Asking Questions First

I’ve had a few surprising experiences this semester in text selection for my three courses (two television production courses and a field experience course in youth media and media literacy). My instinct as a media literacy educator is to use provocative texts “ripped from the headlines,” so to speak — to use the compelling popular culture and current events (especially when the two intersect) as a way to galvanize classroom discussion.

And, in fact, provocative texts — Jersey Shore, Rebecca Black, KONY2012 — did galvanize discussion this semester. But often it also created conditions in the classroom that weren’t particularly productive. I didn’t “bring it” with KONY2012 — there was no research component to general discussions about (e.g.) documentary techniques or emotional impact of the piece — and my conversations about it, though certainly engaging, sputtered out intellectually. We couldn’t really get past the point where everyone “spoke their piece” and then bowed out of conversation.

On the other end of the spectrum, Jersey Shore and Rebecca Black elicited what I thought were some honest responses from students about values, but these conversations were a bit too close to students’ values to help them ask meaningful questions about those values. An example: When talking about Jersey Shore during a week in my documentary class about reality TV, one student said sarcastically, after expressing general disdain for the Italian-American culture on the show, “…and Snooki’s not even Italian! She’s Peruvian!”

I found this fascinating — recently Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend pointed out (h/t Matthew) that a lot of disdain toward lower-middle-class (and, I would add, now sort of “nouveau riche” a la Jersey Shore) people from New Jersey is steeped in long-standing resentment against immigrant populations — particularly Jewish and Italian communities. And yet in the moment a few of my students could use some improvised sense of the authenticity of “genuine Italianness” to further discount the person they liked the least on the show.

Thing is, however fascinating it was for me, I couldn’t figure out what the hell to do with it. I asked the student, “what’s wrong with a Peruvian person identifying with an Italian-American community she grew up with?” but there was no real response. Instead students hopped to the next reason they didn’t like Snooki, before ending on the perennial “it doesn’t matter what we say about her; she wants us to hate her because she makes money either way!”

I won’t go into Rebecca Black — I documented some of my experience using “Friday” in my classes for the last year here (live version here).

On the other hand, I had successes in unexpected places. My students seemed to love talking about media with which they were either unfamiliar or vaguely familiar (web series like Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl; the short-lived documentary series Off to War). I got a lot of mileage out of the Wayne Enterprises Remix, which was open-ended enough to have students brainstorm a lot of good lessons as a component of their media literacy final (the first question was a collaborative lesson plan, and the next two essay questions were based on the lesson they came up with). One group used it as an opportunity to introduce the concept of a “corporation.” Another used it to connect to other superhero universes (what products might other superheroes sell?). Another used it to discuss and create remixes using of pre-existing media materials.

The discussion of challenges were just as provocative. Students wondered about the target demographic (middle school-aged kids) and if the whole concept of a blanket corporation was too advanced. They were concerned about kids who don’t like or know much about Batman, and whether kids who did know about Batman might “take over” the conversation. They worried about starting a media production so ambitious that it couldn’t be completed, and whether or not analysis alone was a sufficient lesson.

I think the reason the piece worked was that students could look at it somewhat dispassionately. I got zero responses that conflated a strong personal opinion with analysis of the lesson itself (the analysis of course included opinion; but what I mean is that there weren’t opinions about corporations or Batman outside of the context of the model lesson). It also isn’t entirely clear where the author (Jonathan McIntosh) stands on the issues he raises — the commercial is parody of an advertising style, but it isn’t incisively pointing at any particular real company; it doesn’t offer an explicit critique of the Batman universe (in fact, the glossy production subtly affirms and expands that universe by digging into a corner of the mythology that often goes underexplored).

This was a nice reminder that I need to keep some of my “Trendsetter” motivations (one of the motivations for teaching digital and media literacy that we’ve identified in research — more info on this in the near future!) in check — that is, an interest in engaging in young people’s popular culture doesn’t always move too far beyond mere engagement in conversation. To the extent that there’s no conversation, a simple use of a galvanizing or controversial pop culture object might be useful; but there may be a trade-off in the depth of analysis that can happen in a limited context. Rebecca Black did end up being a great catalyst for more meaningful conversations in the following week of instruction, for instance (as did KONY after the initial popularity died down). But sometimes the amount of investment needed to get a strong conversation out of controversies isn’t equal to its actual value in the classroom. If I can have the same conversation with something that doesn’t spark the reaction, I need to figure out whether that reaction itself is the most important thing in the room (e.g., KONY2012 may not be a good way to discuss regional African politics if it takes an entire class period to move beyond emotional responses to the filmmaking techniques; but it may be a great piece for thinking about documentary filmmaking techniques).

I realize that because I’m drawn to what I call the “Truthbombing” strain of Rappin’ Grandma — the use of “mind-blowing ideas” as an excuse for simplistic engagement (think Dead Poets Society) — I need to be extra careful not to intentionally provoke students when provocation won’t help lead the conversation anywhere constructive (at least not the way I’m doing it). That isn’t to say that it’s impossible or unimportant to engage in pop culture controversies; it’s just that they need to be approached with more of a game-plan than a vague prediction of strong student responses. So some unpredictably in how a class might analyze something makes it easier for me to focus on how I might structure the conversation or, alternatively, better trust the class to do some of that structuring work themselves.

Via xkcd

I actually think this is an excellent way to think about math, but that’s generally not how it’s treated in schools or most literature about schools and STEM competencies. Math is considered to be foundational, not “elective.” But what if higher-level math like algebra and calculus were elective? Which components of higher math would relate to everyday needs?

At the NAMLE conference last year, Douglas Rushkoff framed long division as a simple algorithm, and argued that students should learn algorithms as early as fourth grade. I’ve witnessed technology teachers teach programming both as a discrete skill (as in a “computer club”) and also as a way to develop logic and argument. My heart is in the latter group of skills, and personally I find those kinds of skills — deconstructing meaning regardless of rote skill with programming language (say) — valuable, but I wouldn’t discount a Computer Club elective.

But if capital-A Algebra class were elective — if, a la Elizabeth Moje’s argument, mathematics were taught as a kind of disciplinary literacy (e.g. “here’s how mathematicians talk about and understand knowledge”), what skills could we say matter prior to the point of teaching such an understanding of professional practices? I’ve certainly never learned “what counts” as knowledge in higher math (in fact I gave up math and found ways to avoid it when faced with taking calculus) or how mathematicians create new knowledge, and sometimes I feel like the person in the cartoon, resentful of the seeming uselessness of the knowledge that I did cram to learn so diligently for many years.

In a constructivist framework, “what matters” about math depends on the culture in which math is understood. One of my issues with Moje’s disciplinary literacy theory is that it presumes a set of professional frameworks for understanding how knowledge in particular fields work, and employs the logic of heavily siloed academic fields without problematizing the silos (or asking whether or not we should put as much energy into breaking down limits of “what counts” as knowledge in various disciplines as we do into building up students’ understanding of it). It also seems to discount more interdisciplinary approaches to “siloed subjects,” like when historical approaches offer much to our understanding of science (understanding different Kuhnian paradigms in science, say) or when math should be treated more like English (writing word problems, say, or incorporating math in narrative) might help students apply mathematical concepts.

Anyway, I think I resonated with the cartoon for the opposite reason that was intended — if I were routinely forced to learn music without an sense of electing to learn it, and couldn’t figure out why what I was learning mattered in anything I ever did, I’m sure I would shout at my music teacher to let him know that I never used whatever it was I was forced to learn in his class, too. But imagine how liberating it would be for abstract math (algebra through calculus) to actually occupy the same elective sphere as music, cooking, or foreign languages, all of which arguably have more of a direct impact on our everyday lives anyway.

I’ve been frustrated watching political commentary over the Philly School District closing (which I discussed briefly here) unfold in a highly politically-charged and rhetorical fashion.

The question above is not rhetorical, though it is often asked as though it has a self-evident answer. If Philly closes 40 struggling schools, where will the students from these schools actually go? The implicit answer from progressive educators is “nowhere,” or its equivalent, while among conservatives it’s “somewhere better.”

The answer is incredibly complicated, though, not least because “privatization” and “corporatization” don’t work as cleanly in education models as either pundits on the left or right would have others believe. Education models that are balanced between private and public (like charter schools) are still dependent on local resources, top-down curriculum, and meeting the same standards as everyone else. And charters, overall, may be more expensive than public schools without being any more or less effective on average, but they also often employ different funding models than public schools can (and charters don’t share one funding model). (National charter statistics are misleading, because charters systems are by design very different from district to district.)

According to Research for Action, Philadelphia public schools increased by about 74 schools in the last decade. On net, none of these were wholly school-district-run (school-district-only schools decreased by about 30 schools). About 30 of them were charters, but the rest come from a variety of public and semi-private schools identified for various improvement programs.

It would not surprise me at all to learn that 40 of the remaining district schools, and perhaps some charter schools, are among the lowest-performing, under-attended, etc., in the area, but that’s more an issue of simple math. With the vast majority of schools remaining entirely district-run, many of the worst are going to be from that pool. And within the portfolio management model, the whole point is to shut down the worst-run schools and “give them over” to providers who can improve the learning experience.

Part of the genius and/or perniciousness of the portfolio model is the way that it decentralizes — genius when centralization is bad, pernicious when centralization is good. Centralization through the School District, generally, has been bad for learning in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia schools in the decade since portfolio implementation have consistently made modest increases in standardized performance.

Centralization is good, on the other hand, for community organization. What portfolio management has effectively done in Philadelphia, it seems, is systematically dismantled the ability of communities to organize broadly toward the same goals, because the differences in ownership, leadership, and general philosophy of diverse schools can’t align with one clear system. In teaching terms, this means weakened unions and less bargaining power among teachers. In community terms, it means that it’s harder and harder for communities to come together as a community, because of the diverse interests that necessarily accompany diverse schools.

That means, in part, that there is no clear path for community organizing to “save” schools in danger of closing. It’s not clear what the end game would be of such action — to keep the School District open? The School District hasn’t had great organizational power in ten years (since the development of the School Reform Commission) and serves a largely administrative role. To keep the 40 schools open? Depends on which ones, in which communities, for which reasons.

That’s the big-picture problem in terms of how this is being discussed locally, in my view — this is an issue of on-the-ground policy, not guiding philosophy. Guiding philosophy around the portfolio management model “won” already — the question is now one of accountability within the new model, both for ensuring job security for teachers and high quality learning for students. Right and left don’t fall predictably on issues of school reform in Philadelphia, with many right-wingers trying to close bad schools and create better ones to take in the students; many left-wingers meanwhile assume the status quo must preferable to the extent that it avoids “privatization,” perhaps in part because of its history of more effective unionization. (It isn’t a foregone conclusion that private models can’t unionize, even though it’s certainly harder.)

As a very pro-union and very pro-closing-bad-schools person, I find it frustrating to try to locate my own politics on the spectrum. It’s not clear to me that School District centralization in any way correlates to the quality of student learning, nor is it clear to me that a focus on portfolios isn’t (in part) a front to destroy unions. But having worked in both charter and public schools, and at least interacted with independent and private schools, I do know that situations on the ground are far more complicated than mere ideology would allow. By that ideological rubric, private = bad and public = good. But in struggling urban education environments, any change to an enormous system is synonymous with radical change.

I’m more philosophically concerned with higher ed, which is many education pundits’ “home base.” There, the complete privatization of the university system has torn that system apart, probably irreparably. Most universities employ half (or less) full-time workers as faculty while simultaneously stripping away from the organizing rights of temporary and student workers. In some ways, public K-12 education has been the last bastion of a traditional, post-New Deal employment environment, and though it’s been disappointing to see K-12 move further in the direction of (say) higher ed, it’s neither surprising nor obviously the worst-case scenario for genuinely failing districts.

Which isn’t, of course, to lose sight of the fact that “getting better” is not the same as “couldn’t get worse.” But, if done thoughtfully, a series of school closings that put students into better, if more semi-private, schools, would still be a success. I wish I had the sense that the stakes in the education battle weren’t so all-or-nothing to progressive advocates for public education in Philadelphia.

Via Katherine, I’m pointed toward a nice response to a recent iteration of the perennial standardized reading testing concerns, “The Pineapple and the Hare.” Scoffing at the absurdity of the questions is de rigueur but I was more fascinated by Cadre’s description of the “psychologist/lawyer” continuum of test question appropriateness:

Companies such as ETS that produce standardized tests employ two types of people: psychologists and lawyers. The psychologists develop questions that, they contend, measure certain mental skills. The lawyers make sure the answers to those questions can hold up in court against litigious parents. A lawyer for one of these companies can’t very well say, “The plaintiff argues that the answer to #29 is (D). We contend that it’s (C). Your honor — doesn’t (C) just feel right to you? Don’t you just kinda look at it and say, ‘Yeah, gotta be (C)’?” That wouldn’t fly. So the answer pretty much has to be a paraphrase of something that’s right there in the passage. The lawyer needs to be able to point at the key phrase and say, “Your honor, any reasonable person who read and understood line 52 would agree that the answer is (C).”

This makes a lot of sense, both psychologically and legally, actually. Having dipped my toes into test prep at the elementary level, I can say that as a highly-literate “skimmer,” I had a tough time “de-skilling” to do what the test was asking of me — essentially, to find and copy (or, in some marginal way, rephrase). But I’m also not ten.

I like to think I have high standards of my students, and such a shallow form of reading comprehension irks me as an educator and more generally as a reader. But as someone thinking about the role of standardized testing in a big-picture way, it’s important to ask the question of whether or not better standardized test questions — test questions that asked students to synthesize, analyze, and make meaningful inferences — would also be much harder. My guess is that yes, genuine reading comprehension — the kind that draws on prediction, inferences, and critical thinking, not to mention “against-the-grain” readings and understandings of subtext — is much harder than the watered-down version of it created for standardized tests.

Lots of test-bashers seem to assume that somehow the world would be a better place if we either (1) did not have standardized tests at all or (2) had better ones. Bracketing (1) (which I can’t really speak to, given my lack of knowledge of how useful or predictive these tests generally are), the inevitable question I ask around (2) is whether or not better tests might not actually serve to further alienate those students most vulnerable to doing poorly on standardized reading tests in the first place.

Hello fans of just about anything — did you used to be, or are you still, an Ashlee Simpson fan? If so, we want to hear about your thoughts on her album Autobiography.

Please take our brief, anonymous survey here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RLKTW8C

And share with any of your friends or communities who might be able to help! Your research will help us to develop a manuscript on Ashlee Simpson and her fandom.

Thanks!

The basic idea of critical autonomy (as I understand it) is that one holds oneself to consistent criteria for evaluation of traits like credibility, accuracy, point of view, etc. — the basic features of most informational texts — as well as understanding (or, when necessary, seeking understanding) of the “how and why”/constructedness of all forms of media, from the most personal/amateur (a YouTube video or an email from a friend, say) to the most professional (a Hollywood blockbuster or fashion magazine).

A “critically autonomous person” can either answer questions about a given thing or at least tell you how one would reasonably find those answers; this person would also know what kinds of questions to ask about the thing. So the critically autonomous person watching a newscast understands the nuts and bolts of its construction, a variety of context for its presentation, and ways of finding out more information to triangulate the source. The critically autonomous person watching a film knows something about film production and film financing, and knows something about genre, and knows something about values embedded in the representation of subjects on the screen.

So far so good (and so far, so what?). But critical autonomy, despite its name, doesn’t happen in a vacuum. That means that any number of other factors seemingly indirectly related to “hypothetical person X making meaning of hypothetical thing Y” may have some impact on how that person defines credibility, quality, etc. When we see a news story that confirms our beliefs, or is presented in a “shell” that has previously confirmed our beliefs (the New York Times, say), we may not be as inclined to question it. This holds true not only for the hypothetical dupe who needs to be “made critical,” but also for the person who, in the majority of other circumstances, would be critical but for specific reasons is less so in a particular instance.

One lens through which to think about critical autonomy is the feelings of pleasure we take in having our beliefs confirmed or having something in which we do not believe disproved (or merely set within some negative context). One fascinating study on Schadenfreude — taking pleasure in one’s misfortune or suffering (the distinction between misfortune and suffering is one John Portmann makes much of in his book When Bad Things Happen to Other People, the source of my thoughts on critical autonomy) — suggests that political affiliation and the strength of that affiliation is strongly correlated to the amount of Schadenfreude one claims to feel in both trivially negative (as in a gaffe) or tragically negative (as in a disaster or death) events in the course of political campaigns.

This makes a certain sense, and the authors of that study are quick to qualify that perhaps the Schadenfreude taken in a negative event is tied to participants’ sense of justice, the sense that a bad thing may make way for a better world in the future.

I’m more interested in the kinds of casual affiliations that resemble more closely social group formations in school settings, and throughout adolescence (and probably into adulthood), not only because I work with adolescent and post-adolescent students, but because I think that generally in these kinds of studies researchers tend to overstate the intentionality and sense of righteousness with which people who feel Schadenfreude can rationalize their feelings.

Take Paris Hilton’s 2007 incarceration for a driving violation for example. In that case, Hilton, who was the subject of several DUI’s before being sentenced to jail for one month on a violation of her probation (she drove when she wasn’t supposed to), was widely met with public Schadenfreude at the symbolic incarceration.

At the time, I was disgusted by this behavior, particularly among people who claimed to be on the side of social justice. Incarceration for minor violations after more major offenses is one reason why non-Paris-Hilton individuals are over-incarcerated in the United States. To celebrate Hilton’s downfall is to thoughtlessly support a justice system that does not work in the interests of its society. That is, by sneering at Paris Hilton, the social-justice-minded individual temporarily suspends her “critical autonomy” in a single situation that can never again hold for any individual who is not Paris Hilton. One cannot simultaneously believe that the justice system over-incarcerates people for minor offenses and also be “glad” that it “finally” screwed over someone many people happen not to like. If the system is broken, it’s broken for everyone.

If we were to believe, in any given scenario, that our participation in group behavior was inherently suspect, and was to be questioned more carefully than when we seemed to be exhibiting individual critical autonomy, this would likely have an impact on the expression of our emotions, if not the actual feeling of them.

I’ll provide an example from one of my own lapses in judgment. When Jason Russell, director of the KONY2012 video, was arrested for public nudity and alleged masturbation, my first reaction was mean-spirited glee. I found the Kony film problematic, and some part of me wanted to share this gut reaction, a Nelson Muntz “Haw haw,” with the world, because of how easy it would be to do so. But I bracketed the feeling, perhaps especially because I saw others indulging in similar snark. I was lucky — in the past my visceral suspicion has led me to share things that I later regretted, as when I shared an (in retrospect) unfair Ginia Bellafante article that painted the Occupy movement protesters as foolish and naive. It turned out, in the case of Russell, that (as I can now imagine more clearly) there are myriad reasons that mocking this misfortune would have been problematic. (How easy is it for me to laugh at someone else acting strangely on the verge of hospitalization? What the hell do I know about this guy or this situation, anyway?)

I think it behooves media literacy educators to hold on to as clear-eyed as possible notions of critical autonomy — a critical autonomy that teaches automatic suspicion of participation at some level. The combination of unexpected events and group affiliation is the foundation for community, togetherness, and other positive values, but it is also the foundation for bigotry, exclusion, and (easy) hatred. That means that we need to be on guard when group affiliations may obscure — or temporarily reverse — a sense of right and wrong. And this sense of skepticism will be different for every person according to his or her group affiliation — that is, Democrats need to be skeptical when contributing within Democratic communities, etc. etc. This does not mean pretending to a neutral knowledge that will necessarily hold true regardless of how we feel; rather, it means investigating counter-claims most intently precisely when they feel most uncomfortable.

For me, for instance, that means admitting how little I actually know about things like global warming, evolution, and other topics that I have expressed strong political beliefs about (and will likely continue to). That isn’t to say that I won’t continue believing these things. But it might temper the strength with which I express them to others, just as people in the Combs study who are only weakly affiliated with Democrats or Republicans show comparable (and relatively weak) levels of Schadenfreude when something bad happens to the other side.