Guided Response: Review your classmates’ posts and write a minimum 150-word response to at least two of them. Explain if you agree or disagree with the values they have identified. Also, state whether you agree or disagree with the implications for education that they have cited and make additional suggestions about the implications of the values that they have identified.
By: Shena
The two values that are currently affecting American Society are “We”/”Me” and “heroes”/”cover girls”. Both of these values go hand in hand with one another. We used to live in a society which we all helped one another without wanting anything in return. There were times you didn’t know you had heroes living next door to you because he didn’t want you to know and he didn’t need it to be known. But all of that has changed in today’s society. Today’s society is mostly worried about impressing other people rather than doing things for them. The cause of this drastic change is because of mass media. You have media outlets showing that we are living in a world where every man is for himself. People are not helping their neighbors anymore. Instead people are putting down their neighbors, to build themselves up. They don’t realize that we are stronger as a people if we work together. Social media has also made it easier for people to “show off”. You have people who will record themselves giving money to the homeless and then posting it online for likes. Why must one feel they need to be noticed and receive a pat on the back in order to do something nice for someone? It has me wondering if they would do good deeds if the entire world wasn’t watching. In my current career as an Army Soldier, we must rely on one another often but some seem to forget that they didn’t get where they are on their own. Everything we do is a team effort and if everyone starts to just think about themselves, the mission will never get done. As Soldiers—we are your everyday hero. If we start to do good deeds just for likes, civilians wouldn’t know if we were doing things because of a good heart or not. These values can affect education and how we implement education. Do we want to teach our children that they can only count on themselves, to put down others to build themselves up, and that they should worry about what others think and do things for likes? No, we do not want to teach our children that. We want to make the world a better place for our children. We want our children to lives a better life than we did. If we know things are not working for us the way they are now, then things has to change.
References
Hall, G.E., Quinn, L.F., & Gollnick, D.M. (2014). Introduction to Teaching: Making a Difference
in Student Learning. Los Angeles: Sage Publishing.
By: Katrina
Childhood obesity is something that is now far too common in our children. In the 1950’s women often stayed home while men went to work. Moms were there to make home-cooked meals. As more and more households have dual working parents, fast food has become a daily meal for some versus a treat once in a while. Parents are too tired or too busy to cook so they feed their family some sort of fast food meal, processed meal, or something that is quick, easy, and nowhere near nutritious. Pair poor eating habits with children not playing outside and sitting around watching television, playing video games, or being on some form of electronic, and you’ve got a recipe for overweight and/or sick children. According the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “The percentage of children aged 6-11 years in the United Sates who were obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 18% in 2012. Similarly, the percentage of adolescents aged 12-19 years who were obese increased from 5% to nearly 21% over the same period” (CDC, 2015, para. 1). If more parents cooked with whole unprocessed foods, children would not be obese or battling illnesses that were uncommon 50 years ago.
Mass media has not really focused on childhood obesity. There are several documentaries that focus on families eating better and reducing the obesity rate. In my opinion, I think that the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies don’t want people to eat better. When people get sick and stay sick, they need medications to live. If people ate healthy and got off of those medications, there is no money to be made by big pharmaceutical companies. As educators, we also need to educate the importance of eating right and getting exercise.
Bullying and cyber bullying is far too common nowadays. Bullies have been around forever but now there are new platforms for kids to bully other kids. Bullies were only able to bully others face to face usually at school or while walking home in the same direction. Now kids can cyber bully other kids. They can send mean texts, say mean things via social media, or post and circulate pictures or memes of the victim. This means that the victim can now be bullied 24/7. The bully has access to their victim’s life and can usually get others in on the bullying. Children are now committing suicide due to this form of bullying. Just recently, a 15 year old girl committed suicide because her so called friends took video of her showering without her knowing and shared it on Snapchat. Parents need to be monitoring their children’s social media if they’re going to allow them to access it. What age is a good age to allow your children on certain social networks? Children are not taught the value of life any more. Just looking on Facebook and seeing some comments that adults make, I can see exactly how that happened.
References
Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (August, 2015). Childhood Obesity Facts. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/obesity/facts.html