So during last week’s class we touched on the topic of ambivalence when it comes to teaching media literacy. Ambivalence because media education requires that students learn to see the world through a critical lens, and this lens can take some of the “blissful ignorance” out of the interactions students have with various forms of media. I think it became clear through our classroom discussion that several of us media educators have had to grapple with what feels like an ethical dilemma: wearing the badge of critical insight while making any number of illicit agreements or transactions with media-makers, whose interests are self-serving at best.
This tension is most evident in the classroom when you see a student’s response to a popular media text that has been been dragged through the mud. Kids will sometimes give you that, “You’ve ruined it for me” face when presented with the reality of the trickery used to create so much of the media they consume. As a teacher I know that I’m doing my students a service by helping them develop a critical eye, but I also know that I (as a consumer, patron, target audience member, etc.) have developed the ability to turn down the volume on the critical voice, especially when I’m choosing to enjoy a guilty pleasure like American Idol, for example. Don’t get me wrong, the inner critic is always there, but I’ve acquired a degree of control over the voice that allows me to reduce it to a faint whisper when I so desire. I don’t know how or exactly when I learned to manipulate the inner critic. No one ever explicitly taught this skill to me. I don’t know if it’s something one can teach…
I think that at the end of the day, I just recognize that the cost of not developing a critical eye in my students is way too dear. If my students can’t bear to watch another episode of Jersey Shore because of something we’ve uncovered through media education, I will somehow feel as though I’ve made the world a slightly better (read: “blissfully critical”) place.
Is that wrong?
