In high school I wrote an opinion page piece about the public school nuisance Channel One. Never heard of it? Basically, a company installed TVs is participating districts’ classrooms in exchange for 12 minutes each day of undivided student attention for a news program interspersed with commercials.
When I was in high school, back when Anderson Cooper worked for the program, I thought Channel One was more like commercials interspersed with news, and so I wrote about all the things I’d learned during those last 12 minute segments of my many school days: Big Red’s cinnamony ability to let you kiss a little longer, and so on. You get the picture, and I’ve not been alone in my outrage.
Now, as a teacher, I’ve come to appreciate Channel One a little more. Much of the coverage is soft–an up-and-coming trend, a featured school sporting play of the week, a look at dating violence–but daily headlines make it in, too, and are explained in a way my seventh grade students can grasp.
The commercials have improved, too. Many of them are no longer candy and gadget oriented; instead, they tout facial creme, college search help, and a subtle navy ad (Approximation: “Mom, have you thought about–.” “How you want to be part of something bigger than yourself? … I’m thinking about it.”).
My favorite commercial by far, however, is a public-service type ad about respect. It shows a teenager listening to his blasting earbuds at a crosswalk. His face shows uncomfortable surprise when the little old lady next to him puts her hand in the crook of his arm. He reaches up and pulls out an earbud and looks uneasily at her.
“May I walk you across the street?” she asks him.
“Uh,” he says. “Uh, sure.” And then, a moment later, “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she says.
“Hey, guys,” I said this week to my students, “that’s an example of two types of irony–verbal and situational. Verbal because when she says, ‘May I walk you across the street?’ what she’s really saying is, ‘Would you please walk me across the street.’ And it’s situational irony because we don’t expect her to say that in the first place.”
“Oh yeah, it is,” one student responded.
2 Comments
Happypappy
I always muted the ads. Can you do that? Otherwise, much is presented to broaden students' education, as evidenced by your use of the infomercial.
current typist
Alas, I cannot–the remotes for those blasted TVs are long gone, and there's no mute button on the unit itself. I sometimes just turn them down, though–and tell students to talk amongst themselves, please.