I am of course writing my essay. Normally by this stage it has started flowing but nothing. I am lost and floating on a zone of much research and no pathway. MORE focus…….Some focus…….
Give yourself a break, have a rest then start again. Do anything as it needs to be finished by next week otherwise I am starting the next module without completing this one.
There is a worry over children using the internet, but why, what are we worried about. What will the internet do to that child?
Big worry number 1 – that a paedophile will get access to the child and trap them into meeting them in the real world and force then into a sexual relationship.
Big worry number 2 – children will have access to material that ‘sexualise’ them making them have sexual relationships before they should.
Big worry number 3 – the internet is a big uncontrollable thing that children are more at home on than adults and if we were them we would be doing all sorts of bad things that would not be allowed.
These to me are the underlying worries that are discussed by parents, educators and politicians when they think of children on the internet.
Should popular culture be allowed in the classroom and if we do what happens next. Oh the alienation question. The one that says; if we bring in the culture that young people interact with those that feel ‘outside’ those that find it difficult to learn might join in. As someone who works mainly with those I would call low-level learners who achieve few qualifications, it is not what they are made to learn about but how they learn, that is important. However, in the primary classroom, surely these developing minds will write in the vocabulary and style with which they are most familiar. They were also able to discuss, stretch and mix media text to create new stories.
If we look at this as media research we gained a lot that David Gauntlett would see as effective. As the researcher has a long connection with the subjects they seem able to express some interesting points of view. Would an adult group discuss the level of blood and death content of a scene or story? The research was also seeking to look and find out rather than answer a question that the researcher already has an answer to and wants proof. This is the sort of question that seeks to find violence in computer games.
Finally I would like to suggest that just because these ‘baddies’ have media names and characteristics, they still follow a long line of hero based storytelling and literature. Again as Gauntlett says we seem more worried at a child seeing fictional violence whereas a child of 8 or 9 watching the news and seeing gun-toting soldiers in many parts of the world is not unusual.
I am half way through the reading on, ‘Baddies in the classroom’ and I want to scream. Where does all this creativity go, what happens to all these children that want to write and explore their imagination. Out of the 55 students that I see regularly each week, and make write, I can say I only have one who is able to write creatively and she has never been educated in school. What do we do in our education system. About 70% of the students can produce a piece of writing but it will be based on the ‘cut and paste’ principle of learning. This is; I did not just cut and paste I changed it into my own words; whilst using exactly the same sentence structure. Ask them to write a description of a picture or photograph and they are lost. It seems like a forgotten form of writing that these learners have lost. I must say it is getting better, six weeks in and one students gave a wonderful description of a photograph including what he imagined was there but you could not see. How are these people going to be creative individuals if you have taught them not to be creative? All that need to write stories at 8 and 9 has been destroyed. Its shameful.
This essay put forward a reasoned argument about the way research into the effects of the media have been so badly constructed. David Gauntlett has previously argued that there is little to prove that media affects our behaviour. Here he takes the approach that the research has taken the wrong approach. It looks as if all research ‘knew’ that exposure to the media was bad and set out to prove this. I was very interested in the research that suggested that disaffected youth spent very little time watching the television, whereas the media headline with violence in the media causes violent teenagers. There seems to be conflicting ideas that suggest that children cannot differentiate between real and animated violence, as in Tom and Jerry, but equally that these same children understand sexual innuendo. This also seems at odds with the violence in factual and news programs which is seen as acceptable. The first part of the essay talked about the attitudes brought to the research by the researcher. The second part of the essay talks about how the research was done. It was interesting that he talks about who the researcher is affects the answers given. Having just read the research on the media interaction of children in India, there great care and thought had been taken in who would interview the children for this project. David Gauntlett does not see the methodology used by some researchers as viable causing results to have dubious factual basis. The conclusion seems to be that the basis for all this work, that media influences behaviour, is unproven and basing your work on an unproven fact is unlikely to produce viable research.
This was really interesting, both how the research was done and what they found out. There was a big difference in the access the children had to media but great similarities in adult response. Wherever you are in the world and whatever your cultural origin parents think that you should not watch too much television. I could hear myself in the descriptions given by the children. There was also that feeling that there are things you do not want to see when your parents are in the room. With some of these children it was probably what my children would think of as very mild but all children seem to have an embarrassment area. What was different was the access to electronic and digital media which for many was very limited. Although there was discussion of limited access because of work, childcare, homework and other labour, I would say many western middle class children have evenings filled with homework and extra after school clubs limiting their access to the media. I was interested in the way some children negotiated how and where they could access what they wanted to see. There was little reference to television for children made in their home country. There was some reference to American cartoons for children seen on satellite or cable tv. I was finally left with the feeling that what we as ‘adults’ think about tv, is not what children see and sometimes our obsessions actually colour and change what the child sees.
Well I am now on the second year of my MA and it feels like I am starting again. I have forgotten how to do all this read and respond thing. It is amazing how you have to get back into the whole academic thing. It does not help that I am starting so late because you enrol and then wait for the work to come up haha. But I came in after the work was up and others had been able to look and work. I found last year that term 2 and 3 was much easier because you were a) on-line and ready b) you were in the mood and knew what to do. Also this year college is dire. I thought last year was bad but this is worse. We are working to rule over a new contracts dispute which means we have not had a pay increase for 2 years. The college has no money and it is a miracle we have any students with the level of capital outlay on equipment and facilities. Students at college now are not interested in the college of the future they are the least forward-looking people, they are teenagers. Through this I am madly busy as there are fewer and fewer tutors every term. Oh, and the college is not supporting my MA in any way so doing it has been complete madness. The positive is I love the learning, trying out the new, looking at how to do things in new and different ways. Back to my first feedback, whoops. Well I did it and got it in on time but it was all wrong or back to front. I like a challenge, get out of this one, work out what they are all talking about…………….to be continued.
I am watching Kraftwork on BBC 4, saw them live years ago, and have been inspired on two fronts.
1. Learning , works and music. The simple style of linking works to music repeating in patterns with simple animation. This definitely prompts learning and could be something I use with my students. After all this is the style that Sesame Street used to teach the alphabet. Now if the students were creating the simple animation to link to musical patterns to explain a complicated process then they could be teaching themselves.
2. This is leading on from the readings I have been doing about children’s media. Although I do not agree with the scare mongering about the destruction of children’s brain because they watch TV and participate in computer based technology I have to accept that it has an influence. If there was never an influence for change from ‘art’ or ‘creative’ presentations why would we make political drama etc. I love the idea that there is a time when a child thinks that if they turn the tv over the cereal falls out of the bowl. Then they come to realise that the tv is not life. My ducks do not understand that the duck in the mirror is not another duck. However most children develop through this. These realities or perception are logically not just enclosed in the media world they are in the world that surrounds the developing mind. Do we damage the developing mind by exposure to the media, or is there a state of plasticism within the mind that dims the borders between reality and fantasy. My son was obsessed with ‘george the dragon’ and this dragon lived at the bottom of the garden. As he grew the dragon got father and father away as he began to understand that in reality there could not be a dragon. This was a mind that was allowed to develop normally coming to its own sence of reality. Surly the mind that is affected by the media is the mind that does not go through those developmental stages. The mind that is the worry is the one that does not understand empathy that does not understand cause and effect. Does exposure to the media cause this or is it the mind that is only exposed to the media and thus emotion and feeling through a visual playback with no real personal emotion the mind created with no empathy.
Having read the second reading I am even more uneasy with their findings. How many children make a research project? Well I have had 3 and have taught numerous under 5’s. I would like to draw the attention of researchers to the washing machine. At an early age the washing machine could be as satisfying to the young child as the tv. In fact my very difficult son who would never be put down would cope with the washing machine or moving traffic from out 2nd floor flat window rather than the tv. Until one son could identify a storyline he could not and would not cope, watch or relax with tv. As with the concept that young children should listen to piano music as it is a single melody line, sometimes the tv is too complex for very young children, with too much going on.
This is a blog so I can write unsubstantiated stuff. What is childhood. When did this concept arise? If we say the concept of childhood, a time of innocence when the brain is developing and thus the child is protected, began with the Victorians how do we square this with child workers and the lack of education for the poor. If we accept that childhood is a very modern concept, post 2nd WW, does this affect the magic family time that existed before the media got in to destroy the family. As i said at the beginning this is a blog and i write stuff. I feel that the concept of ‘family’ that is refered to, is something invented to reconstruct western society after the second world war. The rich could have a childhood, a time before responsibility, but the poor worked, even in childhood. Many women had worked in the war and their children were looked after. After the war society was recreated and within this was the role of motherhood. The mother at home cooking and cleaning to welcome home the father, then to participate in the pastoral idyll of the ideal family. Is this any more real than the family at war with children obsessed by the media with their morals somewhere between ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘The Matrix’. So today, 2009, if I defined childhood it would be a western based idea of the years between 0 and 12. Oh and its primarily male, a girls childhood stops as soon as she bleeds even if she is in primary school and that is worldwide.
