Reading Response: Ideology and Consciousness

For the article's sake it was long, but it was relatively easy to read. To see the differences they made between ideology and consciousness was interesting. I do believe that as teachers we need to be careful what and how we say things to our students. At preteen and even the teenage era, the mind is still impressionable. For many years in public schools the students are spoon-fed all their information.

"Appearances are extremely important in a mass-mediated world" is important to get across to our students. They are bombarded with images–both good and bad–whenever they open their eyes. Everything from tee-shirts to billboards to music and television, they need to understand the ideas that the media is trying to express and what the attitudes and opinions are of the people who made the media, as well as their own attitudes and opinions.

"A mass medium is not just a 'vessel' which carries ideas from one place to another, but is itself a subjective, interpretative, ideological form". I do agree that the "medium is the message" however, it doesn't always work. If you put a beer ad or logo on a tee-shirt, that doesn't necessarily mean that the person enjoys that beer . . . perhaps they just like the logo. Personally, I don't drink beer, but I like the Guinness logo. I have a few key chains and tee-shirts that have the logo on it. Yes, I am getting their business out there every time I wear that shirt or someone looks at my keys, but that doesn't mean I condone what beer and alcohol does to people.

Near the end of the article it talks about the role that culture plays into media becoming a part of everyday life. I think that society should also be included in that. We are so worried about what the next person is going to wear, or what the fashion trend for the next season is going to be. We have become obsessed with our outward appearance needs to be because of what the magazines are saying; obsessed with what we need to eat or listen to because of what the 'celebs' are doing.

I agree that we are saturated–perhaps even over saturated–with media, but as teachers we need to provide the opportunities for our students to look at today's media and decipher exactly what it is that those media want you to think. We need to provide a safe environment that the students are able to say what that media means to them and what they think it is saying. We need to give teens the guidelines and the tools so they can decipher what that media is trying to tell them and how best to avoid the traps that media has set up.