Today I listened to CLIP 36 and 37 and they both showed so much about the dynamic power that children have in their world. In the first one, students were working together as an artist, a business manager and a consultant. They were doing things like conducting surveys about student interest in drawing and what kinds of drawing they were interested in. They also involved math into this by having sale prices for their drawings as well as figuring in tax. This was all done in school, but outside of the normal curriculum. Students were able to express their differences and show their strengths in different areas. The business manager was able to sell the drawings by convincing the buyer that they wanted one as well as being able to do the math to figure in tax. The consultant also conducted surveys so that he could advise the artist about what students were interested in and what kinds of drawings that they would buy. The artist also got to use his skill and be able to charge for it as well as working with others for the whole process to be successful. Many students do not take this much initiative to try and sell drawings through a whole carefully planned and thought out business system.
Children do also have power over their parent’s purchases. Toy packaging is designed for children to see it and immediately want one. In designing Pokemon they found their demographic. After all the years it has been on the air it has still stayed popular. Many other shows come and go so quickly if they are not as able to capitalize on the children’s interests and make a profit. In using food as well as toys children see them everywhere. And being on food makes them that much more prevalent and make the children’s desire for them greater. Most children don’t even know about how the market manipulates them and their desires into their own profit. Their marketing phrase of “Gotta Catch Em All” is genius because children do want them all. And very few of them realize why this all is. In this clip one of the students had his moment of realization where he saw how the market has been targeting him to collecting. But it did not seem like it bothered him very much to realize how much be was being used in their plans for generating profit.
4 comments:
Sue, I like the perspective you have brought up in this post. Kids do have a lot of power in this world and are rarely aware of it. Although this is an important business tactic for companies to know and capitalize on, more importantly young people need to realize this. Many times kids lack confidence and then feel rebellious in the fact that they have no power until they become adults. As younger people grow and develop and if they are conscious of their roles in society, they will become sucessful, aware adult citizens.
first, i completely agree that it's amazing to see children this young looking at their world through a critical eyepiece. the problem that you raise at the end of your post is valid; the youngster understood that he was being manipulated but was not perturbed. how can a child that young be moved to social action?
the other podcast clip with the french cafe also got students to analyze injustices occurring but moved them to social action. how? i think that they unscientific explanation is that they were hit where it hurts; they were being prevented from getting what they wanted. perhaps, if the kids in the pokemon scenario understood some of the sacrifices that buying all the pokemons caused, they might be tempted to send a petition to pokemonville(?) concerning the bad marketing practices of the manufacturer.
I also like this perspective... I wonder how power that we teachers give children? I realize I don't give them as much, becaue I am afraid that they will not use it to learn or that they will not be productive. Plus,I have new standards to get through and pacing breathing down my back. But I will try to let them l know they have power more often.
Sue,
I agree that these CLIP podcasts show just how powerful children really are. It also did a wonderful job of demonstrating the ways that critical literacy can result in a meaningful curriculum. Based on things the students were interested in, like Pokemon, the students became involved in academics on a meaningful level. I think these students were so lucky to get to have the opportunity to be in these classrooms.
Post a Comment