The One and Only Camp Smith: Period 5- May 11th, 2007
Hello, Camp Smith campers!
The first thing that the wonderful and fabulous counselor, Ms. Smith, told us to do was to take out our handy dandy assignment notebooks from our trusty old almost-retired freshmen backpacks and write down the homework. (Even though Period 5 is better than 2nd and should never get homework, because, let's face it, we don't need it. We are just too smart.)
Ahem. The homework for May 11th, 2007 is:
~ Read Farewell to Manzanar: Chapters 20-21, and have your outstanding 3 sticky note questions ready for Monday's camp session.
~Just remember, you still have the semester project to do, so you might want to work on it.
As for the camp session for the day, it was our last day of Fishbowl this year (sniff. run to the Kleenex box for a tissue. Find with despair that the classroom doesn't have one, and walk back to your seat, sniffing with all the other campers in the room.) Mr. Fisch and Mr. Porter came to video tape our Fishbowl to use for the documentary and for Dan Maas to use for his CASE group.
The Fishbowl Discussion went as follows:
~What was the point of Chapter 18?
~What does Chapter 18 show about Papa?
~What does Papa view honor as?
~Why does Papa seem to want to prolong their way back from the camp?
~How is that like Winston giving up in 1984?
~The meaning and power in the "mother and father fighting" statement.
~How in the war, the Japanese Americans were either Japanese or American, nowhere in between.
~Are we any different now, in our society?
- Stereotypes in the book vs. today
- cultural differences in America
Mr. Fisch then jumped in to make the comment: "Where is the evidence that the media is so biased?"
Which followed by Mr. Porter stepping in and contributing with, "Are novels media?"
(What do you say guys, should we add them in our future discussions for their outstanding, discussion changing ideas?) :)
Then Ben, with his standard amazing Star Wars analogy, said that the media is a lot like the Jedi principle that says that anger feeds on actions. Brilliant, by jove! Round of applause for Ben giving us our daily Star Wars trivia!
~ Finally, Counselor Smith ended the discussion with the thought of how often do you thank people around you for what they do for you? How much is our society focused on negativity?
So, Camp Smith, that is your scribe for today, May 11th, 2007.
Toodles!
~Laura
P.S. 4 more days until school is out!
posted by Laurab @ 3:46 PM
2 Comments:
Some of you might be interested in this NPR story.
Is there bias in media? Definitely, there can be bias anytime humans are involved.
Is there media bias? I think that's a different question. Depending on how broadly you interpret that, you could be saying that all media - or a particular media outlet - has a consistent bias in one direction. That's different than saying "I've watched some stuff and those stories showed bias." You could just as easily say, "I've seen some teenagers and they're all hoodlums." I think you need more systematic evidence before making such a broad claim - especially since you're essentially repeating a claim that you've heard via - wait for it - the media.
I think you also need to be careful about comparing media that is not claiming to be unbiased (talk shows, editorials, etc.) with media that typically is claiming to be unbiased (news shows, the news portions of newspapers, etc.). And there's a difference between intentional bias, and just bad, incomplete reporting.
Finally, to refer back to the NPR story - and to Ben's insightful "killing baby turtles" comment - is the media simply giving us what we want?
I am curious what was this comment referring to, it sounds interesting.
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