At first glance, just by reading the three different philosophies about why media education is necessary constructivist appealed to me the most. I agree in the way this philosophy perceives why media education is necessary because, meaningful learning happens when we for ourselves try to make sense of the world by analyzing new information through our own knowledge, concepts, rules and hypothesis from our own personal experiences. After reading the article by Zaslow & Butler where they dive on their explanation on these competing philosophies I agreed with the constructivist model even more. In the article by Zaslow & Butler it states, “Protectionism places the teacher in an authoritative role in which she or he judges and determines the social, cultural, moral value of a text.” This really irks me, first of all just because some of us have trouble resisting falsely media doesn’t mean we as a whole are duped to being able to determine between good media vs bad media and need the bias authority of a teacher to “guide” us in differentiating such media. Second of all, I am not a fan of authority, so having a teacher tell me what “bad” media is doesn’t mean I will stray away from it. I really enjoyed reading the article by Zaslow & Butler, how it focuses on the interpretation of Videocultures from different adolescents. I agreed with Delpit’s argument, “If we do not have the knowledge of children’s lives outside of the realms of paper- and-pencil work and even outside of their classroom, then we cannot know their strengths”. So how can we allow a teacher take authority of how we should interpret media with out the teacher acknowledging our strengths?
Media literacy is key in order to be able to succeed now and in the future. It is interesting to learn about the different competing philosophies there is towards the learning of media education, and although I may not completely I agree with all of them, I do enjoy how all models are looking out for the student in some way. The reading of, Television and Children the author seems to embrace the protectionist model, where it seems to talk about the negative impact television has on children, and it comes out to be discriminating media. After reading this I learned to see the protective model in a different way, I do agree how the child should have a discipline diet on how much tv he or she should consume in a day. I do believe that television can influence the child’s attitude towards themselves and others especially if they do not come from a family who sets a strong foundation teaching them right from wrong in life.
I could not stop laughing at the article about Social Critique and Pleasure to the point I couldn’t help myself sharing it to my friends. I was gullible to the song Ciara, to the point where I took my parents video camera and recorded the video. I also had no idea what the lyrics were saying at that time, I just simply enjoyed the music and dancing silly to it. I did share my passion for music differently than my siblings, I didn’t always analyze every lyric from every song I enjoyed, to me that was taking the fun of it sometimes it is fun to just enjoy the music beat and let your brain have some downtime it most definitely does not define that you are dupe of vulgar consumerism. I agree in the way the article by Jesse Gainer concludes that we must learn together as a whole, parents, teachers, and students. By not acknowledging the interest of the child and how they perceive that pleasure we are just being biased judges on what we think is right and wrong controlling what the child should like and why they shouldn’t like a certain thing. In a way that is taking away the innocence of a child, by feeding them why its wrong to like something when they at first didn’t see it that way they just simply enjoyed it. This is an example of Chris Wornsop of ways not to teach media literacy. The teacher or parent starts from their ideology on a subject and ends up controlling the child in seeing the whole world from their perspective.
