In this lesson students develop an awareness of the ways in which public perceptions regarding young people have been affected by media portrayals of youth violence and youth crime.
Diversity in Media
This lesson develops a beginning awareness by students of how they feel towards, and respond to, different sports, and how the media represents athletics.
This lesson encourages children to explore the differences between their real families and TV families by imagining how their own families might be portrayed on a television show.
Racial stereotypes abound on television, and children's programming is no exception. The turban-wearing bad guy, the brainy Asian, and the Black basketball whiz are just a few of the stereotypes reinforced in children's cartoons, films and TV shows. Spotting these stereotypes is often difficult for children; to them, the tomahawk-wielding Indian or the Asian karate expert is a familiar, easily-understood and often funny character. So how do you help children understand these images for what they are – oversimplified, generalizations?
The media help to construct our perception of the world in which we live. But what happens when media representations omit or distort whole groups of people? In this section, we explore issues of diversity representation and showcase efforts to counter stereotyping and promote more accurate portrayals.
More often than not, we're assigned a gender identity before we're even born, and media provide a lot of the messages we get about that identity. In this section, we unpack some of the media's baggage around gender.