Questioning our Assumptions about Media and Culture

Flying back, through India and then on to Newark, I pondered the impact of U.S. popular culture and media on the rest of the world.  And yet, arriving in the U.S., waiting in the long line for U.S. citizens to go through immigration, I am struck by the huge diversity of cultures, colors, dress, and appearance that makes up the population of the United States.  In Bhutan, nearly everyone I saw and met was Bhutanese; in India, nearly everyone I saw and met was Indian.  But here, standing in the line for U.S. citizens, there were people whose heritage was Indian, African, Arabic, Asian, European – maybe even Bhutanese.  I started wondering – do we have a common culture here?  Or are we just a wonderful collection of cultures and backgrounds and perspectives, unique in the world in our fundamental diversity?

But later sitting in Starbucks at the Newark Airport, watching the long line of almost exclusively white men and women ordering their tall skinny lattes and grande caramel macchiatos from a counter staff made up entirely of young African American men and women, I am not so sure.  Is our diversity merely divided into separate clusters and cultural experiences?  To what extent do our media and popular culture experiences unite us with a common connection and experience?

I have one final story about an experience that has left a lasting impression on me.  In India – unlike Bhutan – I was repeatedly approached by people of different ages and in different settings to buy something from them or pay for their services (go in their taxi, get a henna tattoo, etc.).  I had planned to spend Sunday afternoon just walking around in a relatively safe area of New Delhi to see the India Gate, some parks, and craft areas.  A very persuasive taxi driver talked me into letting him drive me (in his tiny 3-wheeled mini-cab) to a craft bazaar, and was waiting for me when I came out an hour later.  He drove me to India Gate, where I insisted that I wanted to walk from then on – but arranged for him to pick me up at 6:15 to drive me to the airport (in what he said would be an actual taxicab). I had read plenty of warnings about being careful not to get distracted, to pay attention to my belongings, and not to be conned into overspending for services – and my experiences with people constantly approaching me this started to get in the way of my enjoyment of the day.

I found myself becoming frustrated and annoyed, and growing increasingly suspicious of anyone who approached me.  I worried that the taxi driver actually didn’t have a taxicab, or he wouldn’t take me to the airport but elsewhere, etc.  I was relieved when he took me to a cab, but concerned when I found out it was going to be another man driving it.  Then on our way to the airport we were stopped at a red light, and a man and his children started moving through the cars with flowers to sell.  One girl – about 8 years old – came up to my window, and pounded on it, talking in Hindi and pointing to the ground.  I kept shaking my head no – I was not interested – when she moved around the car to talk with the driver.  He then said something to me in Hindi, and I kept shaking my head, frustrated.  Finally he reached back and opened my door – showing me that my long skirt had been hanging out of the door, and that was what the girl was trying to tell me.  I felt so embarrassed and guilty – this little girl was just trying to help me out, and I had already made up my mind about her and shut her out.  The light turned green and we sped off before I had a chance to thank her.  But the incident stayed with me for the rest of my trip.

Now, back in my own home with my wonderful daughter and granddaughter, I wonder:  to what extent do our experiences – both personal and mediated ones – affect our assumptions about and openness to people around us?  And in our practice of media literacy, how do we balance our critical thinking and skepticism with a genuine openness to new experiences and appreciation for others?

Leaving Bhutan

Yesterday afternoon the students in Samtse developed media literacy integration plans for their future lives as teachers.  I expected this to be a difficult task for them, but they found places outside to meet in small groups based on what they would be teaching (primary, secondary English/history, secondary math/physics, etc.).  I gave them a few minutes to get started, and then roamed around from group to group, asking about their challenges and their plans.

By far the biggest concerns centered on lack of access to “media” – especially the internet – so I stressed again the importance of focusing on critical thinking about all types of media messages (books and other print-based material, images, statues, etc.) and communicating with images as well as words.  The other question I got several times had to do with how to use media literacy with students with special needs, especially those with learning problems.  They weren’t familiar with ADHD – perhaps that doesn’t exist in Bhutan?  I talked with individual groups and also to the full group at the very end about this issue – stressing that the focus on visual images often levels the playing field a bit for students who are not strong readers, and also reinforcing the inquiry-based interactive process that provides opportunities for all students to respond and to hear different perspectives.

How would you respond to the question about media literacy for students with special needs?

At the very end of the day, we all gathered outside to take pictures of me and the full group of students – it was a happy, and somewhat bittersweet, ending to their two days with “Mrs. Cyndy,” and many students came up to talk with me at the end.  I urged them to keep in touch with me, and posted my e-mail on the screen.  I’ve already heard from one student, and hope to hear from more during the coming months.

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Heading back to Thimphu today was much easier – I’m becoming acclimated to the mountain driving, and the anxiety over how the training would go has gone. This evening Mona hosted a dinner for me at a lovely hotel with several other administrators from DOIM, along with Namkha and Choki (who was the person who first contacted us about coming to Bhutan).  It was a wonderful time, with a lot of stories about how the Samtse training went; Namkha told me later that everyone was amazed at how much I talked!  She thought my enthusiasm was contagious but that perhaps I should talk a little less next time I come.  OK, lesson learned.

Much of our conversation centered around how to build on this work, and ways to bring Chris and I back to help with curriculum planning.  I am again struck by the advantage they have in Bhutan with strong support – even directives – from the very top of their government for the integration of media literacy throughout the entire country’s K-12 education system.  Will that ever be the case in the U.S.?  Or is our educational system fundamentally too decentralized?  If the U.S. has finally instituted a common core assessment in ELA and math, can we build a parallel approach to develop the scope and sequence for media literacy education?  What would it take for this to happen in my lifetime? Could Bhutan serve as a model for this in the U.S.?

In discussing this with my new Bhutanese friends and colleagues, I was surprised to learn that the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with Bhutan – and that it isn’t because the U.S. doesn’t want relations with Bhutan, it’s that Bhutan isn’t sure it wants to have diplomatic relations with us.  What does this say about the U.S.?  And about the care and caution the Bhutan government and people are taking in opening up themselves to the outside world?  As they move into the 21^st century, can they continue to preserve their traditions and unique perspectives on cultural values and GNH – or will increasing exposure to advertising, consumerism and other elements of Western and other Eastern cultures ultimately consume them?  And was there ever a time in the U.S. when we faced that same issue – and could have made another choice?

News Spin: Who Gets “Credit” for Bhutan’s King and Queen?

Today we spent the first half of the morning on news analysis, looking in particular at news “spin.”  We discussed the ways in which Bhutan is portrayed in different news sources, both visually

and in the headlines and stories in online and print newspapers.  We came back to the discussion that we had started about the news media’s portrayal of the royal wedding, and I showed a collection of four headlines/story excerpts (shown below), asking them to match up the country and the story, based on evidence in the documents. This led to a great discussion and a lot of laughter, especially when I pointed out certain content (e.g., India taking credit for their new queen since she was educated there, and the U.S. taking credit for their king since he was educated in Boston and a great Celtics fan).

I then described the agenda-setting function of news – reflecting the concept that news not only influences what we think about things, but also what things we think about – using an adaptation of an activity comparing pairs of headlines, with the question “Which story will get the most coverage?”  (see image below)  Like students in the U.S., the Bhutanese students said (b) would get more than (a), (c) would get more than (d), and (g) – which is based on a very popular and respected Bhutanese singer – would get more than (h).  Unlike the U.S., however, which tends to emphasize negative news much more than positive news, the Bhutanese students overwhelmingly picked (f) over (e).   Are the Bhutanese students just less familiar with the tendency of the news to emphasize negative stories over positive ones?  Or does this reflect a deeper cultural difference between our two countries, and Bhutan’s emphasis on the Gross National Happiness?

We ended the morning with students comparing working in pairs to analyze different news stories reporting on media literacy conferences, identifying evidence in the news story that the conference sounded either really good or really bad (based on one of the lesson plans in my book, The Teacher’s Guide to Media Literacy: Critical Thinking in a Multimedia World (2012, Corwin/Sage).  The students were totally engaged in this activity, able to summarize the evidence and list examples to support their conclusions.

After the morning tea break, I spent more than an hour talking about ways to use media production in the classroom as a means to build both analysis and communication skills.  Since many of these students will eventually be teaching in remote areas of Bhutan that are unlikely to have ready access to the internet and video cameras, I stressed low tech modes of creating “media” messages, including class newsletters and counter-ads.  We ended the morning with one of my favorite activities – “White Towel.”  Students worked in small groups of 4 or 5 to design TV commercials to sell a plain white towel using a storyboard to plan out the visuals, sound, text, plot and characters – but each group had a different target audience (men, women, teenagers, older adults, children, doctors, electricians, sports players, monks, etc.).  Before they began, I showed several different commercials (Real Bugs, Old Spice, Fair and Lovely), identifying the different elements and discussing how they might have been planned out in a storyboard format.  I showed each commercial 3 or 4 times, sometimes without sound so I could comment on the editing and visual elements and sometimes asking them just to listen for the music and sound effects.  The students really threw themselves into this task – and after 15 minutes I went from group to group, checking in on their progress and plans.  Some groups that had monks as the target audience were flummoxed – “Why would monks use a towel, they don’t take showers!” – but other groups designed really creative commercials for monks (e.g., with a monk climbing a tall mountain and getting very hot, then reaching a waterfall and taking a pure white towel out of his pack to wash off the sweat).  They particularly loved including the music and sound effects, and also gave a lot of thought to the gender portrayals, reflecting our prior discussions from the day before.  Several groups volunteered to have me present their storyboards – and one young man was brave enough to describe his group’s commercial himself (featuring a wonderful plot involving two guys vying for the attentions of an attractive girl swimming on the beach – and the scrawny less attractive guy wins the girl because his towel is the softest on her skin).

The success of this activity made me wonder – would this work in any culture?  Or might there be cultural barriers to participating in this kind of creative small group work?

“Kuzu Zangpo!”  Teacher Training at Samtse College of Education, Bhutan

Today I began the first day of this two-day training with 289 students who are just beginning their final year of college in teacher education; next year they will be spread out across the country, mostly in rural areas, teaching primary or secondary school.  Even with the national mandate to integrate media literacy into the curriculum, they had had no introduction to media literacy at all – I was it.

I had learned one Bhutanese phrase in Dzongkha – “Kuzu Zangpo” (welcome, may you be blessed) – which I used to start my presentation in the morning and afternoon, and that led to delight and a resounding response from the students.  Throughout my work with them, the students have been attentive and mostly quiet – hesitant to raise their hands in response to questions – but whenever they became engaged in a question or issue under discussion (which happened increasingly as the day went on), there was a “buzz” of conversation and vigorous nodding or shaking of heads.

We started by talking about what we mean by “media” – and I included examples of a wide range of traditional Bhutanese media (thangkas, architecture, festivals, banners, prayer flags, etc.), and led a media decoding of money from 6 African countries, from the U.S., and from Bhutan. I ended by showing the new 169-foot Buddha statue, the “Wheel of Existence” thangka that Chris used last month, and the official royal photograph of the King and Queen.  Because of the feedback I had gotten from the DOIM folks, I cautioned the students to probably NOT decode these images in the classroom, given their complexity, and noted that it might be inappropriate – from a religious or government perspective – to have students analyze the authorship, purpose, meaning, etc. of those images.  Interestingly, the students disagreed – and we ended by discussing whether it might work better to show those types of images in a broader media context that would provide a different framework for the discussion – as in the use of the royal photograph in this shop window or in discussing why the U.S. news media chose to emphasize the picture of the King kissing his new queen rather than the royal photograph itself.

We sped through a lot of material – what we mean by “media literacy” and “critical thinking,” and spent much of the morning on decoding some basic media documents.   They were very engaged in decoding the paintings “Discovery of the Mississippi by DeSoto” and “The Last Supper,” and also in the decodings of two clips from the fictional film “Travelers and Magicians” in comparison with one clip from a documentary about Bhutan.  But what they loved the most was the decoding of the Nepali TV commercial for “Fair and Lovely,” a product that will make a woman’s skin softer and whiter.  This raised many issues for the students, including  who benefits from – and who might be harmed by – messages like this.

We spent the afternoon talking about ways to integrate media literacy into specific subject areas, and before the afternoon tea break I divided the whole group in half to analyze the messages and meaning of a popular Korean music video based on the KISS song “Because I’m a Girl.”  Half of the students left the auditorium to work in pairs decoding the printed lyrics of the song, while the other half worked in pairs to analyze the visual music video itself (without the sound or subtitles).   Bringing the two groups together 20 minutes later, we had the first real vigorous discussion in which students volunteered to make individual comments about the messages in the song.  Thos with the printed lyrics concluded that the messages were that girls fall in love easily and often get their hearts broken, while boys (men) don’t really care and treat poorly.  Several male students asked why I had chosen this song to decode – was it because I was a woman myself?  That led to a good laugh, and a great conversation about the choices we make as educators about what media examples to decode.  This was especially rich, since the students who saw only the video itself (without the lyrics) had come to completely different conclusions about the meaning of the story – seeing it as a sad tale of lost love, where the man sacrificed his eyesight to help restore the sight of the woman he loved.  What a great session!

How do your opinions and biases influence the choices you make as an educator about media documents to analyze and discuss?

At the end of the afternoon, following a presentation and discussion about media effects and media violence, I decided to try doing “take a stand” with the whole group of 280+ students – asking those who felt that the introduction of television and the internet had been largely bad for Bhutan to stand on one side of the room, those who felt they had been largely good for Bhutan to stand on the other side, and those who had mixed feelings to find the place in the middle that best represented their opinion.  While there were a few people on the “bad for Bhutan” side, most people lined up somewhere between the middle and the “good for Bhutan” side.  I checked in with people who were standing in different places, and there was a little shifting in attitudes as people made different statements – and a lot of interest in this as an activity that they could do with their students for topics in which there was a range of opinions.  It was a powerful way to end the day.

How could you use “take a stand” in your classroom?

Monday morning I met with Monira Tsewang, who is the Chief of the Media Literacy section of the Dept. of Information & Media (DOIM).  Mona is very enthusiastic about the integration of media literacy into the curriculum in Bhutan, and I can tell she is a little worried about how things will go in Samtse – given that it is such a large group of students to work with for 2 full days – so we talked about the different activities I might use to hold the students’ attention.  I was able to meet with the Secretary of the Department, who is also very committed to media literacy, and we discussed the possibility of having media literacy on the agenda for the annual teacher conference in Bhutan next year.

I would be traveling with members of DOIM, including Namkha (my wonderful guide and companion who will be with me throughout my trip), and our driver, Yeshi.  While waiting for the DOIM staff to finish preparing for our travel, Yeshi drove me to see the Takin national preserve in the forest above Thimphu.  The Takin is the national animal in Bhutan – found only here.

We then spent a rather harrowing two days driving from Thimphu (Bhutan’s capital city, in the Western middle of the country) to Samtse, which is on the southwest border of India. The drive down to the Indian border at Phuentsholing – about 175 km – took more than 6 hours, as everything is through the inner Himalayan mountains on tiny roads (basically one lane, but two-way) that are often gravel, with constant switchbacks and hairpin turns.  One estimate I read was that there is a turn every 9 seconds – so I was very glad to have been advised to take Dramamine.   We spent the night in Phuentsholing, continuing our journey the next morning.

Samtse is in a restricted area that few visitors travel to, and the only route possible involves going through India, entering at and then driving about 60 km west to Samste.  Northern India was intriguing – lots of tea groves, cows wandering freely everywhere, and a wide range of different types of transportation (cars, busses often decorated with Hindu imagery, large trucks, 3-wheeled mini-cars that served as taxis, trains, many bicycles, motorcycles, and both hand-pulled and bicycle rickshaws).  Many of the roads we traveled on were one long series of gigantic potholes, although unlike Bhutan the land was completely flat.  We got lost shortly after we entered India, and ended up driving 2 hours in the wrong direction, so what was supposed to be a 2-hour journey ended up as a 6 hour journey – and by the time we arrived in Samste they were ready to call out the police to find us.   They were much relieved when we finally arrived in late afternoon!