It’s Not “Just a Joke”
- It’s Not “Just a Joke”
- Teaching Tolerance - Submitted by Monita K. Bell on October 6, 2016
- Article Link
- Key Points: Author Monita Bell writes about a recent "Watters' World" segment that appears on Fox News. In the segment, Jesse Watters interviews residents of New York City's Chinatown about the presidential debate. She addresses political humor and how the interview is a prime example of privilege in today's society.
- Relevance: "It is imperative that we—especially those of us who educate and otherwise influence young people—think about the power of our words, even our jokes." I couldn't agree more with Bell on this topic and as a teacher who tries to incorporate humor into lessons and enjoys sarcasm I think that it's extremely important that we consider our audience and the message we may or may not be portraying to our students. With the upcoming presidential election, our students will be exposed to various media reports such as these and it's important that we don't encourage the stereotyping that is being displayed.
Looks like you were a step ahead of me. Very nice article choice by the way ;) I also like to use humor in the classroom and when monitoring lunches to help make connections with the students. I think the article does a great job of showing exactly why we need to be careful with the type of jokes we use as educators. As you say, our students are exposed to a great deal of media, most of it is from Facebook and other social media which use memes to joke about different situations. It is very important we do not perpetuate the negative jokes which divide us as people.
ReplyDelete(Side note: Professor this is not one of my responses for the requirements of the class.)
I think that humor is very important to engage students. The only issue I see in my school is that with the number of English language learners this can be an issue. These students may not understand silver linings of the jokes or the sarcasm and may lead to explaining the meaning of the joke. As well as you, I agree that we need to consider our audience and how it will influence their views. Great selection!
ReplyDeleteLike Graham and the two other comments on this post, I too agree that using humor can be a very useful and powerful way to engage our students. We as teachers have the ability to influence our students through our words and our jokes. We need to be especially careful that the jokes and humor that we use is portraying the right kind of message. I agree with Alejandra in the fact that especially English language learners might have a more difficult time understanding the meaning of a joke and taking it more literally than it is meant to be. We need to be aware of our audience when thinking about the types of humor we are using.
ReplyDeleteGreat choice of article, Graham. So true that words can be powerful weapons. They can be sharp as a sword, or soft as a downy feather. It is not only jokes, though, that we need to be careful with. Our whole language usage: vocabulary and intonation, these are also powerful. We can use our own words to perpetuate stereotypes within ourselves. Think of the power and value that is lost when we use the word 'like' indiscriminately. It makes our words less certain and makes us appear as though we are asking permission to have a thought. Our thoughts are not definite; they are 'like' something, which is not the same as actually being something.
ReplyDeleteAs educators we have a duty to our students to teach them the strength and power of words. We have to model for students how jokes can be funny while not being at another's expense. We have to model using words to elevate others, not tear them down.