Family Guy's subtle response to parents who blame Family Guy

As I mentioned during class, I feel that a lot of the problem with kids and cartoons are that who is allowing them to watch them. I for one am a huge Family Guy fan and there is a reason that it is rated R. If parents have problems with there children learning from them, perhaps they should not let them watch them. As for Disney Cartoons, there is honestly no harm in letting your children watch these. The light subliminal messaging that so many people argue is nothing but excitement for young children.

Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us: Christiensen

"The impact of racism begins early. Even in our preschool years, we are exposed to misinformation about people different from ourselves. Many of us grow up in neighborhoods where we have limited opportunities to interact with people different from our own families....Consequently most of the early information we receive about "others" people racially, religiously, or socioeconomically different from ourselves- does not come as a result of firsthand experience. The secondhand information we receive has often been distorted, shaped by cultural stereotypes and left incomplete. . .Cartoon images in particular the Disney movie Peter Pan, were cited by the children as their number one source of information. At the age of three, these children had a set of sterotypes in place."pg126

"Pam and Nicole swore they would not let their children watch cartoons. David told the class of ocming home one day and finding his nephews absorbed in "Looney Tunes." I turned that TV off and took them down to the park to play. They aren't going to watch that mess while I'm around." Radiance described how she went to buy Christmas presents for her niece and nephew."Before I would have just walked into the toy store and bought them what I knew they wanted-Nintendo or Barbie. But this time I went up the clerk and said, "I want a toy that isn't sexist or racist."pg 134

"Students have also said that what they now see in cartoons they also see in advertising, on prime time TV, on the news in school. Turning off the cartoons doesn't stop the sexism and racism they can't escape, and now that they've started analyzing cartoons, they can't stop analyzing the rest of the world. And sometimes they want to stop. Once a student asked me, "Don't you eve get tired of analyzing everything?"pg 134

COMMENTS


ITS CALLED ENTERTAINMENT!

While reading this article I am not sure why but I was enfuriated, not only am i a huge supporter of Disney and most other cartoons that I have watched while growing up but it also aggravated me to know that Christiansen was changing other peoples opinions. I understand on an academic level the importance of understanding why we must question the "cartoons" as to notice the hidden messages. As adults we understand the hidden messages but as children we do not. I don't think that is fair to accuse a single source such as "cartoons" as the only reason for why we are the way we are. As in our Media presentations I've realized that there are multiple reasons why we are the way we are. In a previous class I had we took the Media in general and tore it apart so there was nothing left. We talked about the negatives and  some how talked about the food industry, I stopped eating meat for a month or so and attempted to become "vegan". Someone elses point of view on such a thing changed the way i ate, I think that is a huge symbolism as to how crazy someone can get in your head. We as a society become routined by the ways of life. In my family we eat meat and we love it, when reviewing the negatives of the food industry i was so convinced that I couldn't eat meat ever again.
Looking at the cartoon Cinderalla on a different approach, children watch it and see the simple things in life. They enjoy the colors the visual stimulation they get from watching cartoons, it keeps them content. When children watch cartoons they are not saying in their head "Wow look at the way Cinderella is so WHITE, and look how shes being portrayed poor and then turns rich"



Where We Stand: American Schools In The 21st Century Part 1

The Education System in America

I think that if President Obama actually did what he said for our Educational System things would be drastically different. We shall see how it turns out.

Ben Stein - America's Education Crisis

This just shows the difference in people of todays society. It also shows our failing Education system. :(

Gender Roles-Interviews with Kids

Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing down syndrome Kliewer

"He tells the most amazing stories. I know you've heard him. But he'll just [she made a series of babbling sounds] -like that. And he'll be acting it out, incredibly dramatic, and you'll have absolutely no idea waht he's saying. Nothing. Zero. Nothing. There's not one intelligible word in there. But I know him. And I'd say, from knowing him watching him here, at home, that it's all story-related. The first time I tried reading Where the Wild Things Are, which is his favorite book, he couldn't sit. He had to be up, dancing in the middle of the circle, acting it out. He just couldn't resist. He could not help himself. It got all the kids going. We were all Wild Things and it just came alive!"pg203

"Schools ahve traditionally taken a narrow position when defining and judging student intellect. The presence of a thoughful mind has been linked to patterns of behavioral and communicative conformity associated with competence in logical-mathematical thinking and linguistic skills. Assessments of how well a student conforms to expectations(measurements through which students come to be defined either as smart or as lacking intellect) tend to focus teacher attention on the child's adeptness at responding to classroom-based math and language tasks.These evaluation instruments supposedly measure either a student's understanding of a transmitted knowledge base (hence, preexisting one) related to math and language, or the students ability to discover the knowledge base through carefully contrived activities."pg 205

"Educating all children together reconfigures the representation of Down syndrome from burden toward citizenship. "pg 213

"One can visualize ther reconceptualization of Down syndrome and disability by returning to the metaphor of the gap first describe in Chapter 3.Community banishment of students with Down syndrome stems from their lack of behavioral and communicative conformity to school standards that form the parameters of intellectual normality."

COMMENT


This is another case of someone not being efficient enough in school. If these people would realize the work load they are placing on these students it would be a different matter. Standardize testing has become priority when in all actuality yes the intelligent level of students is important but the reason why they are doing poorly in the first place is because the testing has taken over.
In stead of making school fun and stimulating and actually making these children want to go to class and learn they are making it a place of dread and boredom. These are children not adults, we can't just sit them in a classroom and tell them to sit there and do this work. They need to be engaged in hands on visual audio classwork. Get them motivated and then the standardized testing scores will skyrocket. Make the material that is priority on the testing fun and these children will understand it. We can't be labelling students anything but students, but doing so we are setting them up to fail.

Anyon Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Schooling



"In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical , involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice. The teachers rarely explain why the work is being assigned, how it might connect to other assignments, or what the idea is that lies behind the procedure or gives it coherence and perhaps meaning or significance. "

"In math, when two digit division was introduced, the teacher in one school gave a four minute lecture on waht the terms are called (which number is the divisor, dividend, quotient and remainder). The children were told to copy these names in their notebooks. Then the teacher told them the steps to follow to do the problems, saying, "This is how you do them." The teacher listed the steps on the board and tehy appeared several days later as a chart hung in the middle of the front wall:"Divide, Multiply,Subtract, Bring Down.The children often did examples of two-digit division. When the teacher went over the examples with them, he told them what the procedure was for each porblem,rarely asking them to conceptualize or explain it themselves:"Three into twenty two is seven; do your subtraction and one is left over."

"One of the teachers led the children through a series of steps to make a 1-inch grid on their paper without telling them that they were making a 1 inch grid or that it would be used to study scale. She said "Take your rule. Put it across the bottom Now make a mark at every number. Then move your ruler down to the bottom. No, put it across the bottom. Now make a mark on top of every number. Now draw a line from..." At this point a girl said that she had a faster way to do it and the teacher said, "No, you don't;you don't even know what I'm making yet. Do it this way or its wrong."After they had the lines up and down and across, the teacher told them she wanted them to make a figure by connecting some dots and to measure that, using the scale of 1 inch equals 1 mile. Then they were to cut it out. She said, "Don't cut it until I check it."

COMMENTS

When thinking about how we can change "This" referring to the problems with our recent educational system, my answer is "impossible for one person to change." We can all preach and say things such as "Everyone can make a difference one person at a time (TRUE) but realistically i find it incredibally hard to believe that people will make the change.The educational system we have today has evolved over years and years, it cannot be fixed in a day or maybe not even in the equivalent amount of time that it took to evolve.Perhaps if i were born in a different era, I could have made a difference in which it might be implemented in todays society. Who would maintain such a structure? Sounds rediculous but seriuosly, I don't see it happening. During my own education I've had teachers tell me how extraordinary i was at writing then literally the next semester my teacher completely shut me out and marked all my essays like a two year old wrote them. One teacher is taught to teach one way and the other another way.
 Regardless I think that a teacher is going to teach however way they want to.



MacLaren Race, Class, and Gender

"Ogbu claims that within the black community itself, there are informal and formal sanctions against blacks who step into what their peers and the black community in general regard as the "white cultural frame of reference." School learning in white-controlled institutions often is equated with abandoning the imperatives, values, and collective solidarity of black culture."pg 227

"Mainstream schooling offers working class students little choice but to negotiate a life for themselves somewhere among the psychologists office, the compensatory program set up to remediate their deficiencies, and the streets where they will eventually be dumped. If the economic climate is good perhaps they will end up in low-skilled, low paying jobs. If they are lucky, they will get jobs in teh service sector, perhaps in retail, selling hip-hop clothes on Melrose Avenue."pg230

"Teachers must be aware of how school failure is structurally located and culturally mediated, so they can work both inside and outside of schools in the struggle for social and economic justice. Teachers must engage unyieldingly in their attempt to empower students both as individuals and as potential agents of social change by establishing a critical pedagogy that students can use in the classroom and in the streets."

COMMENTS

During the Diversity Event I attended A.L.L.I.E.D, I encountered something I had never realized before.  I learned about the experiences of certain people about being under represented. We heard many stories but few stuck out to me, one in particular:
One story about an African American female stood out to me the most. When this female was younger in her elementary school class a child had reported twenty dollars missing. The principal proceeded to check only the African American students while questioning them. When the principal found twenty dollars in the same young girl’s belongings the girl continued to tell the principal it was from her mother. Not believing the child the principal called the parent and had it confirmed. How can someone with so much authority be so ignorant? The principal of all people should be representing nothing less than a positive example of himself/herself. If events like these are still taking place what exactly does that say about our educational system?