach sports or skills are great options. But I think that getting a general education is a good thing, and I think that students should have the option to help shape their education or at the very least shape how they are assessed.