Violence in the media has an effect, and it's hard to say what that affect is. I have played some violent video games in my past, and I have watched violent media too, but I feel that I am able to discern from fiction and non-fiction, truth from reality. But not all folks can do this. The obedient will fall prey to any schemer out there, and so if a student has an impressionable mind, then they will succumb to doing whatever their video games tells them to do.
While the obedient are an easy prey, so are those who live in violent neighborhoods, neighborhoods that reek with poverty, drug abuse, and criminal activity. It's hard to blame the entertainment industry when the streets are a gang warzone, with the police included in that violent sphere of influence, as well as the public educational system. Maslow's Hierarchy (1943) teaches us that unless a student has all of their needs met, from their Physiological Needs (food, water, shelter, warmth), Safety Needs (security of body, employment, resources, morality, family, health, and property), Love and Belonging Needs (friendship, family, sexual intimacy), and Self-Esteem needs (which comes by way of efficacy and love and belonging), then they'll never achieve Self-Actualization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
In a privileged culture, which values our networks moreso than our talents, we're forced to reexamine ourselves. 90-95% of the educational field is taught by white women, white women, most of whom have never had to live the drab day-to-day life of a young black woman or young Black man, or poor whites for that matter, of having to live in the violent ghetto. Just recently, there was a homeless boy murdered in the streets of Louisville. http://www.wave3.com/story/26677476/lmpd-family-not-suspected-in-murder-of-boy-found-hurt-in-cherokee-park Immediately after this story gained a bunch of coverage, it was discovered that the father had an outstanding arrest warrant for him, and now he's being skirted off to jail. This leaves the mother and the rest of her children still homeless. We haven't fixed the problem, and collectively, we've destroyed this family.
12 year old Ray Allen Ethridge was the 7th grader who was murdered. He checked out of school at 1pm, and was found dead 5 hours later. Master P, a hip hop artist, is the one who is paying for the funeral expenses. Is that what our society has been reduced to? We're relying on the entertainment artists to pay for their funeral costs, meanwhile, this same family's homeless is still an issue, only worse so, because now their father is in jail.
Since schools are in the center of our communities, then they should take the forefront in leading from the front, instead of from behind. It makes no sense to force that 7th grader to read books, and engage in discussions, when he needs a home, with some food, water, and warmth. Not just that, but he's still got his Safety Needs, his Love and Belonging Needs, as well as his Self-Esteem Needs still left out. A homeless child is too far away from having all of the essentials in life that say his more wealthy middle class colleagues have. When all of these needs are met, then excelling in Calculus, or Science, or whatever subject that is put in front of him, doesn't mean a hill of beans, if all that's going to happen is that he's going to get shot up. And while the situation appears to be isolated, Ray Allen Ethridge wouldn't have been in that situation to begin with had he had all of his needs met. Homelessness is a form of child abuse, and I do not know the family's circumstance, but at the very least, his homelessness could have been reported, and maybe child services could have done something about it. In fact, in Louisville, there's over 10,000 homeless children in Louisville. http://www.wave3.com/story/15117064/1-out-of-9-jcps-students-homeless. Poverty by itself shows that our capitalistic system has failed, but the homelessness epidemic is affecting our children. We have trillions to bomb 3rd world countries, but we don't have any money for our children? What's worse, is that there's 24 vacant houses for every homeless person we have here in America. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/03/1061611/-STUNNING-When-a-Single-Image-Cuts-to-the-Core-of-an-American-Injustice So while we can raise standards, and force fed our students a ton of lectures, of which, only 5% is retained, but until we actually attack the root problems of out society, we'll never fix what needs to be fixed.
Ralph Nader wrote about a school, of which I've never been able to rediscover once I read it, where they did a self-assessment of their own school, and of their own conditions. It's one thing to hear a politician speak about the perils of our society, but when our own children are pointing out the dilapidated schools, the outdated textbooks, the lack of critical thinking, or learning, and the crime wave they have to endure, by walking the long way home, or having their house broken into, the affect is all together different. Those who live in already violent neighborhoods, where police who shoot first, and ask questions later, they have a different reality to live than the rest of the students do. www.NationalPolicingReforms.org put out a meme that said that Black Americans are being murdered at the same rate as Blacks were being lynched during the Jim Crow Era. And while racism is a big issue our country is faced with, the poverty, the crime, the police brutality, all of it equates to something larger. Our society has failed these folks, and public education was meant to be for everybody.
We have major issues facing our nation, and until we confront these deeply entrenched societal values, they'll never get better, and we'll be force feeding students who will forget all that they “learned” immediately when they go back onto the mean streets, or underneath the bridge they live under. We're not educating anybody, except to ignore each other, and our circumstances. Schools are the perfect tools which to confront these ills. They can be the main advocates for changing our society for the better, so that everybody has an equal chance, equal opportunity, and let all of them attempt to achieve the American Dream.
So blaming the violent images on our TV screens doesn't go far enough. It may or may not have some effect, but the effect it has is based on the conditions on the ground. If the conditions on the ground show that they live in violent neighborhoods, then those images will speak to a reality that not many are familiar with, and that they can relate to. When a teenager has already lost several friends to stupid acts of violence, that only had $50 dollar shoes as the main target, or over some petty beef, the schools are merely mocking their already horrid lives, and if TV and entertainment can give them some comfort from those same conditions, then I can't be mad at them. The schools have let those students down, in many ways: by not confronting and fixing those serious issues, and by diverting their, and everybody else's attention to things that do not matter to those in serious jeopardy, which in turn makes the other students complacent, in the face of the real horror our children are being subjected to, at no fault of their own.
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