Talking Points IV- Christiansen

I believe that Christiansen's argument is that when we are teachers and we are in the classroom teaching, we tend to not teach "everything" the students need to know. We tend to hide them from the media and what other adults (mostly) say. That's what I think Christiansen means by the "secret education" In my opinion you can't keep important information about our society from our students. They're going to learn some day about sex, racism, etc. so why not teach them early? Don't be afraid to tell them becuase it's ok. Another point that Christainsen argues is that does society really show us how to live? Or does it not show us how to live and we figure out how we live on our own type of thing? There's something called in our history called the "melting pot" and immigration. People from Europe and other continents came over here to America to try and teach themselves and others how to live and that's how I think it is today and should be. We can't "accept" the way the world is portrayed like she said. We should live our own life yes,but also teaching one another things is important and there's always room for change.

I liked how she portrayed the "Black Cinderella" and showed her students what kind of society we live in. It really made them think when they had to write their own essay. It made them express their own feelings. One students said "I'm not taking my kid to any Disney movie unless they have a black woman playing the leading role." That goes to show the other students and the teacher in the class how they feel about racism and black people in our society. It's just not in Disney's Cinderella, mostly all of Walt Disney's movies were about racism as they were made in the 1940's-present.

Another example that Christiansen portrayed really well was having the students look at and depicture cartoons such as Daffy Duck and Elmer Fud. It tried to show that men were the dominant one more than women. We live in a society where we are all created equal. It's good to teach students that one doesn;t have more control over than the other one even if thy're female. We see that even women can be dominate sometimes. I know I have definitely seen it over the years.

To me, living in our society is all about learning for yourself, figuring things out on your own, and being independent. There's nothing wrong with needing help sometimes. If you fall down, pick yourself up, and dust yourself off. We shouldn;t live by the way society tells us to. We need to be our own person and we need to not keep "secret information" from our children.