week 6

I’m inspired by the ways bell hooks frames education in Teaching to Transgress, and as an educator I hope to continue working towards the goal of making the classroom a liberatory space, where the emphasis is on students well-being and their capacity for growth. Reflecting on bell hooks, I was reminded of the incredible Tumblr page “Saved by the bell hooks” which juxtaposes quotes from hooks with screenshots from Saved by the Bell: https://savedbythe-bellhooks.tumblr.com/

My cover image for the week is from a twitter page with a similar structure, “Ruth Wilson Gilmore Girls”: https://twitter.com/rwgilmoregirls?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

My meme below addresses the fact sheet published by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which I thought exaggerated the role of media literacy in solving massive social ills like violence & aggression, substance abuse, and body image. I was frustrated with the paragraph on violence, which seemed to imply that “high-risk” youth (haaate that language) caught up in the juvenile (in)justice system simply need help with their “decision-making skills,” implying that these young people are individually at fault because they are inherently more prone to crime and all they need is to understand how to make good decisions.

Reminds me how important it is to always situate thinking within a structural lens of oppression. Like okay sure, media literacy is good and can definitely help empower youth to understand themselves and their worlds, but the only solutions that will actually truly address harm are ones that address social needs like poverty, housing, education system etc etc. Media literacy helps shape our thinking, but that thinking also needs to lead us to reshape our material world.