Module 3 Reflections
In reading through the article, “Do We Have Your Attention?” by Lankshear, C and Knobel, M (2001); it brought to my attention (no pun intended) how critically important attention is for learning environments. Structures that once kept students attentive to teachers such as tests, and texts are being challenged both directly, and indirectly. Due to popular culture media the importance of “paying attention” in school has been disregarded. During my experiences through school as a student I have always fought for my teacher’s attention, especially in my younger days from K-12. After reading this article and participating in “Making Ideology Visible” voice thread I can’t help but notice the change of children’s sense of entitlement. Nowadays it seems the tables have turned and it is the teacher who must earn or deserve the attention of his/her students. According to Lankshear and Knobel (2001), “Rather than focusing on how to gain and maintain attention, Lanham is concerned with how to facilitate or enable attention to data by developing new human attention structures for attending to the flood of information-as-data we face constantly” (para. 24). Given the choice between Goldhaber’s and Lanham’s conception of attention I would choose Lanham’s perception. I enjoy his conception of attention because he accounts for the engagement of post literacy, the person, and the structure of attention.
Hurricane Katrina, a tragedy amongst the many that have occurred in our country have had an impact on us greatly. However, we cannot begin to imagine how much of an impact it had on the poor who lived and suffered through such event. According to deMause and Rendall (2007), “ The rare cases when the poor were allowed to describe for themselves the causes of and cures for poverty were all from stories about the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, with NBC in particular (12/19/05, 1/12/06) presenting residents who charged that developers were putting off the reconstruction of their neighborhood in order to make a land grab, and that the city was denying the restoration of services to poor neighborhoods” (p. 6). This is a great example on how the media does not reflect the poor but represents it through their value of perception. Hurricane Katrina was making headlines through different forms of media. Whether it was through music like the rapper lil’Wayne or through sports when the New Orleans Saints were close to winning and did win in 2009; four years after the tragic. If it wasn’t for such tragic their voices would have never been heard. The fact that we choose to indulge in reality shows where the wives are complaining about their boob size, a catty comment someone said, who has more money, and the better husband is sickening. I think the poor is not seen or represented accurately because we do not want to accept reality that yes people do live terribly poor lives. Nobody likes to face hard cold facts, they like to live in an imaginary world and pretend or be ignorant that poverty does not exists. At least media has lead it to believe this way, by producing unrealistic shows for their power in money consumption. People can’t handle to see, listen a depressing realistic life of a poor student, child, parent etc. Why is that? Is it easier to be sad than happy? Or is it that we use these “realistic” shows as an escape from our own monotonous lives? According to Kuper (2013), “Most people profiled in the media – artists, athletes and many politicians – are millionares” (p. 3). “When we make an entire community invisible in media, what we’re implying is that they do not exist – not in any meaningful way at least” (Ridgway, 2013, The Poor As Invisible, para. 6). I can’t help but refer back to what was stated in the article by Lankshear and Knobel, (2001), “Why are we here, and how do we know that we are somehow worthwhile? If a person feels utterly ignored by those around her, she is unlikely to feel that her life has much meaning to them. Since all meaning is ultimately conferred by society, one must have the attention of others if there is to be any chance that one’s life is meaningful” (para. 7).
Learning about all the statistical numbers of the children who are suffering from poverty is heart breaking. Like Edelman stated, “expanding investments and existing policies we can improve economic standing by 97% at a cost of 77.2 billion dollars” (2015). Do you know how much America spends on military expenses? I’ll just say we rank number 1. She also states it is an internal failure and I could not agree more. If we compare poverty around the world, the United States is one of the top countries who has a great number of poverty existence.
Sternheimer is not shy to state all the ridiculous tabloid titles that lead misinterpretations about real life relfections vs representations being made by the media. In this chapter she focuses on reasons why certain people commit crimes. Sternheimer believes real life situations are over looked and that media violence is something worth looking at to better understand our cultural fascination with violence, but not as the primary cause of violence (Sternheimer, 2013). This is why she took the consideration to interview teenage boys, who either experienced violence by committing it or were victims. I believe media violence affects everyone differently. From my perspective where I have never experienced any type of crime I can perceive what the media is representing as violence scary, gruesome, and very much close to reality. However, someone who has experienced violence in more than one way can see that the media misrepresents what violence really is. Which I don’t know what is scarier at that point. We cannot just blame the poor, or media as factors to such actions. I mean wealthy white males commit crimes too. For example, a recent issue about a white male by the name of Brock Turner was sentenced to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. He was a former Stanford swimmer, from a wealthy family. What made that story just even more appalling was his father, who had the audacity to offer an impossibly offensive defense of his son! I mean like father like son. What type of parenting skills? I do not want to know his view on women. “When middle-classed white youths commit acts of violence, we seem to be at a loss for explanations beyond media violence” (Sternheimer, 2013, p. 109). Media violence is not the only cause to why adolescents commit violence. Violent media can be one factor of crimes, but there are other factors like living in poverty, gang associated, high crime rate communities and in this case bad parenting skills.
