Blog Response 7

Topic: Reflect

Reading:

Hobbs, pp, 104-143

Selections from Seeing and Writing, chapters 6 and 7:

"Omayra Sanchez" (590-596)

"Regarding the Pain of Others" (650-655)

"Ethics in the Age of Digital Photography" (669-676)

How might you engage your students in reflecting on the media using disciplinary tools that you are familiar with? How do the ideas provided in the Hobbs reading help us to reflect on the icons and images described in the Seeing and Writing readings?

So in this reading, I really appreciated the perspective of moral compass that she presented. She presented concerns about maintaining values in our morally degenerative society through our teaching. I really liked that she recognized that there is right and there is wrong, and that one of our jobs as teachers is to help our students navigate through the colossal mashing of those things together by exploring their feelings and opening up dialogues about what goes on in their lives, rather than just ignoring it or saying that you have to come to the same conclusion as the teacher. I never liked teachers like that, because there are definitely more than one interpretations to argue. 

I think it's also a bad idea to just assume that all teenagers are morally ignorant or incapable. Teens can think and have valid experiences and world views that we need to consider. I think the best thing we can do is to try to teach truth. That doesn't necessarily mean bringing religion into everything. Anyway in public schools, it's not an option really. But we can access truth, often by just getting someone's gut reaction to something.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

It was interesting to me, that in many of her allusions to those negatively affected by the sexuality in media, young women were the primary target that she mentioned, but she failed to reference the negative effects it has on guys too. 

I liked the idea of the comparison chart of various celebrities to illustrate some of the contradictory messages about risk taking that she mentioned. I think we could use in conjunction to some of the things talked about in the Seeing & Writing. For instance, this kind of topic about deciphering media and making meaning from it, goes right along with the idea of ethics in creating. I remember the image of the military helicopter photoshopped with the shark picture which won an award. I appreciated John Long's adamancy from a journalism standpoint on credibility. How we need to have integrity in our creations because if people can't trust a photograph, then we can't trust any representation. I think I would link these ideas--the ones Hobbs mentioned on reading texts, and the ones Long represented with regards to creating art. I read the others too, but this is the one I connected with most, and is what I would focus on here.