Criticizing Capitalism in Classrooms: Taboo? or Good Citizenship?
Published May 11, 2009 @ 10:23PM PT
The New York Times published an article this week on how teachers in classrooms around the world are using the environmental advocacy video, "The Story of Stuff," to get students to think about the consequences of our high-consumption, throw-away lifestyles. Teachers, scientists, and curriculum experts all agree that textbooks do a horrible job covering this topic, and argue that global warming and other environmental crises make it too important to ignore, or to give the three-paragraph short shrift alloted to it by textbooks. Here's the video on YouTube (the Story of Stuff website has a Flash version, with many resources not available on YouTube):
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The Times gives two examples of evidence that the video works to make students re-think their consumption habits: a 9-year-old boy struggles over the consequences of buying a Lego set at a "big box" store, and a high school senior persuades her mother to stop buying bottled water - "the bottles don't just disappear after we use them" - and to install a tap filter instead.
Some parents, though, complain that it is "anticapitalist" and "biased," and object to its use in the classroom.
Their complaints raise interesting questions: Is capitalism a subject that is to be shielded from criticism in classrooms out of ideological loyalty? Is capitalism unable to change and adapt in the face of emergent signs of its unsustainability? Or can shining an honest spotlight on its problems in classrooms lead to next-generation entrepreneurs and policy-makers who lead capitalism in healthier and more sustainable directions in the future?
As for that "bias" charge, it points, as member Jodi Rice points out, to recent discussions in this space about teaching students to think critically about their textbooks. One teacher using "The Story of Stuff" in his classroom in Portola Valley, California, did exactly that: he had his students create a series of video responses to the film, criticising what they felt was a too-heavy reliance on fear and a too-light inclusion of constructive suggestions. Here's the first video:
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More interesting was what happened next: students at a school in Mendocino, California saw the students' video, and made their own to suggest the kind of constructive responses possible. "Don't be scared," they say: "Here are your options." And here they are:
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It's all so interesting on so many levels. I wonder if Portola students ever responded to their peer teachers in Mendocino. It's certainly nothing like the analog schooling of my childhood.
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Comments (18)
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Author
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Clay is an American high school Humanities teacher, technology coach, and Apple Distinguished Educator who has taught for the last eight years in Asian international schools. According to law, he's married to his wife. According to his wife, he's married to his Mac.
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Great post Clay. Side note before I start- how cool is it that as our webs get more tangled our connections start to intersect more and more. The teacher you mentioned from Portola is actually becoming a pretty good friend of mine, although we have never met. We exchange ideas through Twitter, Facebook, gmail, and each other’s blogs. He is on the board of a school in Kenya which I have very close ties to as well.
I just wanted to mention that because I think you two would have a lot to gain from each other.
Now onto dismantling capitalism in the classroom! Like religion, sex, and other taboo classroom topics, capitalism has become a sort of given truth that both students and teachers are forced to assume is the only option. To doubt the free market, globalization, and the state of the new world order is tantamount to heresy.
In the US to even mention words like Socialism and communism is to render yourself a pariah. I am not hear to expose the virtues of proletariat revolution, but I do feel it is vital that students are given opportunities to question our wasteful ways of living and try to create alterative economic systems that may help to create a planet where my daughter will be able to live.
We don’t have a choice but to question capitalism, because it is lead us toward extinction. It may seem like taboo now, but in 50 years our children will as why we didn’t do anything sooner.
Posted by Jabiz Raisdana on 05/11/2009 @ 10:51PM PT
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Jabiz, I wonder if we have to think of criticism and reform in terms of "dismantling" capitalism (and if there are other models and lexicons we can think of as alternatives besides the Marxist one). But other than those little quibbles, your "50 years later" finale was well-put indeed.
Posted by Clay Burell on 05/12/2009 @ 01:03PM PT
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Clay, I completely agree with you when you say we should be looking for models beyond Marxism. We have somehow been forced to understand the discussion in the middle of a continuum, which places Capitalism on one side and Marxism on the other. This outdated Cold War mentality still polarizes opposing parties and does nothing for creating a sustainable economic system that will help alleviate the strain on our planet.
Having said that, I think there is no way to move toward this new system without first taking a critical view of capitalism, and no honest view can be achieved without at least first understanding Marxism and its most basic critiques of Capitalism.
In short, teachers cannot be afraid to tackle both isms in order to move beyond them.
Posted by Jabiz Raisdana on 05/12/2009 @ 09:27PM PT
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You really need to figure out what capitalism is. All of you do. This video is railing against consumerism and waste, not capitalism. Would you like to be slaves of the government? No? Then capitalism is your only choice (or anarcho-capitalism, but that's just a flavor).
Posted by E G on 05/15/2009 @ 08:28PM PT
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E G, I always balk at "slaves to the government" rhetoric.
And for the record, note that the critics of the video mentioned in the post? They were the ones saying it was "anticapitalist," and thereby implying that's somehow taboo, the current videos notwithstanding.
And I'm with you on the superiority of capitalism. Several million live in unemployed freedom, tens of thousands (too conservative?) living free of any shelter at all....that's proof enough for me that capitalism is our only choice.
The bunch of losers without jobs and homes deserve it. Screw 'em. They can't handle freedom, it's not my fault, and not the system's. They should have gone into finance or lobbying.
Posted by Clay Burell on 05/15/2009 @ 11:07PM PT
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Thanks for writing this article up. As the Portola Valley teacher who made the video with his students, I'm flattered that you think we did it right by being skeptical.
I wanted to comment because I think it's worth mentioning something that, quite surprisingly, the New York Times left out. It wasn't just the high school in Mendocino who responded to our video. In fact, Annie Leonard herself contacted me about my class' video. Being as she is from Berkeley, and we're just across the bay, she wanted to meet us and answer our questions. After a month or so of trying to get our schedules to work, she was true to her word and ended up meeting with my class in my living room in San Francisco. We recorded the whole thing, and posted it as a part of a podcast series that the class works on.
Last year (after our interaction happened), Andy Carvin reported on this story and included all the details at his PBS Learning Now site, including the follow-up conversation with Annie. You can read that story at this link: http://tinyurl.com/ywxkrf
I point this out for a few reasons. First off, I think it's pretty damn cool and worth mentioning that Annie Leonard took the time to meet with us. But beyond that, I think it gives significant credibility to your last line...how different schooling is today from how it used to be. Through youtube, we engaged in a conversation with Annie Leonard. She heard us, and wanted to continue the conversation. For posterity sake, we recorded it and broadcast it on the web.
Thanks again for writing about this. My biggest hope in all of this, when it started and still today, is to demonstrate to students that their voices can matter. If they say it right, they are not necessarily just shouting into the void, but can potentially find themselves face-to-face with the distant person they want answers from in the first place.
Posted by Mark Lukach on 05/11/2009 @ 11:13PM PT
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Mark, it's great to hear from you hear (and it's great that Jabiz is our one degree of separation).
My wife's calling for me, so I'll just quickly a) ask if that podcast is still out there anywhere, and b) say that your avatar may be the best one I've ever seen. Seriously. I love it. Fun as all heck.
Posted by Clay Burell on 05/12/2009 @ 01:06PM PT
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Mark, as a person who thought, "That's so damned cool that he had his kids do a critique of the videos (instead of just taking them at face value and ending there) AND that they got a response from other kids about it," let me add that it's so damned cool that you got the response from Annie Leonard and that your kids had the benefit of having a real-world audience (both peer and authoritative) for their real-world questions.
Posted by Jodi Rice on 05/12/2009 @ 06:42PM PT
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Thank you for introducing this video to me. I'm going to watch this with my two older kids and I hope we can investigate to find new ways to reduce consumption as well as introduce it to the group of youth volunteers I work with. I think a lot of the problem is that we don't see the whole picture. If we see it and ignore it or make an excuse as to why we don't have to look at it, that is shameless.
I think this should be in every classroom and shown to all adults with an additional 10 minutes on safe, low resource product alternatives and other solutions like the last video here. Great post!
Posted by Michele Rodriguez on 05/12/2009 @ 12:41AM PT
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I think the videos are a good eduaction source for the students of today, because it shows them the truth of what is happening to the planet we live in and if some parents thinks it is wrong, they need to rethink that when they are gone and dead.. this planet is left to the next generation to take care of it. I believe the students learning about this will prepare them for their future and hopefully come up with better ideas to recycle, reuse,reduce the junk that is bought from wal mart.
Thanks for the videos
Posted by Lara Nunes on 05/12/2009 @ 03:57AM PT
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another good source for questioning capitalism is united for a fair economy: http://www.faireconomy.org/
they have links to curriculum that questions the uneven distribution of wealth in our society.
Posted by jessica shiller on 05/12/2009 @ 08:27AM PT
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Just wanted to add this to the conversation:
http://greenlagirl.com/2009/05/13/an-anti-capitalist-video-guide-to-happiness/
Posted by Jabiz Raisdana on 05/15/2009 @ 02:59AM PT
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Don't forget, the first literary person to question/critique "Capitalism" was Karl Marx. To this day, his philosophy on Political Economy still holds true even though his name has been demonized by Right-wingers.
Posted by Al Nava on 05/15/2009 @ 11:07AM PT
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It sure held true for Russia and China. Wow, those were some great systems of government under Mao and Stalin. Viva Revolution!
Posted by E G on 05/15/2009 @ 08:30PM PT
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I was going to reply, but realized it's E G again, who seems to have been living under a rock since the free market went into a free fall.
Ah, hell with it. E G, I lived in Shanghai for the first five years of this century. It's come a long way since Mao. You should catch up a bit.
Posted by Clay Burell on 05/15/2009 @ 11:10PM PT
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I agree with many of the points about anti-consumerism and throw-away lifestyles. We should try to be less wasteful as much as is possible. Yet, the various half-truths and nebulous statistics (completely uncited most of the time) were dispicable and obviously biased.
The most laughable part was the entire section about computers. She outright lies about the "1 chip" that changes every year. All the components change - the RAM gets faster, the video cards improve, the transistor technology allows more transistors per chip, leading to faster processors, etc. The point about monitors was terrible as well. Should we simply neglected to invent LCD monitors because we might be tempted to throw away CRTs? NO. That would be stupid. Following that logic, we shouldn't have invented plastics, and should have just stuck with glass because plastics might tempt us to get rid of that dastardly breakable glass.
There are problems in our economic system, but there is NO problem with capitalism at its core. Increasing competition, removing the government from interfering with business failure and success as much as possible, and enforcing free enterprise are some of the best things we have in this country.
We have seen time and time again that governments are NOT omniscient, and cannot allocate goods as well as a market economy. It's simply impossible. While improvements to the current system of manufacturing and waste disposal can definitely be made, as well as lifestyle changes, these has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism.
Posted by E G on 05/15/2009 @ 08:44PM PT
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Yep. We don't want government interfering with AIG, Goldman Sacks, and all the other hedge fund types hornswoggling the gullible with Ponzi schemes.
Long live Enron.
Posted by Clay Burell on 05/15/2009 @ 11:11PM PT
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Dear Clay,
I would love to see this post split into several different pieces--the video is interesting, but its mistakes lessen its impact, and we need real discourse here. Still, I think how we present information to students (and how this video both works and fails) would be a powerful thread.
Capitalism deserves its own post, starting with some definition of what we're all talking about. The model using "immortal" corporations that externalize and hide their costs and require continued growth cannot be sustained.
Finally, how teachers (agents of the government) can encourage students to question assumed truths in a culture could be another fine thread deserving its own post.
Posted by Michael Doyle on 05/17/2009 @ 03:43AM PT
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