Thoughts on Capitalism, A Love Story

In Michael Moore's Capitalism, a Love Story, Moore is constantly highlighting the fact that big money corporations are focused on devaluing people in order to accrue profits from consumers. With labor being the largest "obstacle" between the businesses and their profits, I'm wondering when the documentary will stop objectifying people like the banks and business have done.

I'm curious to see if Moore will acknowledge the problem in the education system. How are we going about preparing kids for this apparent future where their work will be devalued?

We're sending them to college.

In order to offshore their profits, corporations need to ensure that there is no one left in the US (where the rights supposedly are) to demand places in the labor force and the livable wages they deserve. They're lucky; they have the base of the "American Dream" to build this culture on. They tell each child, "Hey, you with the face! You know what you need? College! Stay in school! For, like, ever. Get in debt. But that's okay. The more school you get means you're this much more likely to get a better job afterwards, and then you can spend the first few decades of that career paying us back, not spending the money one yourself for your hard-earned efforts. It's gonna be good."

No one wants to be a laborer. No one wants to garden. Let's even take away the rights of those who do clean and care for us by trying to deport them because those are our jobs we don't want to do.

Composer, Medium, and Message

I was in a car with a friend listening to some his favorite old school jazz. He discussed the irony of a happy lilt and melody blended with lyrics about some lovers' suicide pact. The dark side of popular music, he said. I thought about it for a moment and mentioned Death Cab for Cutie's song "I'll Follow You into the Dark." The line, "If heaven and hell decide that the both are satisfied / And illuminate the "no"s on their vacancy signs / If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks / I'll follow you into the dark." It was an interesting remediation of a very human pain - the longing for connection in a big, dark world.

Professor Wexler implied that even speech itself is a form of media, our speech is a method by which a Composer creates a Message to their audience. If we are to reflect Aristole's triangle of argumentation, this assumption is clearly relevant. The Composer is the Media is the Message. An example I suggested was one's use of a personal Twitter feed. Someone may be more honest or less honest, depending on their relationship to their audience. Another student suggested that this relationship forces larger news corporations like CNN to forge those relationships over social media to remain relevant to their audience. The news is no longer in print, it's in pixels.

Discussed also were to concepts of immediacy and hypermediacy. Immediacy purposes to make the viewer forget the medium or form of delivery of the message. A news station might use a high definition photograph of a "disaster area" for a pathos pull on their audience. They might also attach hotlinks to the Red Cross to express urgency and reality. Hypermediacy forces the audience to mark the media of their message. The professor used the example of a Jackson Polluck painting; the message is subliminal to the method and format of the work itself.

This is a news article that uses hypermedia links to emphasize it's point. The use of hypermedia in everyday texts changes the linear methods of communication that written language has been structured on for centuries. It's rocking the boat of academics as far as what to teach students in the classroom. There is emphasis on "back to basics" using books, grammar, and work books further students' learning.

I think its the millennial responsibility to construct the future curriculum that bonds technology and text.

But the questions remain: Perhaps in future classrooms where we are the teachers, how do we work with the ideas immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation so that each term is understood? How does writing on a blog affect the written text?

Apart from formatting, I don't see much departure from academic writing in blog writing. To effectively communicate one's point of view, it's still necessary to learn the skills of rhetoric and argumentation as well as ensure argumentative credibility with grammatical strength and thorough research. However, there is stronger emphasis on audience because the audience is no longer a single bored teacher reading essays, but the whole of those with access to the internet might take up parts of an argument.

Transmedia and Accessibility

Ask me three years ago, I would have told you that I disliked the jump into technology and that I mourned the almost certain demise of paper-books. (I worked at Borders, so I was more concerned about my job security, to be honest.) But I'm finally, slowly adapting. Despite my many frustrations with my touch-screen smart phone, I know in my heart that I cannot switch back to a "dumb phone" that cannot play music or run iHeartRadio or Pandora apps.

Still, even as I embrace technology and all its advantageous gadgets and applications, I have questioned what will happen to classic literature and learning. I am the kind of person who loves being in an actual classroom for formal education. I might even use a pen and paper to take notes. On the parallel, I'm the nerd who will Wiki all the answers to all the questions. If I can blend the traditional with technology, where's everyone else?

I found the answer to my question in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a webshow on Youtube.com based on Jane Austen's classic novel, Pride and Prejudice. The story was pulled into the modern era for a modern audience. Not only was Lizzie Bennet a Southern California grad student, but she interacted with her audience "off screen" on Twitter and Tumblr. It was a new kind of story-telling, but it was the same classic story made accessible to today's young women (and men, too).

Though people who watched The Lizzie Bennet Diaries understood that the story was fictional, the pattern of bi-weekly updates and live character interaction on social media pulled that screen away and immersed the audience into the story like no cinema film or television show can do. Transmedia storytelling is still finding its footing in the mainstream. The first prolific Youtube series that went transmedia was the story of LonelyGirl15 back in the days of Myspace.com. The creators of the show didn't tell anyone that the story was fictional, so many real-life viewers believed that Bree (aka LonelyGirl15) was in real danger. Months later, the audience uncovered their plot, and the rest was history.

Storytelling like this creates a new wave of research styles and a new style of critical thinking and discussions. In the case of LonelyGirl15, it was the fans of the show who spent the time to unravel their story, both the fictional plot and the production's deception. In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, fans decided to enter the stage directly by hacking a webpage to avenge the defaming of a character. People got invested, and then they got involved. I'd like to think that this passion and creativity is a gift from technology, finding new ways to be clever and realize that sometimes the box is bigger on the inside.

Currently, the same production company that gave us The Lizzie Bennet Diaries are in the middle of a new show called Emma Approved, based on Austen's novel Emma. I'm looking forward to how this story will unfold.


I meant to post this shortly after the first week of school in relation to technology in the classroom, and then we got "real" assignments.

Young-ha Kim

As one who is aspiring to be a teacher, an instructor -- a mentor, my aim is to honor my students as human beings and nurture their development into people who will make the world a better place. It seems a lofty goal, but I want to argue that it's simpler than it seems.

Young-Ha Kim, a teacher and author in South Korea, gave this lecture for TEDTalks, a group centered around the same goal I mentioned: how to make the world a happier and fuller place for future generations.

I previously posted a video, also from TEDTalks, by Sir Ken Robinson, which examined the industrialization of education, a method that molds children into "productive" and "functional" members of society by teaching them reading, writing and 'rithmetic. Sir Robinson and Young-Ha Kim resonate the same message: the naturally creative and genius side of children of this generation is being suppressed by the requirements of this society. Society demands that children are educated to a standard so that they can get into college only to get focused into an even smaller standard so that they can do this one mundane thing for the rest of their lives.

Young-Ha Kim uses his personal experiences as a teacher/professor to give viable credit to this belief. He relates several experiments conducted - getting college students to "crazy write" and drama majors to try a different element of theater than they're used to - and when put in situations where they are forced to be creative, these students blossomed beyond expectation.

The "little artists" in everyone, Kim says, are suffocated by the "devils" of the world that demand that anything a person does must pay the rent, pay the bills and put food on the table. Creativity suffers in the world that constantly asks, "What for? Why the hell would you do that?"

Since I have a platform...

It was just another day in class, destroying brain cells by endlessly scrolling through the friend-stalker known as Facebook. I went my merry way, liking, commenting and complimenting... and then there it was... the dreaded soap box post. And I couldn't scroll past it. It ate at my mind. I needed to put my two cents in. My valuable two cents that I hoard to myself because it's mine to have. And I put it in the pot. I ended up putting in more than I bargained for, but I think I won something in the end.

In the original post, a Facebook status, the poster was very much angered by a hypocrisy seen in the church. As she sees it, the debate over whether the American dollar should continue to bear the motto "In God We Trust" takes precedence over caring for the poor and helpless in the community. And, as a believer, I agree with her on that count. I care less about what is printed on my countries currency and more about what I choose to do with the money I earn. It's fair point, even in the words of Jesus -- what is Caesar's belongs to Caesar's, and what is God's belongs to God.

While I would be highly disappointed that "In God We Trust" is removed from my money -- the symbolic meaning of its removal being that the country no longer honors God -- the money isn't me. The money does not define my faith. The slogan removed is neither detrimental nor beneficial to American society - her nations leaders will glorify or damn the name of God in whichever ways they humanly choose. And they can do that with the currency because that is theirs to do so. They, however, cannot shake my personal faith or dictate my personal choices (yet). I give myself to God, and the best way to show that is to give to other people, for in giving to them we are giving it all to Him.

At this point, the conversation deviated from simple separation of church and state into whether evolution, science, religion and intelligent design should be taught in public classrooms. Party One (the original poster) insisted that religion should be shoved into an all-encompassing, while the second party (a Christian angered by those who are stubbornly ignorant and brusque to her about her beliefs) desired that both theories be taught in a classroom, especially from the Christian point of view. The posts were laced with personal attacks, and the debate was turning into an ugly rant at this point, instead of an intelligent and enlightening discussion with the original poster scoffing at assumed resistance to evolution being taught in a church.

I interjected at this point that I, personally, would allow evolution to be taught in my church. I'd rather give people a choice, an informed choice, before choosing to follow. It makes the choice more genuine, more faithful. And here I laughed because the original poster felt it appropriate to tell me that there are those who unite the idea of creation and evolution.

I am one of those people. I have seen that there's enough proof to make an argument for creation in what we already know and have seen in this universe. Whether it's a good argument is up to the hearer. I've seen legitimate arguments with reasonable proof go both ways. Belief is faith and choice, even when it comes to observable science.  Religion might less be science, but it's viable human history and completely human right. Keeping either from connecting to the other produces crass, biased and unrounded elitists with closed minds and hardened hearts.

I walked away from this conversation having been told that I will go unblessed by God because I choose to let the gay agenda persecute the church with their removal of "In God We Trust" from the dollar bill. That, I can assure you, is the least of my worries. The other hand holds me in a place where someone's mind has opened up to the fact that there are faithful and educated Christians who are logical and not blinded by this petty war of words that keeps us from ministering to those in need to God's love.