Reading: Emery Petchauer, “Starting With Style: Toward a Second Wave of Hip-Hop Education Research and Practice,” Urban Education 2015, Vol. 50(1), pp. 78–105.
Andrew Marantz, “Kanye West For President”, The New Yorker. (31 Aug 15): http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/kanye-west-for-president?mbid=social_facebook Hip-Hop.... A way to offer a voice and mechanism to move forward, perhaps to take a negative situation and turn it into a positive way forward? Individuals who have had challenges in their lives as a result of their race, economic situation, circumstances (ruptures).. and the opportunity to offer a means of communication. For individuals whose music becomes mainstream - the opportunity to take that voice to the masses and use it as a means to speak up for those who cannot, or aren't being heard. To make difficult or controversial political or social statements. A manner for getting messages to mainstream. A voice and abilty to share a message through a less frightening medium, to provide an inference.. lead in sentence with a pause to allow the listener to follow the thought through.. The Petchauer reading highlighted specific highschool programs for learners who were not successful in other learning environments. The effort to meet the learner at their interest point. Highlights individuals capabilities and works to encourage learners to meet their potentials recognizing and in fact perhaps utilizing their backgrounds and circumstances to move forward.
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Reading: Karen Anijar. Teaching Toward the 24th Century: Star Trek as Social Curriculum (Pedagogy and Popular Culture). New York: Falmer Press, 2003. Access through library collection:http://books1.scholarsportal.info.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/viewdoc.html?id=/ebooks/ebooks2/taylorandfrancis/2013-03-10/1/9780203011300 Reading: CHAPTER 4 Klingon as Curriculum: Militias, Minstrel Shows, & Other Language Games; CHAPTER 5 Resistance Is Futile: You Will Be Assimilated into the Predatory Jungle (Pp 142-190) The readings this week had me thinking about language. The impact a persons language has on their culture and the interpretation of their culture is interesting. I am not much of a trekkie although did watch a number of episodes over my life - usually while sitting next to my dad who really enjoyed the show. The language of Klingon is intriguing and led me to consider all the languages and ways of communicating that exist out there. All manner of languages and dialects, but also language through a computer (aka Stephen Hawking), sign language, and all the languages of those who can't/don't communicate through traditional or untraditional means. What is their language?
The concept that struck me was just how much of an impact this conversation has for people who have language based learning disabilities, autism, language developmental issues etc. This challenge goes both ways. The individual who cannot be understood is often excluded because they "don't fit in" and/or "can't be understood". This often translates to "they don't understand" so "they don't care". Overall however, when people can't communicate - they have trouble... Not because they are not valuable members, Not because the people who love them don't understand / don't want to understand, Not because they don't have something to say, but rather because they lack the language to say it. Social cues, inferences, dual meanings, and the like all pose additional comprehension challenges to the language impaired. The loss of language as a result of forced assimilation, forced silence, or removal from one's culture highlights the damage that can be done when language is lost. It has given me pause to reflect on how this must feel for individuals without language in our own culture. Readings: Henry Jenkins. “Fan Activism as Participatory Politics: The Case of the Harry Potter Alliance.” DIY Citizenship. Pp. 65-73. Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. The Walking Dead #1: Special Edition. Berkeley, CA: Image Comics. (May 2008). Comic book. Watch: Zombie Apocalypse (Discovery Channel, 43 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=75&v=YdAe18Xvs4Q
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Robert Saunders. “Imperial Imaginaries: Employing Science Fiction to Talk About Geopolitics.”Popular Culture and World Politics: Theories, Methods, and Pedagogies. Caso and Hamilton, Eds. Pp. 149-159. This weeks reading caused me to pause and reflect on the interpretation of media and specifically that of science fiction in relation to world events. It is interesting to read how others have interpreted story lines to run parallel to geopolitical events. As I reflected on these examples I wondered how many of these interpretations are supported by the programs writers as actual correlations, versus interpretations of others who would like there to be correlations. This interested me enough that I have allocated a bit of time to go and explore this further. I also wonder about cause and effect. In the sense that media shapes perspective, but also that perspective shapes interpretation of media. Science fiction “the genre of the unknown, but imaginable” (Saunders, 2015) is a perfect tool for such consideration. Much of the world and world events seem to be drawn from futuristic and unimaginable headlines. The interest in bad news has proliferated the media such an extent that we have almost become immune to what was once a horror. The internet age has provided an avenue for individuals with similar viewpoints to “find” each other and share their beliefs, whether they are of the June Cleaver sort, or the Mad Max sort. How much does science fiction provide an avenue to present an alternate reality or viewpoint that might otherwise be socially unacceptable? As “stories” are sold as entertainment, and maybe even gather cult following, viewers are desensitized to the global correlations that might be made. When the atrocities of the world are able to be correlated to science fiction it makes one wonder what kind of world we live in where there are so many plot lines which can be aligned to the real world. |
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