Teachers
of civics need to develop a professional appreciation for the
subconscious nature of how individuals hold political beliefs and
attitudes. George Lakoff is but one noted cognitive psychologist who
has written extensively on this topic. I recently was thumbing
through one of his books and for some reason, a recurring ad on
television came to mind.
In
a current advertisement for Fed Ex, the mailing/shipping firm, there
is an apparent rock band sitting in a hotel room watching TV when its
manager bursts in expressing anger at the fact that the media has
photos of the band members carrying their golf clubs around. He
wonders how he can sell the group as a dangerous bunch of young men
when people see them with the clubs – somehow the image of danger
and golf engenders dissonance. They need to portray hate. One of
the group claims he doesn't hate golf. Solution: get Fed Ex to ship
the clubs directly to the golf course. The manager then commands:
now learn how to destroy a hotel room and proceeds to smash a vase
full of flowers on the floor before storming out of the room. One of
the band members finishes the ad by stating he will get water for the
flowers.
Why
do I think of this ad? I know it's a joke. I know the intent is
merely to draw our attention to the message that Fed Ex, for a price,
will ship your golf clubs to just about anywhere saving you the
hassle of lugging them on planes and taxis and the like. But the
message reflects, to some degree, reality. If it didn't, it wouldn't
be funny. And what message is that; to what aspect of reality does
it allude? The reality is that there is a portion of our population
that finds it okay to destroy hotel rooms. Now in real life who pays
for that destruction? If and when a rock band destroys a room,
either the band pays for it, a publicist pays for it, or a hotel eats
the cost as the price for the attention it is getting. But who pays
for it when the culprits are a bunch of fraternity brothers having a
wild weekend? Even if the destruction is not extensive but enough to
be noticed, one can make the claim that such behavior is encouraged
by the antics of rock bands and other popular icons demonstrating
their disdain for property and authority.
Now,
if a teacher walks into a classroom and asks how many students are
dying to destroy a hotel room, I doubt hands will shoot up in the
air. And truth be told, the attitudes and motivations that lead to
such behaviors are probably not conscious. But they do set the stage
for how, to some degree, the world is seen. And the part of the
world most affected by the attitudes expressed in the ad is the
civics world. It has to do with rights and laws and economic and
political values and morals. Yes, I'm making too much of the ad. I
just felt it illustrated what Lakoff''s book is about.
What
people will tell you about their worldview does not necessarily
accurately reflect how they act. … If you ask a liberal about his
political worldview [for example], rather he will almost certainly
talk about liberty and equality, rather than about a nurturant
parent model of the family. But … such directly political ideas do
not meet our adequacy conditions; they do not explain why the various
liberal stands fit together, nor do they answer the puzzles or
account for topic choice, language choice, and modes of reason.1
As
opposed to the Fed Ex ad, there was the Sunday Morning, CBS
program, segment2
that highlighted a high school basketball game in which a player of
one team purposely threw the ball to an intellectually challenged
“player” of the other team, who was put in at the end of a game
to have his moment. He usually works as the team's equipment manager
and with a love for basketball has been a sort of spiritual leader of
the team. Up to the point when the opposing player threw him the
ball, he had missed several attempts at scoring, but this time,
having a clear shot, he made it. He had his two points. What civics
attitudes, ideals, and values were demonstrated on that high school
gym floor? They were the kind which I want to see demonstrated in my
neighborhood and community. How about you?
1Lakoff,
G. (2002). Moral politics: How liberals and
conservatives think. Chicago,
IL: The University of Chicago Press. Quotation on pp. 36-37.
2Aired
on March 3, 2013.
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