Better Late Than Never Reflections on Christensen

In "Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us," Linda Christensen states that our children, our students, receive a "secret education" from what they read in childrens' books and watch on TV and in movies. That secret education teaches them "to accept the world as it is portrayed in these social blueprints. And often that world depicts the domination of one sex, one race, one class, or one country over a weaker counterpart.

Christensen urges us to "look at the roles of women, men, people of color, and poor people," and encourage us ask the following questions:

• Who plays the lead?
• Who plays the buffoon? 
• Who plays the servant? 
• Look at the race, station in life, body type of each character. 
• What motivates the character? 
• What do they want out of life? 
• What's their mission? 
• If there are people of color in the cartoon, what do they look like? 
• How are they portrayed? 
• What could children learn about this particular group from this cartoon? 
• How does the film portray overweight people? 
• What about women other than the main character? 
• What jobs do you see them doing? 
• What do they talk about? 
• What are their main concerns? 
• What would young children learn about women's roles in society if they watched this film and believed it? 
• What roles do money, possessions, and power play in the film?
• Who has it?
• Who wants it?
• How important is it in the story?
• What would children learn about what's important in this society?

She offers her students a chart to fill out as a guide when analyzing these media messages. Often we find that the lead characters are often the most attractive, the heroine is mostly concerned with winning a man, this becomes her happily ever after, the hero is hyper masculine, she is the damsel in distress and he becomes the knight in shining armor, poor people are uneducated and illiterate, people of color are horribly stereotyped, overweight people are buffoons, ugly people are evil or comical - need I go on? 

These are the messages being taught to our children, which can lead to a whole heap of insecurities for many, among other things.

Christensen offers us, as teachers, a way to help our students fight back by first, using her model to have them analyze different media, and secondly - taking action!

Instead of just assigning students an essay critiquing a book, show, or movie, Christensen has her students come up with a project that will go beyond the classroom, empowering students to educate others about what they've learned. While it must still be specific, and use specific examples - the students have the opportunity to publish their work for an audience of their choosing: "parents, peers, teachers, children's book authors, librarians, Disney video store owners, advertisers." One group of students decided to make a pamphlet that graded different cartoon shows that they would hand out at the PTA meetings. Here is another example which explores the roles of women and demands a new kind of self-sufficient heroine, and one examining the gender roles taught and their affects on the lives of the viewers. 

 Reading this article, as an individual, has caused me to examine and re-examine everything I read and watch to look for the social injustices they might be teaching, I think about having my own children. I've decided not to shelter them from it, but teach them about what they're watching. As a teacher, I hope to do the same for my students, and incorporate an underlying theme of social injustice in the media message into my curriculum, so that as a class we are continuously analyzing what we read and what we see, and I hope to give them the kind of assignments recommended by Christensen.

I hope that, in class, we can talk more about specific ways to incorporate this kind of critical analysis into our own classrooms someday. Because it's easy to look at and discuss these issues in a class designed around them, but we need to know how to teach our students about these issues in different classroom settings.