Dear friends, clients, and other acquaintances:

I am excited to announce The 6Teens Project, an ever-expanding trove of short, thematic videos in which teens discuss with candor the people and learning environments they find most helpful. Each video is designed to be a patch of a larger quilt which taken as a whole can help us better understand adolescents and how to serve them. The 6Teens Project is an opportunity for teens to help shape a conversation about what adults can do to better understand and connect with them. I trust you will find their responses as fascinating and inspiring as I do.

It’s simple and free to access The 6Teens Project videos:

1. Watch – Videos are available on The 6Teens Project Channel. You can also watch the videos on YouTube.

2. Subscribe – Receive new episodes as we post them. (Just click Subscribe on Vimeo or YouTube.)

3. Participate – Share this resource with others and let me know how it has informed your work.

In response to The 6Teens Project I have enhanced my training workshops to incorporate not only cutting-edge brain development research but also insights from teens themselves into how to build meaningful, lasting connections with them, as expressed in 6Teens discussions.  If you are interested in learning more about these workshops send me an email.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!

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In the foreword to his book Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman differentiates between George Orwell’s and Aldous Huxley’s prophesies for the future. Postman devotes the remainder of his book to demonstrating how Huxley, not Orwell, is right. The following excerpt from Postman’s foreword illustrates how he views these contrasting perspectives:

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

Postman argues that the media and its ability to amuse us has played an enormous role in our becoming a bibliophobic, information-gluttonous culture for whom truth is as interesting as reruns of Flipper. If Postman is correct, how can we square off with this nearly ubiquitous force? Increase our media literacy.

Years ago I met with a group of teens in a focus group. Part of our conversation included a discussion about the media. One of the teens admonished, “Nothing makes teens angrier than when they realize something is controlling them. If you want teens to resist the power of the media, help them see the ways the media controls them!” He had a point. Teens despise control; recognize how the media controls them and teens might be less likely to fall prey to the media’s persuasion. This is part of the picture, but I think we can build on it.

Media literacy is similar to reading literacy: to be more literate we must grasp the languages to such a degree that we’re able to comprehend the meaning implicit in their message. We must pay close attention not only to what they say, but how they deliver their message. A person is more literate in regard to reading when she is able to not merely read the words, but can grasp the craft of writing, language, plot development, and context. Media literacy is more than hearing and understanding the message from the media. We can broaden our media literacy, as we do with reading literacy, by examining the modes by which media communicate their message.

Grab a magazine and flip to an advertisement. What is the message of the advertisement? Now consider how the ad delivers its message. What tactics does the ad employ to endear you to the product? Where in the magazine does the ad appear and why would that matter? Consider what you would see if you could broaden the frames of the photography in the ad. What are they not showing in the ad and why? What don’t they include in this pseudo-reality that we know to be true about real reality? We can develop similar questions for other media that can help us expand our media literacy.

The media’s power to warp reality is alarming. Yet the task of developing media literacy is not anti-media: It is a quest to understand what the media does to us and its potential to erode our autonomy as free-thinking individuals grounded in reality. A camera, for example, cannot capture reality. “Not only can the camera lie; it always lies,” goes Malcolm Muggeridge’s famous saying. Yet we can readily confuse the images for what is real and true.

What are we to do? We gain independence from the media and regain a footing in reality when we work to comprehend the media languages and how they communicate their messages. We then not only understand media messages, more importantly, we recognize how the media communicates.

Boosting our media literacy is a worthy and difficult task. For more reading on this topic, consider reading more of Neil Postman’s work. Propaganda and The Technological Society, by Jacques Ellul, also address this topic with remarkable clarity.

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A few weeks ago our family toured the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun in Tucson, Arizona, a small campus of adobe structures and the home of famed artist Ettore “Ted” DeGrazia until his death in 1982. With his own ingenuity and effort, DeGrazia designed and built numerous structures on-site, including a gallery, his house, and an open-air chapel. Behind his house is a shack, now in disuse and clad in boards—presumably one of his original studios. We peeked through a knothole and could see old furniture. One of my daughters spotted a well-baked snake upon one of the tables. On the way back to the car my wife stopped and looked into a ground squirrel hole. She suggested I take a look. I peered in and saw a large snake. Our kids gathered around. They, too, could see the dark mottled skin of a bull snake. For a few moments we studied the snake and then loaded in the car.

Wouldn’t you think that our children, when asked to recount our visit, would at least mention the artwork, the unique structures, or the craftsmanship? How could they not? It was all around us. Yet when telling others about our visit to the gallery, their account begins and ends with the snakes. 

Does this mean my children did not learn anything? Was the outing lost on them? We can mistakenly believe that, because others may not highlight details we deem essential to a subject, they have not learned anything. Many of the groups I work with confront this phenomenon on a routine basis. They are bringing a message of health and wellbeing they dearly want youth to embrace. In the process they include potent facts and data—and may be disheartened when students do not with absolute clarity reflect back this valuable information. On surveys and in focus groups it is common for students to highlight aspects most of us would consider footnotes. We take seriously what students report, and use their feedback to strengthen future efforts. But we ought not be distraught and assume students have learned little when they don’t say what we hoped they would say.

Every one of us is able to articulate only a fraction of what exists in our subconscious. Learning experiences, be they field trips or classroom activities, help create a larger context within the unseen, ineffable crannies of our minds. This context serves a critical purpose, like the background of a painting. A painter typically paints a background first, moving in subsequent layers toward the details contained in the foreground. Diverse and stimulating learning experiences construct a background upon which we can add details through ensuing life encounters. That we cannot articulate in detail the existence and the nature of this background does not mean it isn’t there, or relevant. 

Particulars are important to learning, but they will be most powerful in a context wherein they gain meaning. Imagine how the image of American Gothic would change if skyscrapers replaced a southern Iowa cottage as the background of Grant Wood’s masterpiece. The background gives the two figures in the foreground a particular significance. Our tendency is to invert this relationship, emphasizing the so-called facts that compose the foreground. Though kids may be able to recount such facts with remarkable accuracy, they remain suspended—segregated from a context necessary to provide meaning. 

As a parent and educator I have to be patient as my children and students build their background layers and prepare to add details. Had my wife and I gone into our DeGrazia tour with the strong conviction that “Our children will learn about Ettore DeGrazia and gain an appreciation for his art!” we would have been frustrated and disappointed. Yet, because of the critical role I believe background plays, I’m confident they did learn something valuable upon which they can add detail. Appreciating this larger perspective can help us focus on bringing life and richness to the larger context within which effective learning takes place. 

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