Module 2 Readings
It seems Sebastian and I had some similar thoughts on the readings this week. Like him, I began to question my own experiences when reading the articles and watching the videos from this week.
Although this was not part of the readings in question, I will be discussing the advertising videos from activity 13. I used to work in retail. I worked at Babies R Us for nearly a year and in that short time I learned how to manipulate objects to get them sold. I mainly worked at the service desk and cashiers, I was good at selling credit cards to my customers. Near my station there was always candy fully stocked. This is surprise to anyone, the placement is normal. However, I would put the more expensive candy at a toddler’s height, just so I could make that one extra sale. Let me be clear though, I did not want to do this, my boss did. I followed orders. I made small sales at the front desk just getting kids to want candy. Normally, kids would throw a tantrum when they would not get the candy they saw, so parents would give into their children’s tantrums and buy the candy for them. I find it fascinating and a little crazy how much placement affects our buying abilities.
Onto the readings now. I know I probably should not have a favorite article, but I do. I found Tollefson’s article, The inversion of visibility. In Volatile knowing: Parents, teachers and the censored story of accountability in American public schools. I found it to be the most important of all articles. “Accountability, not possibility, is the ruling paradigm in the lives of children and teachers in America’s schools.” (Tollefson, 125) I think this quote is the most important quote out of the entire chapter, simply because it involves so much; it’s a broad quote, but I will try to condense it for the sake of my reflection.
Our education system is flawed. This is a known fact and our government has made efforts to change the deterioration of our system. Media, as we all know, is growing rapidly in our society. Many of my peers and I were in school during the blossoming of media education. We grew up in a time where our teachers did not know much media literacy or media education because it was still relatively new. One of the articles from last week stated that media education is not a new concept. I’d have to disagree. Based on the context of our modern society, media education is pretty new. Cortes wrote the article on generalizations and stereotypes. I never learned that in my K-12 education, although that article came out in 2000, when I finishing Kindergarten. I felt that Cortes was telling us to take action. He was telling us we need to teach this to our youth. Gross discussed the representation of sexual minorities in the media and how we don’t teach these concepts. We have a protectionist ideal of media education. I disagree with that form of media education. I think teaching these ideas to our youth will help them understand these concepts and look at the media with a more analytical eye. I think I, as a future teacher, am accountable for teaching my students to be media literate.
