soiciology
Media and Education
Soci 1125, week 8th
What are we going to learn today?
Education:
residential school and structural inequality in Canada
Media
McLuhan theory of “ medium is the message”
Baudrillard theory of hyperreal
Higher education associated with decrease in unemployment rate in Indigenous people.
Statistics Canada, National Household Survey, 2011.
As the First Glance ……
Why?
Less than 10% of Indigenous people attend post secondary degrees, compared to 26.5% of non-Indigenous Canadians.
(Preston 2008; Clark et al. 2014 as cited in Bailey 2016)
Meissner & Bell 2019
What is the function of education ?
Transmitting the knowledge, skills ,values and attitudes deemed desirable in a particular society to the next generation.
Producing good citizen
Formal education is regulated by the State. (Ravelli and Weber 2019: 324)
This is mainly the State which determines the meaning of “good citizen” and the “desirable knowledge” worthy of transmitting to the next generation.
History of Public Education
Residential Schools
Earliest forms of formal education in Canada
Re-socialize Indigenous Peoples to become “civilized”
With support of the federal government, these schools sought to replace Indigenous knowledge and lifestyles in the belief that these practices were inferior to European morality and consciousness
These schools were an attempt at the forced assimilation of Indigenous children
The last school closed in 1996
Continued intergenerational trauma as a result of residential schools
Residential school : “Kill the Indian in the Child”!
Residential schools were the earliest form of education system in Canada.
Residential schools set up by the Canadian government and administered by churches
Residential school objectives:
Introducing indigenous children into Euro-Canadian and Christian ways of living
Forced Assimilation of indigenous children into mainstream white Canadian society.(Hanson, Eric, et al, 2020)
“Kill the Indian in the Child”
Kids Separated from their families by force.
The children were prevented from speaking in their mother tongue.
Violence, abuse and lack of proper health care.
High rate of mortality among children in residential school
Detrimental long-lasting effects on wellbeing of survivors and their communities.
A Mother's Grief
By Kent Monkman
The Shifting Away from Residential Schools
Since 1990s Canadian Government started acknowledging their responsibilities for residential schools’ harms toward indigenous communities.
The last school closed in 1996
In 2008 Canadian Prime Minister, Stephan Harper, offered a formal apology to the survivors of residential schools.
Meissner & Bell 2019
Two aspects of Structural inequality indigenous Students experience in Canadian Education system
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
The challenges of assimilation in the Western culture
Howard Becker (1952) Teacher-imposed labels can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy
Teacher Belief:
Ethnic group A ‘s IQ is higher than Ethnic group B’s IQ
Teacher’s action:
Smiling, calling and praising A students more than B students.
Students’ reactions:
Student from group A: Study enthusiastically and get higher grades.
Students from group B: Become disappointed and study less and get lower grades
Proving
From Myers 2008
Canadian school teachers had lower expectations from aboriginal students than white students. (Riley&Ungerleider 2012)
When you expect less from someone you will see less from them!
The challenges of assimilation in the Western culture
The culture of the education system in Canada is Eurocentric in which the Non- Western knowledges are marginalized.
Thus:
Indigenous students face more difficulty adjusting with the education culture. (Hanson, et al, 2020)
Adjusting with education’s Eurocentric Culture may result in their assimilation into the Western culture and alienation from their own culture.
Summary
After the closure of residential schools, indigenous children were officially got introduced into Canadian Public school, where they were supposed to be treated equally with their Western peers.
However, they are still target of discrimination and inequality in the Canadian education.
Self fulfilling prophecy and challenges of assimilation in the Western culture are only two aspects of inequality that indigenous Students endure in current education system.
Think about the main features of an ideal educational system that would strengthen(instead of weakening)minorities in dealing with structural inequality.
Break
What dose this quote mean? Exemplify it
SOCI438-week 4
18
Technology as Scale
Technology extends some organs/ part of our physical and/or psychic selves (MacLuhan 2006:107) by outsourcing some tasks which used to be done by our body/ psyche.
In doing so, technology modifies our functionality to do that task while, contradictory, shrinks the power of the same or other organs within our body/ psyche.
What part of our human ability was expanded by modern media in general and "social media” in particular?
Our ability to observe
We can observe way more than our natural horizon allows us!
Social media as “Ideal type” Media for Mcluhan’s Theory !
The entire content of social media is generated by the users
But are we really, totally free in social media ?
What is wrong with living in our echo chamber ???
Living in echo chamber, thinking in box!
23
Living in echo chamber,
Mob mentality: e.g., Panic buying in the covid19 age
Conspiracy theory, polarization and violence
The introduction of web.2 and “ virtual reality”
“Virtual reality takes the imaginary of the world and the imaginary of the film or video image one step farther by placing the individual "inside" alternative worlds. By directly tinkering with reality, a simulational practice is set in place which alters forever the conditions under which the identity of the self is formed"
(Poster 2006: 539, emphasize is mine).
Hyperreality
Phases of images:
Reflection: it reflect the reality(I put make up and take photo to share in Instagram!)
mask reality: ( the photo makes me look more beautiful smart/ intellectual/ progressive )
mask the absence of reality or make Illusion. ( the reality that I am not as beautiful/smart/ intellectual/ progressive that my image shows)/ [ celebrity culture]
The pure simulacra: has no relation to the reality
The production of images as pure simulacra creates the hyperreality. Hyperreality has no relation to reality. e,g. I believe my picture more than my self
The picture does no linger representing me, rather I am supposed to represent my image: fake it till you make it!
Virtual reality
The audiences of mass media were like spectators who stood outside of the scene and watched whatever happened on the screen as "outsiders."
The "mass" of the mass media would need to be invited inside the scene as participants, not just the audience, if the "medium" aimed at constructing a new world_ a new human reality or virtual reality.
Virtual reality is the constructed reality in which all people have the opportunity not only to be audiences' celebrities( kingdom of TV) , but also to be the celebrities / actors of their own echo chamber!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVM5-_fusjs
Baudrillard’s criticism toward The Matrix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9J35yzM3E
Hyperreal
In the hyperreal world the boundaries of virtual reality ( the images of representation of actual reality) and “actual reality” ( our real world) blurred in our horizon.
“It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for
the real”( Buadrillard 2006( 1994):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pupLQd3SRms