DOCUMENT RESUMt

ED 091 390 SP 008 067

AUTHOR Houk, Annelle; Bogart, CarlottaTITLE Media Literacy: Thinking About.PUB DATE Apr 74NOTE 108p.AVAILABLE FROM Pflaum Order Department, 8121 Hamilton Avenue,

Cincinnati, Ohio 45231 ($3.50)

EDRS PRICEDESCRIPTORS

MF-$r,.75 HC Not Available from EDRS. PLUS POSTAGECurriculum Development; Films; *Literacy; *MassMedia; Media Selection; *Multimedia Instruction; NewsMedia; Printing; *Teaching Methods; Television

ABSTRACTThis book is a guide to teaching media literacy.

Among the topics discussed are the following: (a) the use of a can asan example of media (included is a description of the basic cancurriculum or "CANalysis") (b) how to devise media classes so thatpotential critics (parents, administrators) can appreciate theclasses without judging them; (c) "the Natural Curriculum"--the useof stones and other natural materials in class; (d) an analysis ofthe different media: print, film and television; (e) grading in mediaclasses; (f) the process of translation or transformation from ideasor events into media; (g) the importance of point of view in media;and (h) the use of "reversals" as a tool in media. (JA)

MEDIA LITERACY: THINKING ABOUT

CD byAnnelle HoukCarlotta Bogart

Pflaum/Standard

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1974 by Annelle Honk :mil Carlotta Bogart

All rights reserved.No part of this work may be reproduced inany manner for any purpose except reviewstvithoot permission in writing from the publisher.Design and illustration by Tim PotterLibrary of Congress Catalog Card Number 74.77021

ISBN B.S27S-0264-12 3 4 3 (i 7 S 9

Table of Contents

Introduction /1

Chapter 1: You Can If You Want To /5

Chapter 2: Spit and Polish /15

Chapter 3: Sermons in Stones / 26

Chapter 4: Two Senses Worth /37

Chapter 5: Fail-Safe /73

Chapter 6: Caterpillars and Tadpoles /80

Chapter 7: I'm Uninformed,You're Ignorant, He's Stupid /91

Chapter 8: The Tiger and the Lady /102

Chapter 9: What's the Best Way to GetOut from Under an Elephant? /109

Introduction

`Thinking About"(Humans & Enimals)

byH*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N

Somtime I feel sad about how som people areliving. Only sleeping eating working in shop.Not thinking. They are just like Enimals thesame, which dont thinking also. Humansshould not be like Enimals! They shouldThinking! This is with me a deep idea.

Now we are having in school the axeminationa Comp. Mostly, will the students write a

story for Comp. But I am asking, Why mustallways be a story? Mr. P. must be sick andtierd from storys. Kaplan, be a man! Nostory! Tell better about Thinking something!Fine. Now I am thinking.

In the recass wasright to say Its Mewe will have thatIts Me or Its I aYes.

But it isnt so hardfiggure in this way:

If somebody is inmakes knok, knok,

2.

som students asking if isor Its I (because maybequestion in axemination),planty hard question, no?

if we are Oinking about! I

hall besides my door, andknok; so I holler netcheral

2

"Whose there"? Comes the anser "Its Me." Atine anser!! Who is that Me anyho? Can I tell?No! So is Its Mc no good.

Again is kook, kook, kook. And again I holler"Whose there"? Now comes the anser "Its I."So who is now that I?? Still can 1 (Kaplan)tell?? Ha! Umpossible!

So it looks like is 110 anser. (Turn aroundpaige)

But must be som kind anser. So how we canfind him out??? BY THINKING ABOUT.(Now I show how Humans isnt Enimals)

3.

If I am in hall and make knok, knok, knok;and I hear insite (insite the room) somebodyhollers "Whose there"? I anser strong "//sKaplan! "!!

Now is fine! Plain, clear like gold, no chancemixing up Me, I, Ect.

By Thinking is Humans making big edvenceson Enimals. This we call Progriss.

T-H-E E-N-D

ps. I dent care if I dont pass, I love this class.

From THE EDUCATION OF HYNIAN KAPLAN byLeonard Q. Ross, copyright, 1937, by Harcourt BraceJovanovich, Inc.; copyright, 1965, by Leo Rosten.Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

3

For Hyman Kaplan there was no receivedwisdom. No matter who told him what, everyidea, any rule, any content had to be testedagainst his own experience and with his ownreason. His essay entitled ''Thinking About" isan excellent fictional piece of evidence thatthere is indeed a difference between beingeducated and being schooled.

Schooling produces horses with perfect gaits,children with accurate enunciatioA and gram-mar, and no square pegs. Education literacy

produces nothing. Instead, it is the powerthat persons who develop it can kce rc ise overtheir world and themselves. So defined, liter -ace' becomes the individual's assertion of hispower over his behavior his refusal topermit his behavior to be modified withouthis conscious acquiescence. Literacy is inde-pendent behavior consciously shaping andbeing shaped by media of all kinds.

AH and CB

S

Chapter 1: You Can If You Want To

So you're going to teach media. You have onecamera but no film, the TV set is in the otherpod, and this year's budget cuts eliminatedpaperbacks. But you have at least four walls,and if you want to begin media study there,you can start by listening to what the wallshave to say.

Ask your students what one wall could say toanother wall besides "Meet you at thecorner." And then question what very dif-ferent responses a single wall sends. Note thedifference between what the wall's builderintended (probably "Keep on your sk1e! ")and the wall's own multiple messages of "Goaround, over, under: walk on top, etc."

Continue to encourage your students to thinkaloud about what messages are sent by everyother structure, every texture, every color,every sound in your particular classroom. Forexample, what' is the seat in the classroom

6

saying to the sitter? Be prepared for as manydifferent answers as there are students be-cause every receiver has a unique personalrelationship to every medium.

What is the shoe saying to the foot? Or forthat matter, is there evidence that the foothas communicated something to the shoe?And what has the shoe said to the floor? Andhas the floor answered?

Be prepared for chaos the first day youpermit thinking about the learning Liiviron-ment instead of about recognizable subjectmatter.

Be prepared for some students' fury at beingasked to think such stupid things Nvlien theycould be learning something.

If to cut down on the noise level you shiftfrom talking to writing, and if you want theflow of ideas to continue, be prepared not tograde the grammar or insult the sentencestructure, and to tolerate the noise that willcontinue from the intense necessity of sharingdiscoveries too good to wait for permission.What will disappear temporarily will be disci-pline of the body (shut the mouth, keep theseat) and conformity of communication (putthe period, spell the word) at the cost of thegrowing discipline of thought (open the ears,open the eyes, open the mind, move themuscle, feel the emotion).Students will probably rate media class the

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least useful, most interesting class the onein which they learn the most personally thatthey need the least in school. Because it's fun,it can't be work. Because it's not work, itcan't be useful; and besides, what kind of jobwould pay you to think like this anyway?

Make no mistake, however. Media study is aserious and sober subject. Therefore, home-work must be assigned.

Everyone knows the importance of theprinting press, but the can has been neglected.Therefore, ask every student to enlist thecooperation of his family in obtaining andeating the contents of a can of something. Sothat his family, too, can understand theseriousness of the assignment, require at leastthe following record to be kept for compari-son and compilation by the whole class andlater shared at home:Who got the can?Where?At what cost?Why that brand?Why that size?Who else touched the, can between the shelf

and the home if it was not home canned?Who touched it at home. for what purposes,

with what, and how?What were the contents?Geographically, where did the contents come

from?What happened to the empty can?

9

For economy, the same can can be used forfurther study if the sau ,. .it will bring boththe can (cleaned) and its label to school; forcans are not merely containers of food forindividuals. They affect the economy and theecology. Where do they come from? Where dothey go? How have cans affected our livescoming and going? Class projects to which allcontribute can use those single cans to begin awhole semester's work in economics, art,human relations, psychology, consumer pro-tection, international food production andmarketing and distribution, etc.

Thinking about anything even a canmake us aware that that thing is a medium ofcommunication. But any thing even a canwill communicate itself as well as ( or eveninstead of) that often simple message itsinventor or first user intended. Furthermore,our use o' anything even a can confersresponsibility for all the messages of themedium those intended and recognized andthose hidden unsuspected in the nature of themedium.

The Can as a Medium

In its structure the can carries messages aboutits physical nature its demands of space, itsstrengths, its weaknesses. In its materials itcarries messages of its derivation and itsdestiny. Its contents carry messages about

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their production and processing. Its labelbears information and influences us to buy.

We consciously acknowledge some of thecan's messages when we choose to use it, butby that use we also become responsible for allthe messages that the can carries even thoseof which we are not at all aware. Further-more, again both consciously and uncon-sciously, our use of cans comments on whatwe value time, convenience, etc. And themessages that we impose on mec' .a or towhich we respond are often the least impor-tant that they carry.

Note on Media Study Activities

Media study of its own nature can operate inany medium or in many media and on manylevels simultaneously. The more consciouslyone thinks about a medium, the more diversi-fied his activity and his insight will become.Whether an entire class, small groups, orindividuals carry out particular projects orexplore particular questions depends on theunique conditions of time, space, materials,and ability that exist in any particular schoolsituation.

What follows are suggestions that may lead totraditional library research and business-letterwriting, to posters and other pop art, to filmmaking, to informational display and creativecommentaries even to political action.

1I

Ideally, media study is a success curriculumthat permits a student to capitalize on hisstrongest ability while learning to shore up hisweaknesses. Sometimes this means that thepsychomotor student with little verbal abilityteams with a very verbal student in con-structing a three-dimensional word-picture-product project. A nonreader may be en-couraged to use a tape recorder. A visuallyacute, shyly inarticulate student may producea film which he augments only with music. Aprime intention is that all participate and thatall activities finally be shared successfully.

THE BASIC CAN CURRICULUM

CANalysis

1. What is a can? (Find the name and address ofa major can manufacturer and write a letter ofinquiry about film or print material that maybe obtained that describes manufacturingprocesses and the variety of their products.)

2. What kinds of cans are there? (Collect cans ofall shapes and sizes and construct a sculpture.)

3. What can be canned? (Make a collage ofpictures from magazines of canned laughter,canned heat, canned salmon, etc.)

4. How do cans open? (Set up a display.)

5. Prepare a display of labels for the sameproduct (peas?) produced and sold by differ-

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ent companies. Then analyze the market andthe appeal of each product as determined bythe label.

6. Survey a grocery store for the countries fromwhich it stocks food and map them, prefer-ably with pictures hand drawn or cut frommagazines.

CANformation

1. Write a history of a/the can.

2. Make a slide show or film illustrating theimportance of the can to your local communi-ty. (Gas being carried to stalled car, garbagecan, oil drum, etc.)

3. Report on laws related to cans in yourcommunity. (Garbage disposal regulations,anti-littering laws, recycling requirements.)

4. Investigate the Oregon bottle law.

5. Is everything called canned, in a can? ("Theycanned my dad today." "Buy me a can ofbiscuits.")

13

C4Nalogy

The can is one among many containers. Howis it like and different from bottles, boxes,cars, computers, etc.? (Posters, collages, dis-plays, slides and film, black-and-white singleshots, abstractions, overhead projector over-lays, opaque projector series, etc.)

UnCANny Activities

1. Design pop-top-can ring jewelry or decora-tions.

2. Debate: Resolved, that the can is a majorfactor in the liberation of women.

3. Tape an interview with your garbage manabout his entire day, particularly what helearns of people from their garbage.

4. Write a model ordinance for your localgovernment requiring the distribution ofdrinks in returnable or recyclable containers.

5. Identify and interview major opponents todrink-container regulation.

6. Design a label intended to sell a new productof your choice.

7. For a can label that you imagine, write clearinstructions for the use of the contents in aspecial recipe.

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8. Invent a name for a canned food or someother product.

9. Study can pollution in your community (film,slides, black and white photos; tape-recordedcommentary on a ride down the main streetor by the nearest river).

10. Get down in the dumps.

You also can ....

15

Chapter 2: Spit and Polish

Spit and polish is ,a term coined by soldierswho discovered that they got a higher shineon shoes and buckles for military inspectionsif they added a little spit to their polish.

A realistic teacher knows that many peopleoften even the administrators who ask forme(VI curricula are ambivalent about thevalue of a media curriculum. Therefore,knowing how to show off students' mediawork without either exploiting the studentsor prostituting the course is vital to thesurvival of the course and often to the successof the teacher in the eyes of outsiders.Deliberately planning to gain praise and toavoid criticism for media work requires anhonest admission that the average adult andmany students have to be sold that mediaunits aren't a new kind of basket-weavingsubstitute for grammar or physics. And truth-fully, teachers' intelligence, discipline, integ-rity, and sweat are the only real protections

l6

against media students' substituting razzle-dazzle for substantial learning.

Fortunately, the nature of media tends tomake the study of any medium yield aproduct visible evidence of the nature ofthe student's involvement with the medium.At the end of a study of 'film, for example,there usually is at least a single photograph ifnot a sequence or an entire film that isstudent-made. Everyone is visually experi-enced to some degree if not visually literate.Therefore, that visible student product repre-sents to students, teachers, parents, andadministrators a measurable investment oftime and energy and at least to some extentan understanding of process or content thatcan be evaluated.

The job of the teacher is to be sure thatpotential critics (evaluators) of student mediaprojects appreciate the learning that the pro-duct has permitted rather than judge theperfection of the products.

In other words, an effective media teacherpolishes the context of the learning.

Where the talent of the students is such thatthe product itself shines, the teacher's jobmay well be to keep the observer's perspectiveclear that the edge one product has over thequality of another is usually a matter of astudent's native ability not just thelearning. What needs appreciation may be the

17

projects of students who have learned morethan their skills can exhibit. In other words,the product sometimes isn't much but thelearning always is.

Where learning is valued most more thanperfection of product a group effort thatfails of its intent may be as successful as theproduct that special talent makes superior as aproduct.

For example, suppose a group decides tomake a film with music and voice-over narra-tion. Suppose further that filmmaking,recording, and writing and reading narrationall are new ventures for everyone. The pro-duct may end up a combination of soundsand sights that no one but the studentsthemselves appreciate or value. What themedia teacher needs to do is to help thestudents and others evaluate what the stu-dents have learned from their successes andtheir errors, 'hot merely to take a look atand/or listen to the product and judge it.

If the group has learned only to take the riskof learning of experimenting of creating

any project is a success. In fact, toencourage exploration the teacher must becareful not to reward students for replicationof processes in which they already excel.However, neither must a student be requirednever to contribute what he already does bestjust because he needs to extend his learning.

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Successful products tend to result from care-fully planned group work.

Successful learning as well as display oftenresults from combining persons who comple-ment one another, learn from the facilities ofeach other, and end up with a better per-formance than any can manage alone in a newexploration. That means that a person whowrites well may write for a group thatcontains nonwriters who are good artists,narrators or photographers. They, in turn,contribute what the writer lacks in experienceor

The s.udents themselves make the best possi-ble presenters of their work.

An outsider, exposed to the enthusiasticpresentation of projects by their makers, willrecognize the difference between conven-tional success and media learning. When stu-dents explain without either apology or exces-sive pride how they have tried to accomplishsomething important to them, the observercan realize the necessity of an atmospherethat rewards the willingness to explore anddiscourages the dully safe exercise.

Media classes may be the first classes in whichadults have an opportunity to observe whathappens to students freed to make errors bycontracting to work as best they can with nothreat of failure if their learning succeeds buttheir product fails. What may seem most

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remarkable is that in such a nonthreateningatmosphere there are so many surprisingsuccesses.

The very evidence that a student is carryingout his work as he promised to do is itself apowerful selling tool with parents and admin-istrators. If each student can be helped tolearn to log his own or his group's planning,procedures, and production, the log itself canbecome a tool for thinking regardless ofwhether the students work toward a poem, aposter, a lighting technique, a can collection,or a display. Ideally, however, a log is not arecord for show-and-tell but is a means foridentifying what goes well and what may beimproved.

A media class may also be the first learningsituation where some adults see judgment ofstudent work strictly restricted to assessmentin relation to a learning objective selected bythe student. What he is to present publiclyshould always be assigned in a medium inwhich he feels confident even while he riskshimself. A medium in which he knows he failsto perform adequately shOuld never be themajor medium that he presents publicly or onwhich his work is judged.

Suppose, for example, that a student plans hisstudy to end with a tin-can sculpture. Sincehis learning is to be evaluated not his loghe can get exercise in writing without fearing

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that his inability to write will be confusedwith failure of his thought or work.

Another need for media work is time forgroups to plan and carry out their projects.Students sometimes need more than sched-uled class time for this. Usually there is nomore school time available. Partly there is notime because every experienced teacher hashad to learn to guard his own class time fromintrusions from other subjects if he is toaccomplish his own course objectives.

An activity that will generate acceptance ofmedia is to have the students involve theirother teachers in the activities that link mediaobjectives and those of more conventionaldisciplines.

The most important in-school selling point formedia is students' involvement of theirteachers in interdisciplinary activities wherethe teachers can see math applied in Englishand writing done well in physics and historygraphed or dramatized. There is no sounderproof of successful teaching than to seeobjectives of one field fulfilled in another.

Going interdisciplinary is just one outreach ofmedia. Ideally, good media projects involvethe home and the community withoutdraining either. Imagine a parent's actuallybeing asked his opinion even if the purpose isto let a son or daughter practice taping aninterview. Most doctors, lawyers, merchants,

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chiefs will give time to young people whoreally care what such professional personsthink or do in their work or their civicactivities. Giving business and industry andservices and organized religion a first-handlook at serious students having fun learningabout the real world is an excellent way toestablish good community rapport withschools.

Medic v?elationships

Mass media print, film, TV, radio have abad name as manipulators. What better waycan the schools inform the public that stu-dents are learning to use rather than be usedby media than to involve the public in thestudents' work?

Furthermore, once media are thought of morebroadly as all substances, principles, andstructures that can be arranged or operated tocommunicate, media integrate rather thanisolate both different disciplines and individ-uals.

HELP OFFERED

Tape

how to do any media project for a medialibrary other students can use.

steps for teaching science experiments toother students.

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interviews with school visitors, careerexperts, celebrities in town, etc.

panel discussions and group interviews(simulated TV news conferences, gameshows).

a no-word sound track for a short story.

Talk

to younger students informally or formallyabout what the next division of theireducation will be like.

to share special skills with others (tutor inyour best subject, teach a craft during anactivity period or at a community center,explain to a group of senior citizens some-thing unusual like taxidermy that you havehad experience in).

Film

school sports for team analysis and localTV.

pictures of people, events, and sports atschool for the yearbook, school and localnewspapers.

a silent movie, a parody of a soap opera, asong, an idea, an emotion, how to doanything.

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Talent

-- Form a media talent pool. (Make availableto teachers, students, administrators a cardindex of schedules and phone numbers ofstudent poster artists, photographers. pro-jector operators, etc.).

Make a public relations team available to allschool departments to help devise publicityfor events in the school and community.

Design

program covers and posters for schoolactivities.

a computer program for composing poetry,solving paperwork bottlenecks concerningregistration, etc.

polls to survey students, parents and othercommunity members on current issues.

HELP WANTED

from the art department to demonstratesilk screen printing for two-color posters.

from business and industry to explaincareer options and requirements.

from people in the community to sharespecial skills with classes.

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from businesses who will offer on-the-jobtraining to students who want or need towork while they go to school.

GETTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Plan

a media festival in the spring to exhibitoutstanding work from all areas of theschool (carpentry, welding, art, sewing,dance, music, speech, film, etc.)

Display

all the media and tools peculiar to eachsection of each department in the school(thread, scissors, patterns, yard goods inclothing; paint, brushes, posterboards,glues in art; mops, cleaners, vacuums inmaintenance; etc.).

Share

your private laughter over your biggestfailure in media projects; the funniest mis-spelling, typing or printing; your bestwrong answers to questions neverasked .. . .

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OPEN INVITATION

Post

on doors times and kinds of media displaysto which visitors are welcome.

Write

formal and informal invitations to fit themedium and the occasion.

a 30-second intercom announcement for anevent (media's or anyone's).

forgotten staff (nurses, secretaries, custo-dians) when you send media invitations.

community individuals and mass media toshare time, fun and skills with students.

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Chapter 3: Sermons in Stones

When we do something acceptably normallike studying rocks in geology, we look atrocks in terms of principles that someone elsehas derived and that we are taught. We feelquite comfortable thinking about the recordsof time in rock formations and even carbondating of fossils we may be lucky enough tofind. But suppose Shakespeare was right andthere are sermons in stones. What if any oldrock can preach?

The idea of stones' containing sermons sug-gests that all nature and all that man hasmade from the materials of the earth cancommunicate. If so, how can people learn tohear silent sermons?

Perhaps we go walking barefoot and step on arock. Without question, our feet get a numberof messages, relay them to our brains, and ourminds make patterns out of those messages.But the rock has not merely spoken of itself.

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It also has caused our feet to speak of theirnature. The messages received and translatedinto meaning, we then respond to the rockand to our feet. We move the rock, walkaround it, put shoes on and ignore it, pressthe rock down until it is level with the rest ofthe ground, or put many other rocks besidethat one and perhaps seal them all togetherwith cement. So we must have read sermonsin stones and in feet; and in turn we havespoken to the stones of what we have learnedabout both them and our relationship tothem.

Presumably, we are as knowledgeable aboutrocks as we are about any other naturalphenomenon on earth and we are beginningto extend our knowledge to the rocks of themoon.

We have discovered that rocks make durable,efficient walls and that some rocks makebetter walls than others. We have learned togrind up rocks themselves and bind naturaland imitation rocks together in what we callpermanent structures. But walls still crack andfall. And then they act like rocks in totaldisregard of man's announcement to themthat they are walls.

We have discovered that rocks will burnsome better than others. Some day we may beable to convert any rock into its energy forour purposes. We transport some of the coalto the furnace and produce heat and hence

29

energy. We transport some of the coal to thealveoli of the lungs and produce disease anddeath.

The rock acts according to its nature in a wall,in a lung, in a furnace. Only when it is brokendown in its composition as by burning orchemical action does its nature change. Andthen we must deal with the nature of thenatural thing to which we have converted it.

It is the nature of water to run down a hill. Itis the nature of a hill to transport down thewater that it cannot absorb. Man cuts downtrees and builds concrete and asphalt ribbonsand buildings where trees stood. And the rainfalls, and the water runs down man's imper-vious hills into nature's streams or man's lakesand they overflow. Sometimes the waterwashes away man's roads and buildings.

We want a farm, so we find the richest land.We plant crops on that delta in disregard ofthe natural processes of erosion that producedit in the first place. And the rains descend andthe floods come and the farm is washed away.We find a beautiful rocky canyon and buildour house high on an escarpment of it. Andthe earth rumbles and our house falls. Andthese we call natural disasters.

Man takes natural substances, transformsthem into fuels, and burns them in cars thatrun up and down those non-absorbing hills.The cars emit wastes because they do not

30

consume the fuels entirely. The wastes thatare heavier than air fall to the ground, rundown with the rain, and concentrate topoison fish, men, and other animals whosebodies are not designed to handle the natureof those displaced natural substances. Parti-cles and gases lighter than air rise, disperse,and linger so that we and trees and animalsmay breathe them. And we call this pollution.

The Morality of Stones

Shakespeare implies that there is some kind ofmoral lesson in stones a notion of what is aright and what is a wrong relationship of manand stones. In other words, if we people areto get along with stones, we have to knowwhat we are doing when we adapt them to us.The basic sermon in a stone seems to be thatwe establish a right relationship with stones oraccept the consequences of our ignorance orour willful violation of the nature of stones.

Perhaps Shakespeare meant in part that innature we can read man himself. Since man'smind grows from the patterns derived fromhis experience both of the real and theimaginary world the world of sensoryexperience and of concepts he formulatesfrom experience the logic of man derivesfrom nature. Furthermore, what a man makesor an idea that he conceives also has a natureand a reality of its own once it comes intoexistence.

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Man thinking is in a very real sense manlearning to read stones well enough that hecan both adapt stones to his purposes andadapt himself to the nature of stones.

THE NATURAL CURRICULUM

Easy-To-Read Sermons

1. What rocks are valuable? (Arrange rock sam-ples or descriptions according to variousvalues usefulness, beauty, etc.).

2. What is the relation of roads to rocks?(Compare geographical, topographic, and roadmaps.)

3. What rocks contribute to your local econo-my? (See the Yellow Pages; make some calls;visit quarries, jewelers, etc.)

4. Read a slice of petrified wood, a geode,obsidian, sandstone.

5. What does the San Andreas Fault say?

6. Study precipitation in your area over the pastfifty years. (See weather department records.Ask a lunberyard for a cross section of afifty-year-old tree. Interview local senior citi-zens about their memories of floods anderosion from personal observation. Interrelatethe information.)

7. Does a glacier know when it is about tobecome an iceberg?

8. How does a sea shell roar':

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Preach to the People

1. as a blade of grass (how you grow, how younourish horses, how you expire).

2. as a seed (popcorn, peanut, poppy, pine).

3. as a drop of rain (hailstone, snowflake, etc.).

4. as a cloud (cumulus, nimbus, etc.).

5. as a virus, a crystal, a bacterium.

Famous Misreadings

1. The Titanic is an unsinkable ship.

2. The world is flat.

3. The sun sets.

4. Manned flight will never exceed the speed ofsound.

5. No one will ever hit more home runs thanBabe Ruth.

6. No person will ever run the one-minute mile.

Nature-ally

1. food

2. clothing

3. shelter

4. reproduction

5. the windmill

6. solar energy

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The Nature of Change

1. peneplain (Forecast the levelling of the RockyMountains, the Himalayas, etc.)

2. the Grand Canyon (Photograph your ownsand pile. Collect photos or maps of any oneplace over a period of time.)

3. mountain building (volcanos, continentaldrift, faults, plate tectonics, glaciers)

4. birth, life, and death (of anything, anyone.From your family photograph album illus-trate the cycle with a relative.)

5. How do you know the Mississippi is "old manriver"?

6. Explore the geological history of your ownarea.

7. Use time-lapse photography (crystal growth,flowers blooming, a fire, a sunrise).

The Changes of Nature

1. the bulldozer

2. the dam

3. the builder (Study the effect of city weighton earthquake probability, the water table,weather.)

4. the hybridizer (beardless wheat, corn blight)

5 the cloud seeder

34

6. the fertilizer

7. the explosive

8. the geneticist (beefalo, mules, etc.)

9. the atom smasher

Natural Metonymy

1. satellite photographs (geological structures,mineral deposits, vegetation, crop conditions)

2. amplification (Listen to an insect, the grass, acat's purr, a heartbeat. Explore experimentsin sound-proof environments.)

3. chemical analysis (Read the priorities of manin the chemistry of your nearest stream orlake.)

4. holography (Compare and contrast a photo-graph and a hologram.)

5. reconstruction (a drop of water to an ocean, agrain of sand into a mountain, a cell into abody, a bone into a skeleton)

6. parallel records (a rain storm barometricpressures, wind velocities, cloud formations,responses of insects, plants, soil; Abe Lincoln

his letters, fictional and factual biography,photographs, a play, poetry, etc.)

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Chapter 4: Two Senses Worth

The reason to study mass media at all is tounderstand both how mass media control usand how we may control them. All massmedia depend on the two senses of hearingand sight. Yet, if we had only hearing andsight, we would reduce our awareness of theworld almost completely to intellectual obser-vation and/or emotional reaction. Amongwhat we would lose would be texture, depth,and our own motions and actions that testand unify our major knowledge of the physi-cal world. Limited to detecting sights andsounds, we would become observers of liferather than participants in it.

Mass media seem to threaten to make uspassive. However, because mass media makeour minds so active, almost no medium cankeep a person passive more than temporarily.Furthermore, print, radio, recordings, film,and television have in common an ability to

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expand our experience in a shorter time andacross greater physical space than our ownactions permit.

The greater the number and variety of experi-ences, direct or vicarious, the greater ourgrowth of mind. The greater the frequency ofmedia and vicarious experience, the moredeeply we expand our understanding.

Few of us will fly around the world, set footon the moon, operate the world's largesttelescope, discover a natural medication ofthe value of penicillin, or write a modernParadise Lost. Yet one or more of the massmedia can sooner or later permit us toparticipate at least vicariously in both thediscoveries and the creations that we cancomprehend through sight or sound. Mostimportantly, that acceleration of participationin the experience of others increases thequantity and quality of our own experience.And the rapidity of our personal growth is indirect proportion precisely to the quantityand quality of our experience.

Just as the person who invented the canrevolutionized the eating habits of the indus-trialized world, so the inventors of alphabets,the printing press, the telegraph, radio, tape,and television revolutionized the intellectualconsumption of everyone exposed to them.And the inventors of eye-ear media neitherforesaw nor can control the contents of print,

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radio, and TV any more than can the can'sinventor control the contents of the world'scans today.

With sufficient money and opportunity aconsumer now can taste chocolate coveredants, beer, bacon rinds, vegetable soup, andany other nourishing or idiosyncratic ordebauching product produced in the worldthat his curiosity, his cultivated craving, or hisnormal appetite desires. Mass media make itequally possible to feed or glut the mind withsensation or repetition and to indulge one'smental appetites.

The analogy between the consumption offood and the consumption of media suggestsfurther similar behaviors. Pantry critics maysneer at shelves stocked with commonplacecanned goods and regret the lack of taste ofmass buyers in relation to the critics' ownviews of what foods are valuable. Mediacritics, censors, and media merchants tend tomake similar judgments of the tastes ofconsumers of mass media. Ironically, thosepersons who sneer most at mass taste seemoften to work hardest to manipulate themasses and subsequently to make the mostprofit from that manipulation. For example,the advertiser who sneers at the media con-sumer often does the most to create the badtaste he sneers at. Sometimes he even refusesto support the consumer when he showsexcellent taste.

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Studying mass media requires the ability tosample and assess the content of mass mediawithout condescension or automatic approval.In other words, exploration of the mass mediaideally should be as open to discovery as issensory exploration of the physical world.Such exploration with freedom is extremelydifficult to manage, however, because of theconscious and unconscious power needs cul-turally built into each generation of mediaconsumers. Those needs tend to cause personsto defend or attack various media on the basisof which media or medium each has beentaught to accept or respect.

Probably the first person to devise a symbolto substitute for spoken words sold hismedium to someone else on the conditionthat the buyer agree that the symbols meantwhat the originator said they did. Presumablythe originator sought to market his symbolsystem partly to improve his own communica-tion with them by standardizing the mediumand hence making it easier to transportinformation accurately over longer times anddistances.

Once accepted, the symbol system has to betaught formally as the spoken word did not

because the symbol system was arbitrarilyimposed, not mutually generated. Thereforeeducation began as a means for transmittingthe agreed symbol system to people born laterinto the society that had accepted it. The

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standardization of words necessary to control-ling the symbol system and education's con-trol of the people using it conflicted with thenatural fluidity of spoken words in dailyusage. For example "It" used to be con-sidered as illiterate as "ain't" until the stand-ardizers accepted "it" by force of spokenfrequency. To permit the symbol system tobe asserted as superior to the spoken lan-guage, the symbol makers constantly had tokeep standardizing more and more wordsand incorporating them into the system sothat the diversity of the symbol system couldcompete successfully with that of the spokenlanguage. For another instance, today's writ-ten language has to keep up with spacetechnology; so we all know how to spellNASA and read about sky-labs.

What was lost when the symbol systemstandardized meaning was each individual'sunique view of his own experience. If theindividual accepted the symbol system, heagreed to adapt himself and work within thesystem. If he could not adequately expresshimself in that medium, he could try to adaptthe system by devising new symbols (usuallyby raiding the spoken vocabulary) or changingold ones. If he could neither successfullyadapt himself nor change the system, hisalternatives were to reject his education forthe imprecision but the freedom of thespoken language or to invent another mediumto add to the standardized one.

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Persons deriving their social power from theircommand of a medium have always foughtchange even when the unchanged mediumcould not meet new needs adequately. There-fore, their very efforts to maintain the statusquo have hastened if not provoked the devel-opment of new media. Furthermore, personsdependent for power on the preservation oftheir medium have almost universally foughtto maintain exclusive control of communica-tion. To exist at all, each new medium has inturn had to fight the old as if to replace ittotally. Instead, each medium, new or old, hasmaintained at least a part of its functions andsupplements or complements other media.

The spoken word was not replaced by print.Print was not replaced by radio. Televisionhas not killed off either film or radio or print.However, each new medium has caused therevision of the roles of other media. No mancan any more be truly literate if he dependssolely on any single medium for his informa-tion. Neither can any man or group of peoplecontrol a medium. Sooner or later, by access,numbers, and individuality, the masses regaincontrol of every medium. Then media becomecreative extensions of individuals who canlimit the power of the media over them anduse the media for their purposes.

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Print

Print is the most individualized mass mediumbecause any interested person can seek andfind some sort of print material suited to hisage, ability, and interest. Its defect is that fullcomprehension of print requires the reader tobring as much experience and attention toreading as the writer brought to composition.Because reading print alone is a most complexsymbolic process carried on completely intel-lectually, it requires the development ofprecise skills primarily through incrementalrepetition. The rate of that developmentapparently is so unique to each person that noone knows yet how to supply reading experi-ence in appropriate individualized quantitiesof the right level at the right rate and time topermit mass print literacy.

Because print is a linear medium, it has abeginning and an end both in time and space;and its line determines the sequence, hencethe time of the contact with content. Syntaxor formulae manipulate that order to putideas in positions early or late where theircontent or function is either stressed ordeemphasized. A writer through grammarcontrols the unique structures that play down

uild up the relative structure of ideas.

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Because of its flexibility, print has an almostinfinite capacity to store disciplined informa-tion, ideas, and invention. Its effect is tofreeze concepts and effects in immutable butvaried forms. An accomplished reader hastime to read and reread and compare until thecold content of words and other symbolscomes alive in his own active mind. Therefore,print is the major mass medium yet developedfor disciplined logical and creative thought.

Ultimately, the most comprehensive and themost complicated ideas are extremely short inprint. E=M0 is perhaps the supreme exampleof the severe simplicity of fully clarifiedthought made permanent in print. Those fivesymbols condense whole fields of knowledgeand make possible explanation of a host ofhypotheses scarcely dreamed of before Ein-stein's simple statement of their relationship.

The strictly utilitarian mass uses of print areidentification, information, and selling. Theyrequire the minimum ability to read. Oftenthey are only fragments that get their contextnot from sentence structure but from loca-tion. Identification signs, for example, arenouns or noun clusters on streets or buildingsthey name or that point to services orproducts visibly available nearby. Often thesign is merely an attention device to draw theeye to the physical context. A reader wouldrecognize a fence company once a sign drewhis eye to the stock of fencing.

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Other signs that primarily give directions usean action verb with the reader the understoodsubject. Increasingly these signs are beingreplaced by international nonverbal symbols.Print information signs also are being replacedby these universally recognized picturesymbols (for example, school crossing, restroom).

Advertising signs use a minimum of printoften fragments such as incomplete compari-sons and nonreferring pronouns that cause thereader to supply personally his associationwith the picture. That association usuallygives the print what context it does have.Reading advertising print always meansreading the total context in which the printappears.

The rate at which a reader acquires informa-tion through print depends on the intelli-gence, age, and variety of experiences of eachindividual. The prime factors seem to be easyand constant access to and experience withbooks, magazines, and newspapers. The bestreaders now grow up immersed also in mediaother than print.

<

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GO TO PRESS

1. Put English in the order of other languages(posters)

2. Experiment with reverse English (mirrorwrite, right to left; make a concrete poem;tennis)

3. The power of invisible print1. property lines2. maps3. reading between the lines (semantics)4. caste, class, monetary systems5. flight patterns6. international date line7. equator8. human rights

4. Color the news (With overlays, crayon, paint,distinguish what news is local, national,foreign and international)(Color who, what, when, where, how and whyin the first paragraph of an/each article.)

5. What do you read? (Make your own paperincluding only what you read normally from adaily paper.)

6. A cross section of opinion (Make a collage ofeditorials and cartoons representing opposingviews).

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Display Advertising

(Pull from the paper all of the ads on aparticular product.)

1. Who is selling what? (Analyze the dealersphotograph their headquarters and comparethe size of the companies with the size of theads.)

2. Who is buying? (Identify the market.)

3. What's the pitch? (safety, economy, luxury,gifts, fear, sex)

4. What's the date got to do with the pitch?(Mother's Day, Fourth of July, Father's Day,Washington's birthday)

5. What's the pitch got to do with the news?(new auto emission standards, the economy)

6. So what else is on the page? (Do thesurrounding articles and ads sell it or fight it?)

Classified

1. How are people and things segregated in yourpaper?

2. What other than words identities the classifi-cations? Who needs them?

3. "Lost and Found" (Who lost what, valuedwhy, and how much? Write a short story.)

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4. "Educational Opportunities" who's sellingwhat? (Film a fantasy of the student whobelieves the ad.)

5. "Help Wanted" (Chart the pay for the firstfive jobs under each help wanted classifica-tion)

(Write a job description of one typical jobfrom each classification)

(Rank the first five jobs from each classifica-tion from most to least amount of educationrequired)

(Stage three job interviews for any job: oneover-qualified, one under-qualified, one guar..-fied)

(Contact several agencies and chart their feesin relation to tthe income of the persons forwhom they find jobs. For whom are fees mostlikely to be paid by the prospectiveemployer?)

Reading Context

Who advertises in what?

1. Analyze the "Help Wanted" sections of threenational circulation magazines.

2. What kinds of products advertise in anysingle magazine? Why? (Write the sales mana-ger of the magazine for a market breakdownof subscribers).

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Is What You See What You Get?

1. For a whole series of ads for differentproducts draw to scale the size of the productas presented in relation to the size of the ad.

2. Collect a series of predominantly picture adsusing the same appeal. (sex, fresh air, etc.Code them and remove all evidence of theproduct in print or picture. Prepare amatching product identification test for theclass and chart the accuracy of their scores.)

3. List the products in your medicine cabinetthat are nationally advertised.

Sound

A nonreader can listen with understanding tooral materials of any sophistication for whichhe develops a listening vocabulary. The diffi-cult translation steps reading requires areeliminated when words spoken or read orsung are transmitted by radio or recorded onrecords or tape. Therefore, the listener oftencan understand concepts he may not have thefacility to express for himself either in speechor writing. Furthermore, spoken or sungwords supply interpretation and emphasisthat print requires a reader to determine forhimself with the aid of his mental experiencealone. The speaker's oral abilities may restrictthe listener's consideration of alternate poten-tial meaning of words much more than even

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emotionally colored words can in print. Infact, a listener may be led to his under-standing of words by the emotional power ofthe voice rather than by the content of thewords.

The effect of the total context of sound onthe listener's understanding perhaps is mostclear in popular music. Often the meaning ofwords sung matters very little. They may noteven be understood until they have beenrepeated many times, most likely in a rathershort period of time. Nevertheless, themeaning of words under these circumstancesseems to have unconscious influence similarto the effect of visual images repeated in filmtoo few frames to be seen consciously. Also,pitch, stress and volume of sound evokeemotion much in the way touch does. Of allthe senses, hearing and touch seem closest tothe emotions and least filtered throughreason. Perhaps that is why feelings andimages in response to sound and touch are sohighly personal, so difficult to share in anyalternate media, and so privately valuable.

Undoubtedly media dependent on soundalone, plus the kinesthetic effect of vibrationother than on the ear, do indeed have strongemotional appeal. This power derives primar-ily from the freedom of the listener to use hispersonal experience to supply every otheraspect than sound required to make meaningfrom sound waves. That very direct, intensely

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personal contribution of the listener to themedium is reflected in the high degree ofselectivity the listener exercises over sourcesof sound and the sound content with whichhe fills his listening time. Witness both thevariety of listening fare selectively offered bya great number of AM and FM radio stationsin any large market and the unprecedentedpopularity of tapes and recordings across theentire spectrum of available sounds.

Tapes, recordings, concerts and other formsof exact repetition permit a listener todevelop the same kind of aural sophisticationthat rereading print permits the reader's intel-lect. When that repetition is quadrasonic withthe volume high, the sound cocoon of thelistener isolates him almost totally in personalexperience.

The rate at which information is acquiredthrough sound media is much faster thanthrough print. Nevertheless, until the senseexperience itself is repeated often enough, itcannot rise to a level of consciousness thatpermits the listener the kind of conscious con-trol he can exercise sooner over the contentof print.

SOUND ON

1. Tape vocal expressions of emotions withwords garbled. (anger, fear, love, excitement,etc.)

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2. Listen to the audio on TV without the videoand see how well you Can identify the action.What does music add to dramas, commercials,soap operas?

3. Identify songs by rhythm tapped on a desk,lyrics of a little known verse, orlistening when instrumental volume is louderthan the vocal.

4. How fast can you identify groups by a phraseor two of their music? TV programs by theirthemes?

5. Change music into light.

6. How well can you identify common soundsrecorded on tape?

7. What can a Moog synthesizer imitate?

8. Simulate a sports announcer, a disc jockey, anMC, a news announcer.

9. Tape an interview. Read the phone book likea disk jockey, news announcer, politician.

10. Write a paper after hearing the directions onlyonce.

11. Tape yourself telling someone how to get toyour home from school. (Follow your owndirections.)

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Radio

1. Does what you like matter?(What station(s) do you turn on regularly?)(What music do they sell to what audience?)(What products do they sell?)(Who owns the station?)(If you stopped listening, what would youlose? What would the station lose?)

2. What do you not support by not listening toother stations (music, sports, news, religions,organizations, companies)?

3. Write a job description for a disc jockey.

4. News Survey and -analyze the time spentby stations reporting news each day.(How much time goes for local, national,global reporting?)(How often is the same event repeated identi-cally?)(How long does it take to get news of a localevent? a national one?)(How much news comes from UPI, AP, NEAand local investigation?)(Who decides what is news?)(Who sponsors news with what productsaimed at whom?)(How controversial is coverage of localissues?)(Can you tell the announcer's biases?)

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Film

Film was the visual motion medium of thepre-electronic age. Television has not replacedit even though film and TV have adopted andadapted each other. And electronic develop-ments have extended its field to include themicro and macro worlds.

Regardless of whether a film is intended asart, entertainment, or instruction, it unrollsfrom a reel in linear frames each of which is asstopped an action as a noun is. Motion in filmis an illusion. The capacity of film to repeatwithout change the same sequence and con-tent of visual experience makes it the pictorialcounterpart of print. Film literature permitsthe development of what might by analogy becalled a grammar, a syntax and a rhetoric. Inthat sense, the study of film becomes to somedegree potentially scientific or at least system-atic.

On a practical level film is the medium wortha thousand words a still frame. Set in motion,a few feet of film says much more than a fewfeet of print. Without question what is seenclearly in its details particularly if it is seenrepeatedly from the same and different pointsof view becomes patterned mental informa-tion. Such visually established patterns canmuch more easily be translated into wordsthan words can be translated into mentalimages. If direct or vicarious experience has

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been derived solely from words, imaginingtouch, hearing, smell or clear mental picturesis particularly difficult, if not impossible. Athousand words are never enough to repro-duce a picture with the detail of film.

Both words and film, however, can serve tomake the present permanent when it becomesthe past.

Despite its potential power to inform, topersuade, to inspire despite all its potential,film cannot take the place of words for twoprime reasons.

First, no matter how carefully a filmmakerbelieves that he has focused on a subject orobjects or action, he cannot control the focusof the individual viewer. Just as the point ofview of the cameraman (the film editor, etc.)will screen out of his consciousness much ofwhat the camera records, so each viewer'spoint of view may cause him to focus onsomething in the foreground or backgroundthat the filmmaker considers peripheral.

Second, the viewer will see what he knowshow to see, and his experience may not besuch that he is even capable of seeing whatthe filmmaker thinks he records and canhimself see in his film.

Because individual point of view in bothmaking and viewing film is so difficult toanalyze, much less anticipate, the power offilm probably is predominantly unconscious.

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When words are added to film, they help tofix the viewer's attention on the filmmaker'sintended emphasis. When music is added, ithelps produce the emotion intended to en-hance that focus. No matter how great thecontrol of words or music, the viewer still willsee what he will see. And his most permanentlearning may be what he absorbs peripherally.

Film initially kept sizes in relatively realisticproportions. When films began to be madeexpressly for television, this distinctionlargely was lost. When a mountain and amolehill are shown as if of equal size, onlyviewer experience can compensate for the lossof realistic proportions. On the other hand,films made for television have helped viewersof the news handle the sight of the wholeworld on the small screen.

ROLL ON

Advertising

1. How do movie theaters promote their comingattractions? (See a movie and prepare theprint teaser for the film.)

2. What name products are identifiable in thefilm? (automobiles, cigarettes, etc.)

3. What local and name products are advertisedas in the lobby between films? What productsare advertised in the lobby itself?

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4. How much TV advertising is film?

5. Compare advertising costs on film and on TVtape.

6. Decide what camera to buy (on the basis ofadvertising available)for your father.for a ten-year-old.for a portrait photographer.for rich you.

Developing Illusion

1. How authentic is the science of human andanimal behavior in Tarzan films?

2. Study the elements of plot in films.

3. Compare print and film versions of plays,novels, and short stories. (How is time se-quence different, what does sound addbesides the dialogue, and how do cameraangles and lighting affect mood?)

4. Make a documentary of any literature, sci-ence, social studies, or news event.

5. Trace universal themes in film and in litera-ture (isolation, identity, distovery, etc.).

6. Make an animated film.

7. Compare how different students arrange thesequence of action using the same set ofphotographs or pictures.

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8. Decide what photographic action was re-corded on film at a particular point and whatwould happen if the action resumed.

9. Photograph one subject and develop onesatisfactory print.

10. Study student or professional prints to findgood uses of composition, framing, texture,etc. for character, action, scene, etc.

11. How is film made? In what sizes? For whatpurposes?

12. What should one know about film to takepictures on the moon?

Television

Television cools to some extent the listener-viewer's emotional involvement with themedium. Primarily this cooling derives fromtelevision's providing, as does film, visualimages that the imagination of both thereader of print and the listener to soundmedia must contribute from their own experi-ences. A member of the television audiencebecomes to a great degree precisely that: ananonymous observer belonging to an uniden-tified audience. But his observation is withtwo senses, not the single sense implied by theinaccurate term "television viewer."

The viewer-listener may react with fascinationto what he sees and hears, but even an intense

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reaction still reflects his distance from thetelevised experience. One of the uniqueeffects of television comes from that feltdistance. While radio listeners often have greatdifficulty distinguishing fact from fiction ifthey tune in in the middle of a progam,experienced members of the TV audienceusually can detect the difference as soon asthe sound and the picture are both on. Thequantity of their television experience hastaught them what the average reader of printknows: the patterns of fact and the patternsof fiction.

The television audience member developsanother and more sophisticated level of dis-crimination more rapidly than the reader orthe listener develops it. Even with entertain-ment programming, he soon judges the relia-bility of the context. His emotional distanceplus his at least unconscious discrimination ofpatterns of reliable fact transform televisioninto a potent educator. Even the least crea-tive, most stereotyped, most repetitious pro-grams sooner or later expand the individualconsciousness particularly by expandingvocabulary. The television listener's vocabu-lary grows far faster in number and varietythan does that of a reader or a listener eachof whom is restricted to intake through asingle sense. A visual context for words heardreduces the frequency of repetition necessaryfor them to become standardized. Where thelistener-viewer knows the characters, the set-

bo

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ting, and the attitudes he can expect, hisattention is attracted primarily by the un-expected and his experience grows with eachmoderate change or startling event.

Since it is the nature of mind to makemeaning of experience, perhaps TV commer-cial techniques inadvertently make the great-est single contribution to the growth ofliteracy. Repetition and concept integrationare their special forte.

Television programming in general providesthe average person a much greater quantity ofmuch more accurate and varied content thanany previous generation has had access tothrough any other single medium or combina-.tion of media.

Television can expand experience vicariouslyfaster also than any other medium, not onlywith greater uniformity of viewer-listenerlearning but also without most of the enor-mously complex cognitive skills required byprint. Furthermore, as the consciousness of amember of the TV audience grows, selectivitytends to emerge, much as it does in the tasteof persons using and being used by print andsound media.

The new generation that has grown up withthe television always on has developed selec-tivity with a speed that probably is vastlyunderestimated, primarily because the quanti-ty of apparently indiscriminant viewing seems

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to contradict the possibility of selectivity.However, a medium-literate person swallowsonly what he chooses of all that quantity hesubmits to.

Stop-action replays and the repetition video-tape makes possible will speed the develop-ment of an even more sophisticated televisionliteracy. Much as being able to reread wordsmakes a man more literate than if he cananalyze what he merely hears, evenrepeatedly, so being able to videotape televi-sion fare will put the analysis of televisionunder his control.

The more literate he becomes in each mediumand the more media in which he becomesliterate, paradoxically, the broader his tasteswill be but the more selective he will naturallybecome.

For all the visual variety of television plus thejuxtaposition of sights and sounds, televisionstill is a medium linear in time and heavilydependent on both the spoken and theprinted word. Most action still proceeds byline of sight in space sequences, and wordspredominantly follow the linear sequence ofprint or speech. The printed word itself is stillessential for advertising on TV.

No doubt a major effect of television isemotional and is evoked by television's visualvividness. But with rare exceptions, wordsand those words at least initially on paper

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control the design even of visual sequence.Except for live coverage of spontaneousevents by more than one camera, the print ofwriters, directors, producers, sponsors, andgovernmental control agencies still controlstelevision. And even that live coverage oftenreflects selections suggested and predicted inprint.

RESHAPING ACTION

The Information Tube

1. Simulate motion by sequencing cartoonedcharacters before a background scene to tell astory. (Recreate literature, make a commer-cial, simulate or animate an historical orscientific event.)

2. Compare the time it takes you to identify aTV program by its theme music with identifi-cation times required by (1) a major charac-ter's repeating phrases he habitually uses; (2)viewing pictures of major characters out ofcostume; (3) viewing pictures of the pro-gram's setting.

3. Interview a marketing expert at a TV stationto find out how time is sold.

4. Analyze the cost of local advertising on thebasis of your interview with the TV marketingexpert (a product, a particular time, fre-quency).

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5. See how a show is produced by joining a liveaudience or attending a taping of a pilotshow.

6. Determine the characteristics of the Americanfamily as shown in a popular drama orsituation comedy series (size, relationships,distribution of authority, attitudes towardmoney).

7. Survey students and parents for an estimateof their total time weekly before a TV set.

8. Conduct your own analysis of audience for(1) TV as the major source of information on

news, sports, weather, or entertainment;(2) each channel (Seek the public television

audience especially.);(3) TV specials ( news, documentaries,

theater and music, social and politicalissues, children's shows, variety entertain-ment).

9. Soap-opera stereotypes What feelings andattitudes do you experience when you sepa-rate the good guys from the bad guys?Do the emotions of a character change whenhe identifies a bad guy?What are the separate conflicts of the majorcharacters? To what extent do those separateconflicts overlap? Who that you know in reallife has any of these same conflicts?Simulate the next day's episode, acting care-fully in character. (Are there actions oremotions that are difficult for you to act?)

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Dramatic Reality

1. What electronic and medical equipment doesthe public learn to accept as parts of regularprograms dealing with adventure, crime, andmedicine?

2. What freedom from law do the main charac-ters exercise that is open to indictment in reallife?

3. What legal protections that exist in reality forthe accused are bypassed on TV?

4. What official positions in society are identi-fied as being held by major characters indramas? (If they are not identified, whatdramatic purpose is served by their not beingin conventional employment?)

5. What effects does music have on time andspace?

6. What effects do camera techniques and filmspeed changes (stop-action, slow-motion) haveon time and space?

7. Write a job description for your favoritetelevision dramatic character (doctor, lawyer,super-sleuth).

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The Game Plan

1. Do the rules of the game depend on competi-tion, skill, knowledge, or chance? (Analyzethe requirements for becoming a contestanton a variety of game shows.)

2. Why is the game played at all(contestants,sponsors, audience, budget, etc.)?

3. What kinds of information about themselvesand/or others are contestants willing to revealfor what kinds of rewards?

4. Who sponsors what kinds of shows, when, andwhy? (What are the sponsoring products?Who is in the viewing audience? How muchpresentation time does each product get? Areprizes equal for of the same name inthe afternoon and .. (he evening?)

5. Does the live audience laugh at or with thecontestants?

6. What insights would contestants get fromseeing a rerun of their own performance?

7. What are the general qualifications in attitude,voice, appearance, personality, and actingability that game-show MC's seem to share?

8. What values in American society would aforeign visitor identify if he judged only by agame show or game shows in general?

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9. What game shows would you like to partici-pate in? (Why?) reluctantly participate in?(Why?)

10. Are there game shows you would refuse toparticipate in? (Why?)

11. What game shows do you watch regularly?(Why?) occasionally? (Why?) never? (Why,if for a reason other than scheduling?)

12. Is your watching of game shows primarily ofthose you would or would not participate in?

Mass-Media Literacy

Today a person who learns from only onemedium will to some major degree lack theinformation, interpretation, insight, and ex-pression that permit society to deem himliterate. A literate person needs the greatestpossible contact with the largest possiblenumber of points of view and sources ofinformation. And beyond that, he needs todevelop the power, in turn, to express him-self.

If a man depends solely on print for hisinformation and his contact with creativeliterature, he cannot keep up with the hap-penings of the world without submitting, atleast partially, to the biases that inevitablyfilter fact on its way to print. And he limitshis interpretation of literature to his owncapacity for imagination.

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If a man depends solely on radio for his news,his music, and his drama, he slows his intaketo the speed of sound; he accepts informationschedules exterior to himself and he restricts,simply by time, the variety of points of viewhe can sample. He also suspends his ownpotential capacity for interpreting literaturein favor of hearing the interpretations ofothers.

If a man depends solely on film for his accessto information and ideas, films are always outof date for current events and they are anexpensive means of access to interpretationby others.

If a man depends solely on television, helimits his knowledge of current events pre-dominantly to what took place within camerarange, to the visible and spoken action ofworld and local leadership, and to the selec-tion by cameramen and cameras and editorsand officials and sponsors whose limitationshe cannot know but whose biases he is

subjected to without their identification. Andhe must content himself with being a passiveobserver of most television fare unless hephones in to a talk show.

The mass-medium-literate man must see forhimself as much as he can on television andtest what people say there against what hesees. He must listen to radio at least enoughto remain aware of the diversity of taste andattitude that typify segments of his local

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community. He must read a daily newspaperor two, at least with some thoroughness sothat he can rethink what he has seen andheard and, again, test the validity of others'opinions. Furthermore, he must find thosenews items too small or too specializedthemselves to demand time on the air or inthe eye. Then he must read magazines andbooks to put both immediate news in detailedperspective and the present in relation to thepast. In his spare time he should improve hismind with books and film and TV drama andlive concerts.

He is not a literate man, however, until heacts beyond the act of thinking. If he cancreate in print or film or video or paint ormusic or some other medium, he should. If hecannot create, he should criticize. If indeedthe real work of man is growing to be literate,he has a responsibility to use his knowledge atleast in part to shape in turn the media thatshape him.

ACROSS MEDIA

Reading Context

1. Where is print? (Collect as many differentlocations as possible trucks, cans, boxes,buildings.)

2. Compare the order of information in thecaption of and in an action news photograph.

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(Make a string poster connecting image withword.)

3. Experiment to see if recall is greater onproduct identification through flashing com-pany names or logos.

4. Analyze political cartoons to see what know-ledge from what media are required to under-stand each one.

S. Prepare ads to introduce a new company orproduct on radio and TV and in newspapersand brochures to be mailed to the generalpublic.

6. Compare how many ways time and space canbe altered in different media.

7. What is the vocabulary of media literacy(film, advertising, TV, computer, papers,magazines, etc.)?

Medium Literate

1. How many media can you translate any onething into?

2. Invite an ad agency representative to explainthe media program they have devised for aparticular client.

3. Make a chart comparing time and space costsin advertising among local TV, radio, anddaily and weekly newspapers; suburban, city,regional, and national newspapers; network

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and cable television; local and network radio;local and national magazines.

4. News (Record, in the appropriate medium,TV, radio, and newspaper coverage of onenews story for one day. Compare the coverageof the different media.) (Compare the cover-age of one continuing issue in mass media forone week.) (Separate fact from opinion innews on radio, TV, newspaper, and weeklynews magazines. Compare and contrast theproblems involved in the separation.)

5. To be fully informed on current news eachweek, what media need you use, how often,and why?

6. Survey students to see what proportion haveaccess to what media at home (books, maga-zines, newspapers, TV, phonographs, taperecorders [reel, cassette, eight 'rack] , cameras[still, movie, TV] ). What media do studentsuse for self expression?

7. Find out how cable television can providetwo-way communication and for what.

8. Visit local companies to see what computersare doing (telephone, electricity supplier,IBM, Honeywell).

9. What media can computers link? (Visit thecomputer system in your police headquarters,school system.)

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10. Identify what equipment designed originallyfor space flight is used now every day onearth. (Project what will be adapted next.)

11. How are communications satellites used? Bywhom? For what?

12. Project the effects of media on life in the year2000 A. D.

13. What ifthere were no radio in your community?

(What services break down?)

there were no telephones in your commu-nity? (So what?)

there were no print at all in your communi-ty? (

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Chapter 5: Fail-Safe

About the only permissible reasons for astudent not to pass a media course are hisown failures to work or to come to class. Solong as he is learning to think and demon-strating that he is learning in some acceptableway, he should be passing. The question, ofcourse, is: What is acceptable? And in termsof the evaluation of thought and the growthinvolved, acceptable doesn't translate easilyinto As, Bs, and Cs.

Since media teaching is primarily the assistingof a student in thinking about his own ideasin his own direction, the individualization ofwork makes grading almost impossible in anytraditional form. Therefore, more than in anyother course perhaps, the student must parti-cipate in determining his grades.

Only the student know's the degree of hisbenefit from the course. And almost alwaysthat benefit is not of Ole sort he would

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conventionally expect from a traditional class:He will seldom have learned an objective bodyof fact the mastery of which by itself deservescredit. He seldom will perform enough consis-tent experiments in learning that the quantityof work alone deserves credit. Surely he willsee that time spent is not enough to qualifyfor credit either.

Hopefully, the student will know whatpersonal skills and what academic tools he haslearned to apply to the integration of his ownlife experience. Media class may be the firstintegrative group and integrative work of hisschool career. Particularly in those circum-stances, only he can know how well he hasgotten together himself, his academic know-ledge, and his understanding.

Most grades that students give themselves canbe accepted by the teacher. If there is animportant discrepancy between what theteacher and the student believe is fair, thereasons for the differences should be talkedabout in private individual conference. Suchdiscussion especially helps those students whohave never recognized their own creativity orwho have been consistently considered medio-cre in traditional performance. Given theopportunity to judge his work in relation toits value to him personally, such a studentoften cannot give himself a good grade with-out outside help in changing !ic,*v ofhimself as a failure.

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If students are to grade themselves, each willneed to develop standards of judgment rela-tive to his individual and group abilities andinformation. What quantity of work has beendone? How hard has he worked and howlong? How has he worked in comparison withthe person who didn't come often to class andin comparison to his best friend? What is thequality of his work? Has he grown as athinking human being?

If it has to be translated into a grade,satisfactory learning alone may be worth an Afor the student whose competence and experi-ence are extremely limited to begin with. Onthe other end of the scale, there should be noA for an exceptionally qualified studentunless he exhibits originality and inventive-ness in addition to performing whatever mini-mum level of activity is established by theclass in combination with the teacher.

Media is a perfect course for a contractsystem. Ideally, the teacher and the individualstudent agree on the kind, quantity, andquality of work he will do for a particulargrade. Because the student agrees to a per-formance he chooses, the responsibility forlearning shifts to him, and the teacher be-comes properly the student's consultant. Fur-thermore, from the grading itself the studentlearns. Sometimes he learns not to under-estimate his ability when he does excellentwork but contracts for a B and gets it.

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Sometimes he learns to accept responsibilityfor going ahead and finishing an unrealisticquantity or quality of work. Always he learnssomething about the relationship between hisreal learning and what is externagy observ-able.

Performance contacting can remove the fearof failure from the student who has severelearning problems and remove the guaranteeof effortless success from the student who hasexceptional endowments of talent and/orbackground. Any student who attempts to dosomething which for him is difficult, or new,and which extends his experience will earn aC even if his work falls short of his intentionand his contract. Some plan for successfulcommunication with his classmates should bea part of the contract of any student whoseeks an A. In return for that effort, he canexpect commentary, help, and evaluation ofhis work by the class.

Perhaps what makes the media curriculumpotentially most failure proof is the oppor-tunity the class affords for independent indi-vidual work within group projects. The mediateacher can deliberately mix students to addexperience to those who lack it, give supportto those who need it, and make demands onthose with special skill. What often emergesare exciting revelations of individual capaci-ties frequently masked in standard perform-ance.

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For example, in heterogeneous classes thereusually are at least one or two students whoare emotionally disturbed enough to be aproblem to themselves and others. In aproject where group success requires workwith others, such students often performremarkably well. If their responsibility iseither independent but essential to thegroup's success or if they have authority todirect others in an activity where they them-selves have some facility, other students willaccept the deviant students and their contri-butions. And that acceptance often helpsstabilize those students' whole school day.

If students are given choices to match them-selves with one another, the chances are thatdisruptive students nevertheless will chooseand be chosen to work very productively in agroup project. In fact, to be accepted enoughto be permitteu to cooperate in the accom-plishment of something that they care about,they often will find out things about them-selves that may have favorable influences ontheir behavior from then on. Furthermore,the variety and the individualization of mediaprojects even the specific assignments ofpersons within groups permit so muchsatisfaction to each individual that often astudent can accommodate even to personswho ordinarily exclude him or whom heusually rejects because they threaten him.

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In many ways media teaching is extremelyhard. Every student sooner or later challengesthe teacher to help discover interests toexplore and to devise activities with which to'explore them. Because of the freedom thatmust be allowed students, those interests alsooften lie outside the teacher's personal rangeor experience. Furthermore, even when stu-derts do their own grading, evaluation ofstudent work requires constant finding andaccepting of new ways to look at bothlearning itself and media products. Even anexperienced teacher will have to experimentconstantly to permit and handle the flexibil-ity of assignments, organization, and behaviorthat student freedom to grow literate re-quires.

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Chapter 6: Caterpillars and Tadpoles

Metamorphosis is nature's way of translating atadpole into a frog or a caterpillar into amoth. Yet, tadpoles are not frogs, and no onemistakes caterpillars for butterflies. Some-times metamorphic changes occur in incre-ments small enough to be individually invisi-ble even though they all occur under observa-tion. Sometimes the major changes occur socompletely beyond observation that one mustbe told that what went in and what came outare the same in basic nature though differentin form.

When an entomologist identifies the cater-pillar of a monarch butterfly, he knows withcertainty both that it is not some odd sort ofworm and that it will proceed through verypredictable steps. Watching it gorge itself onleaves, this insect specialist knows that in timethe caterpillar will shape its cocoon, growthrough its pupal stage, and emerge full grownin the perfect yellow, orange, black and whitepatterns of its kind.

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The process of translation exercised by ahuman being is not so predictable or soautomatic as metamorphosis. The geneticcode of the frog or butterfly decrees each stepof its cycle. No such automatic biologicalsystem operates the mind of man when ittransforms something from one medium toanother. For example, translation of a shortstory is thought of as traditionally takingplace in the same aedium language, as fromFrench to German rather than as a changeof form. But a short story has nothing in itsnature that will prevent its being translatedinto film or its inspiring music.

Despite their essential difference, translationand metamorphosis have a number of usefulparallels.

The changes that come upon a tadpole occurvery slowly and result in visible continuousreshaping toward a form to some degreealready basic to the legless tad. The newproduct of human translation often alsoinvolves visible adaptations of the original. Atranslator of a short story from one languageto another will keep the general organizationand the major content of the words of theoriginal. He will change only the sentencestructure that makes the sense fall naturallyinto the patterns of the second language. Hewill make as few modifications of the sense ashe can within the limits of the secondvocabulary. In fact, the original and the

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translation still will be called "a" short storydespite the transformations involved inturning one into the other. Nevertheless, theymay be as different as tadpole and frog. Moresignificantly, the precise process by which theskillful translator modifies or amends theoriginal to produce the same or greaterperfection in the new medium are as hiddenin the human mind as the program for theemergence of the frog's hind legs is hiddennature.

Translation from the medium of language tothe medium of music or of sculpture is muchmore like the metamorphosis of a butterflythan like that of a frog. The changes thatcome upon a caterpillar are visible in stages,but the pupal part of the process is com-pletely hidden. Both metamorphosis andtranslation from one medium to anotherinvolve keeping involate the innate identity ofthe original while changing the outward formentirely.

Human physical growth fits the analogyneither of the frog nor of the butterfly.However, the growth of a human mind hasanalogies to both. Mental growth proceedsinvisibly at its own rate in its natural waymuch as the butterfly develops beyond obser-vation. But evidences of mental growth are asobservable as the gradual appearance of frog'slegs. r example, we know gurgles and cooswill bec;.!iie intelligible speech.

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We accept the natural developments of insectsand frogs. No one will poke a tadpole, say"hop," and stand back to see an instant frogobey. Nor will any sane man order hisbagworms to emerge as monarch butterflies.The frog will naturally grow from the tadpoleif he has even a mediocre quality of frogenvironment, though the adult frog may weara vestigial tail for a long time.

Many an adult human being keeps the ap-pendages of childhood long after they areexpected to disappear. If we have no patiencewith them, we sometimes amputate bothexternal behavior and physical appendages wedo not approve in human beings. However,natural mental development occurs beyondour sight. If an adult mind is to emerge, it willfollow its nature, and its nature only. Whatinternal effects do our external amputationshave?

Consider the possibility that translation is theprocess by which a person becomes himself.Sometimes he takes others' attitudes, feeds onthem, hides his digestion of them out of sightin his mind, and emerges invisibly but per-manently different from what he was beforehe listened. Another time he translates hisenergy into grades or athletics or thoughtful-ness or bullying the block whatever getshim the best results from the persons headmires most. Each time he takes an idea, an

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action, a purpose and translates it intothought, action, or creation, he changes him-self.

How does a human being develop spendinghabits? Is he simply made so fat with propa-ganda or commercials or beliefs that he goesinto a mental cocoon and, after an incubationperiod, comes out a buyer? lf, unlike abutterfly, he learns the processes that operateon him, can he choose what kind of buyer hewill become?

ROUND AND ROUND

Translate into words

1. a short story into a ballad

2. a poem into a paraphrase

3. a formal menu into standard English

4. your life into a three-page autobiography

5. an idea into a poster or collage

6. road signs into language

7. erosion into figurative processes (as "facialerosion")

Translate into film

1. (animate) a wheelie, print cartoons, a process

2. ethnic culture into photographs

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3. a song into a drama

4. a drama into a silent film

5. night traffic into time-exposures

6. the history of a place (photographs of a mainstreet)

Translate into art, graphics

1. an emotion to images

2. words into colors

3. wire, metal scraps into sculpture

4. make a poem concrete

5. a bar of soap into sculpture

6. a picture into a silk screen poster

Translate into numbers

1. a physics principle into a mathematicalformula

2. a filled grocery cart into dollars and cents

3. linear into metric measurement

4. inches into picas

5. pieces of wood into a cabinet

6. input into computer language

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Translate into maps

1. a school floor plan into a texture map forblind students

2. population density into a map (texture, color,pattern, contour)

3. location of industries

4. traffic flow through town, to and fromwork

Translate into music

1. time into a march

2. a poem into music

3. color, emotion into music

4. any work from major to minor, vice versa

5. tempo within a song into another

Translate into time

1. a trip to Mars, Jupiter, etc.

2. sun's shadows

3. high school

4. dreams during sleep

5. yourself aged 10, aged 30, aged 70

6. becoming a welder, contractor, a pharmacist,a lawyer

7. starlight

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Translate time into

1. a flow chart of any process

2. money for a secretary, a bricklayer, a lawyer,a bank teller

3. travel by foot, car, train, plane, rocket

4. milk (ask a goat for help)

Collect the translations of othersO

1. migration of continents (Australia, NewZealand)

2. maps on any subject

3. computer art, poetry

4. paintings (Ask local artists to exhibit originalwork)

5. crafts (Find local talent to teach skills usingwood, metal, sewing, leather, herbs)

6. geometric patterns of the movement offusion, planets, plants, extra-terrestrial radiosignals, Jupiter's magnetic field

7. logos and symbols (from newspaper ads,classified, signs on buildings, TV) (Objectswith symbolic meaning [apple; flags J )

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Inside out

1. Do a cut-a-way of an engine, a body, anystructure.

2. Cut in two a geode, a saphire, a cell.

Symbol Making

1. Make logos for rooms in the school.

2. Make signs to direct the deaf around yourschool.

3. Draw safety signs for shop areas in schools.

4. Diagram how to work any machine bylabeling and numbering each part in order ofits use.

5. Make symbols for occupations, sports, etc.

6. Substitute seriality for tonality in a familiarmusical work.

7. Make flow charts of cycles (life, water, air,chain reactions, life cycles of stars).

8. Study, in physics, new designs for storage.(Study rings in electron-proton accelerators.)

Compare Look-Alikes

1. grafts in plants and transplants in humans

2. volcanos and guisers

3. geologic and biologic metamorphosis

4. cycles and chain reactions

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Commentary

1. Write conversations or comments that mightbe said by persons, animals, or objects inpictures cut from magazines and newspapers(by public figures about current events)(by babies with adult ideas)(by animals with human postures, facial ex-pressions)(by trees, lakes, flowers about the environ-ment)

2. Reconstruct American society in 1975 fromfive objects found on an archaeological expe-dition in 4000 A.D.

3. Cover an historical event of the past (signingMagna Carta) with current media used inreporting today's news.

4. As a minstrel of 1000 A.D., compose a balladabout the facts of a current news event.

5. Graph world population using figures fromten years intervals to the present, and projectthem twenty years into the future.

6. Decide if adaptation is a form of translation(example: Alaska's Snow Monkeys)

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Chapter 7:I'm Uninformed, You're Ignorant, He's Stupid

In a time of impending material shortage, agovernment spokesman announces with pridethe foresight of officials in building up thegovernment's inventories. At the same time hechides big business for stockpiling the samematerial. And if the housewife is in on theact, he accuses her of hoarding. The house-wife meanwhile knows that she is shoppingwisely but agrees that business should becalled down for creating an artificial shortageand attacks the government for manipulatingthe economy. The businessman calls a newsconference to point out that maintainingmaterials in sufficient supply keeps the grossnational product growing but urges that thegovernment get out of competition with theprivate sector. He calls on the housewife notto do panic buying, since the shortage antici-pated will be at most a temporary effect ofthe law of supply and demand.

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Each person is speaking about the samematerial, the same shortage, and the samemethod of guarding against going without.Yet each sees his own practice as justifiedeven while he finds fault with others. Each,that is, sees primarily his own point of view.

The tendency to speak as commendably aspossible of one's self, slightly less well ofsomeone who is at least present to defendhimself, and negatively of persons wellbeyond earshot is a human habit if not humannature. The safeguard against blind assurancethat all the rest of the world is out of step isto keep aware of how many different pointsof view there can be in a given situtation.

Point of view is a term having to do on aliteral level with the physical position fromwhich one can see. What one sees from a ,V.Pbalcony differs considerably from what the

,/ ///

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same person sees from a hang glider or asky-lab. The same kinds of differences inperspective are illustrated by looking at an antwith the naked eye, a magnifying glass, andfirst an optical and then an electron-scanningmicroscope. The greater the perspective, theless the detail. The greater the detail, the lessthe perspective. e. e. cummings suggestedthat in that sense "electrons deify a razorblade into a mountain range."

Point of view is much more than physical,either in relation to place in space or toability to see. Point of view is affected at leastas much by time and experience and psychol-ogy and biology and involvement. A juniorhigh school student is probably going to berather sure an adult is nuts if the adult tries tosell him that these are really the happiest daysof his life. But that same student may listento a great-grandfather's stories about life onthe farm during the Great Depression andthink how wonderful it would be to havelived in those good old days.

In literature, point of view is much simplerthan in real life. In fact, literary point of viewcan be determined rather precisely once thenarrator of a story is identified.

There are three narrators who tell their storiesin the third person about others withoutthemselves having any relation to the action.If the narrator stays out of the story butknows all past and present history and can

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come and go in space and time and can readthe minds and emotions of all the characters,he is an omniscient (all-knowing) narrator. Ifhe really is omniscient but for some literarypurpose chooses to limit what he tells to whata major character in the story has the sight,insight, and ability to know, the narrator iscalled a limited-omniscient narrator. If he tellsonly what an intelligent fly could see and hearand knows nothing outside his two senses orthe time and place when and where heobserved, he is an observer narrator.

There are also four narrators who tell theirstories in the first person about themselvesto some degree. A narrator who tells storiesothers have told him (hearsay reporting, talltales, etc.) is a first-person narrator-at-second-hand. If he tells a story in the first personabout himself as it occurs, he is a presentparticipating narrator and therefore has nomore (and perhaps less) insight into what ishappening to him than the reader has. If hetells the story of his life as he looks back overit, usually with considerably greater insightthan he had when the events he tells aboutwere happening, he is a first-person retrospec-tive narrator. If he tells the story of someonein whose action he was a minor character, heis considered a first-person observer narrator,but he may have either advantages or disad-vantages that stem from his involvement inthe action.

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It is hard enough to determine in a fixed formlike literature just what the abilities, limita-tions, and attitudes of a narrator are. In reallife, we often are so involved in thinking ofourselves as the center of all the actionsimportant to the universe that we identifyneither our own points of view nor those ofothers. To learn to know ourselves, to learn toknow others, and to learn to be literate aboutmedia, we should devise means for changingour points of view. Physics suggests that aninfinite imaginary line drawn from any pointwill curve until it returns to its starting point.Therefore, any tiniest motion in space willchange the entire course of that curving line.If we can learn to move left and right, in andout from the earth if we can look throughall manner of windows with every contour ofglass if we can hear the inaudible with thehelp of magnification if we can remove oursenses and study the effect on our totalperception then we can at least begin tounderstand ourselves better because we under-stand our time and space and energy relation-ships better.

Our human relationships require differentchanges that are no less perhaps are evenmore important. Can we change our minds?Quite literally, can we imagine having less ormore mind than we have? Can we substitutefor what we have absorbed from our cultureor our physical environment both the rich-nesses and the poverties we would have

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enjoyed/suffered had we been born elsewhereor elsewhen? Can we dream the dreams ofothers, fear their fears, hate their hates evenif who and what we are already are theobjects of those others' dreams and fears andhates? If not, what's the point of having anyview?

FROM WHERE YOU STAND

Lose Your Senses

1. You have just had a fronts; lobotomy, aheart attack.

2. You have just lost your sense of touch,taste, sight, smell, kinesthesia.

3. Lose your most creative talent and performwithout it.(If you are an artist, become color blind.)(If you are a writer, lose your grammar.)(If you are a musician, become tone deaf.)(If you're logical, give up order.)(If you're not physically disabled, become so

turn in one foot and walk without a limp.)

4. Add the one character trait you wish you hadthe most. (Practice your new image before amirror and pantomime it for the class.)

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Choose: Them or Us?

1. Without a kidney transplant you will die.

2. If you get the transplant, a 35-year-oldwoman with two children will die.

3. Divide this year's production of wheat, books,radios, TV's, cars by this year's world popula-tion.

4. You have three children and find out thatanother baby is coming.

5. You want to finish school, and you're preg-nant.

6. You want to finish school, and the girl you'vebeen dating is pregnant.

7. Your son is looking for a job and you own abusiness.

8. You see a purse in ;41% .m.

9. You want promotion anu find a mistakeon, ,'Peervisor has made.

10. .ou have a chance to go out with your bestfriend's steady.

11. The smartest student in class sits in front ofyou at the exam.

12. Everybody else has tried it once.

13. As soon as you pull into the right lane afterpassing on an interstate, the car you passedpulls out to pass you.

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14. A person of another race invites you to aconcert.

So?

1. Using a newspaper story, tell what happenedfrom the points of view of everyone involved.(Assign parts and practice separately.)

2. Would you sign a contract contaie.ing these?to some degreemore or lessto a certain extentwithin reasonwith deliberate speedbeyond a reasonable doubt

3. Photograph the same place from ground level,a tree or similar height, and from a buildingoverlooking the site.

4. In any literature, establish the point of viewof the narrator. Change to a different narra-to r.

5. What's new on Venus, Jupiter, Mars, themoon, etc.?

6. Move to a new school where you don't knowas much as the others.

7. View the 1973 eclipse in Africa as a scientistand as a tribal native.

8. Who lives at the top and bottom of the hill(s)in your town?

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9. Look at a city ghetto from a street in it andfrom the top floor of the nearest condomin-ium.

10. Fill out the form for receiving food stamps asthe official, then as the applicant.

11. Why do you want to be tall?

12. What is the significance of the differencebetween the ratios of single men and womennow and ten years ago?

13. What are biological sex differences?

14. What are sociological sex expectations?

15. How old is young? Old? Mature? Legal?

Action-Reaction-Retraction

1. She's taller than he is.

2. You're too young ....

3. No son of mine ....4. But she's n3t like the rest of them.

5. They all lo,)k alike.

6. She's smari enough to be quiet.

7. That's Ont' thing you can count on.

8. I tried so hard ....9. He didn't tell me.

10. I should . . but ....

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11. Be rational.

12. I don't know what to do with ....13. That's an emotional response.

14. How much experience have you had?

15. What 1 mean is ....16. Now back where I come from

17. What I can do for you is ....18. It's just a....

19. These irresponsible . . . .

20. It's just not a _I like.

21. Handsome devil.

22. That's not practical.

23. I did what I was told.

24. Don't ask stupid questions.

25. That wasn't my job.

26. They like to live like that.

27. She's going to keep the baby?

28. ... too lazy

29. What kind of

30. Of course you'll graduate.

31. They'll outgrow that.

32. He's really not her type.

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33. He's hooked.

34. The little woman

35. My old man

36. My old lady

37. The better half

38. The breadwinner

39. It's only a job.

40. It's just money.

41. I got it for nothing.

42. The view alone is worth it.

43. Every man has his price.

44. It doesn't mean a thing.

45. I don't care . .

46. ... right out of the jungle

47. If you don't love it, leave it.

48. 1.,00k what's happened to the neighborhood.

49. a woman's place

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Chapter 8: The Tiger and the Lady

There was a young lady of NigerWho smiled as she rode on a tiger.They returned from the ridewith the lady insideAnd the smile on the face of the tiger.

Unknown

A great many things in life and literature andhistory and science depend on what might betermed situation reversal. What goes up mustcome down. A muscle flexed must relax.Energy can be detected as light or sound ormass and each may be converted into theother. Comedy is tragedy at a distance andwithout moral consequences. Irony is eithersaying one thing and meaning another orexpecting one thing and having anotherhappen.

In almost every case, what appears to be areversal of situation is really a limitation ofpoint of view or a focus on a part instead of a

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whole attention paid to one phase of acycle or one state of matter.

One out of five romances in popular women'smagazines for years has depended on un-expected collisions. A beautiful young girlleaves her apartment with her arms loadedwith garbage intended for the trash shutearound the corner. A handsome young manheads from that corridor for the elevator onher hall. At the corner, they collide andromance springs to life as he helps her collecther old banana peels. All that would beneeded to save the situation would be onemaintenance engineer standing on a ladderchanging a light bulb at the intersection of thehalls. He could call a warning, the youngpeople would avoid their collision, shewould go on safely with her garbage and hewould catch his elevator without event. Thewhole short story business could be wreckedwith a few well placed observers.

Another way to do-in television, radio, stage,and screen is simply to have everyone changehis schedule. If the boss never comes todinner, it won't matter that the oven won'tcook. If the thief breaks into the rightapartment a year late, the masterpiece will besafely hung in the museum.

Changes of place serve the same function. Ifthe detective shows up on the wrong series,the murderer can't be caught. And what

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would happen to war if the enemies ended upready to tight but in different countries?

Changes of mind can rk'N crse almost anysituation. Deciding not to go fishing may savethe life of an innocent dolphin. Turning offthe television may interrupt the best laidplans of Madison Avenue.

No matter how sophisticated we become, wewill constantly be dealing with situationreversal in our minds, in our perceptions, inour creations, and in our communications. Asobservers we can alter our relationships inspace and time sufficiently to get the perspec-tive that lets us leant from others withoutpermanent pain and often with pleasure. Asparticipants, we are far more likely to stumbleinto situations that reverse themselves or thatwe reverse. Sometimes we fall into reversalsbecause we see too much on too grand a scale.At others, we see too much in too greatdetail. Often our stumbling leads to ourphysical harm but more frequently to theinjury of our pride. If we can develop a senseof humor, we can learn to share the view ofourselves that others have. That ability to seeourselves as others do will help us laugh andso have the emotional distance to handle thedamage or the recognition that we gain fromreversals that affect our egos.

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INSIDE OUT

What If,

1. Collect comic strips where the last frame is asituation reversal of expectations in motion,time or action.

2. Collect comic strips where the words contrib-ute to the situation reversal.

3. Change the timing when characters meetduring the opening minutes in any short storyor drama on TV or in print.

4. Change the setting where characters meet inany . . . .

5. Stop-action during any TV program or litera-ture to predict the reversal that will producethe final resolution.

6. Write one line gags for comedians.

7. See what children learn from cartoons thatreverse real-life. (setting, motion, time, space,size, physics, animal and human behaviors)

8. Collect comics that comment on society andpolitics (Doonsbury, Butter and Boop,Conchy, Peanuts, Pogo, L'il Abner, LittleOrphan Annie, political and editorial car-toons).

9. In the newspaper, identify sports, businessand front page reversals that made news.

10. Why does a baby first laugh? (Photograph.Observe. Record.)

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What Are the Odds?

1. Study your playing of a game or sport. (Howmany reversals do you make? How many doesyour opponent make? Who wins?)

2. Analyze the statistics of a football gamepunts, interceptions, fumbles, etc.

3. What are the mathematical probabilities thatgambling will "pay off"?

4. How do open secrets feel about the invasionof their privacy?

5. Find reversals incollecting experimental evidenceastronomical explorationscomputer projectionsany warphysicsevolutiongeneticspropulsionagression in animal and human behaviormagicTV programs

6. Make comic strips by reversing the last frame.(Reverse movement.)(Use a size or time switch.)(Add a play on words or verbal irony.)

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Chapter 9: What's the Best Way to Get Outfrom Under an Elephant?

The question "What's the best way to get outfrom under an elephant?" can finally beanswered by one of two people: an observeror someone who's under one. Meanwhile,don't worry about how he got there or why.Just willingly suspend your disbelief. Therereally is somebody under an elephant.

Get it clearly in your mind that a humanbeing is being sat upon. There is not someonemerely beneath that elephant. That personhas a real 2,000-pound problem. Now decide:Is that somebody you or someone else? Whichyou are makes all the difference.

If you have let someone else be under theelephant, you know yours was not a generousdecision. Given a him-or-me choice like that,almost anyone would let someone else gofirst.

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So there he is under the elephant. What's thebest way to get out? You have chosen toobserve, perhaps even to assist. But it's notreally your problem. At least technically, thatmakes you objective. Since you are notinvolved in such energy-consuming activitiesas breathing under pressure, you can concen-trate either on recording the behavior of thesat-upon or on devising ways and means forextricating him. Your detachment permitsyou also to weigh the relative merits ofprocesses and devices for removing either theelephant or the person. There is nothing inthe question "What is the best way ..." tomake you responsible for the person himself.To the uninvolved, the "best" inevitablymeans method or manner, not condition. Youcease to be objective in your interpretation ofthe question the second you become involved

begin to care. Objective; calls for thesuspension of judgment o values unless"values" translates as "most efficient," "mosteffective," "most economical," etc.

The greater your involvement, the less yourobjectivity and the less your concern withhow to get out from under the elephant. Infact, if you are the person under the elephant,you are enormously involved. From a positionunder an elephant, "the best way to get outfrom under" is alive. And that answer is ajudgment concerned totally with condition.Any method that will work will do. Yourintellectual interest in the quality of method

1 1 1

decreases in direct proportion to your con-cern with survival itself.

A great deal has been said about the desirabil-ity of objectivity and the undesirability ofsubjectivity, Reality as opposed to thepurely theoretical suggests that total objec-tivity is a quality potential to computers andthat subjectivity is an inevitable part of everyhuman judgment.

Suppose you are given an elephant and powerover even your worst enemy. Inviting theelephant to be seated on him is, at its mostobjective, accompanied by delight at thepicture. Pleasure is scarcely objective. How-ever, something in the nature of humanconsciousness will not permit you to let eventhe imaginary elephant remain seated verylong. No matter how unworthy a person youdeem your enemy (two value judgments:unworthy and enemy), you inevitably judgealso his worthiness to remain alive. In amoment of fantasy you are as free as is everpossible to deal with a person objectively anddispassionately. Yet as human being you willinevitably set limits on the degree of damageyou are willing to do.

Scientists have tried as hard to be objectNe asany single group of persons concerned withways and .Weans. Yet repeatedly their greatdiscoveries have come because they wereinvolved with other, and/or their environ-ment. That involver-iv ,.t was so great that,

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when the apple fell or when the mold grew orwhen the red cells were devoured by thewhite, they cared. That subjective involve-ment has constantly pushed back the limitswithin which objective exploration is possible.It drives the experimenter to repeat andrepeat and repeat his experiement not toprove its perfection, but to find its flaw thecrack through which he sees what no one eversaw before.

Next time you have a choice about who willdecide the world's important questions ofvalue, snatch the opportunity to be the onewho thinks his way out from under anelephant. The more your survival and that ofothers is the question, the less will be yourconcern for analysis and the more for lifeitself. The less survival is a question, the moreroom there will be for the logical analysis thatis the hallmark of objectivity. But room forobjectivity does not mean that subjectivity isless desirable. The subjective provides thedrive that creates the opportunity for theobjective.

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"THERE IS A TIME FOR EVERY THINGUNDER THE SUN."

1. ice 8. war

2. volcanos 9. love

3. peneplaining 10. hate

4. mountain-building 11. youth

5. birth 12. age

6. death 13. stages of matter

7. peace

Hide-and-Go-Seek

1. magnification and reduction

2. appearance and reality

3. matter and anti-matter

4. hallucination

5. amnesia

6. ESP

7. UFO's

8. projection (missles, film, and people)

9. sublimation (gases and people)

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Where Is It? What's in It? Who's in It? Why?(Note: "When" for all the question should bethe same.)

1. photos of the school

2. maps (road, density, topography, etc.)

3. buildings (jails, churches, hospitals, busi-nesses)

4. collections (stamps, coins, etc.)

Now switch the "when."

Who Is Who?

1. Who owns what in property and ideas? (me,mine; his, hers; our, ours; yours; theirs instories, political speeches, etc.)

2. Who owns the moat? (Count possessive pro-nouns)

3. Who is important? Who is the narrator? (Is ittold by an "I" or about "them"?) Who is themajor actor? (Who is the subject of the mostverbs?) Who uses the biggest words? the mostcomplex sentence structure? the greatestnumber of assertions of opinion as if theywere fact? So what?

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Hair Line

1. fracture (skull x-ray)

2. faults

3. bomb sights

4. wigs and hair pieces

1)raw the Line

1. court lines (tennis, volleyball)

2. field lines (magnetic, land)

3. time (date lines, time zones, deadlines)

4. vectors

5. right and wrong (role play)

6. black and white

7. spectrum

8. referee any game

Sending and Receiving

1. computer banks (libraries, cable TV)

2. telecommunications

3. satellites, cables, and space labs

4. transporters (horses, cars, trains, rockets,lasers, minds)

5. time (transmission speeds, secret and delayedmessages)