Post 8

While learning about adolescent identity and literacy, I was shocked at the ways our current education has made school so unfavorable for young boys.  The TED talk stats in particular were alarming.  The paranoia and over sensitivity to violence (also stifling political correctness in my opinion) we’ve fostered in this country is pushing males out of school.  This turned my attention to a discussion I had a few weeks ago outside of school.  My peers and I have been debating about the competing values within the male psyche.  On one hand, we’ve been taught to value the physical world: “practical” knowledge, the ability to work with our hands.  Competing with that value system is an education system which promotes abstract thought:  sensitivity, creativity, the arts, mathematics, physics, “book lurnin'”  My solution is to provide, within the confines of the classroom, role models for boys that have been able to do both–work with their hands and their minds.  Being a creative writer, my examples included Gary Snyder, the celebrated American poet who has also worked as a logger and merchant marine, and William Meredith, who wrote poetry and flew dive bombers in WW2.  How about Corky Gonzalez, featherweight boxer and Chicano Rights activist?  Abe Lincoln?  Nikola Tesla?  The point is, young boys need be taught that learning is not just for the girls.  One can be a man, and be smart man too.  It may seem obvious to us, but the studies say that it isn’t being taught that way.

A take away I took from the digital storytelling group is the concept of participation in modern story telling.    Whether it be the remixing of texts (word used loosely) or simply the creation of a blog, people are not content with just being consumers of literacy in the 21st century.