Two starts to today's lesson. The first would entail these clips:
It dawns on me that after a while, kids might not catch a William Hung reference, so feel free to just enjoy this video one without my commentary.
The question to consider is whether or not that went exactly as you thought it would? Something about Hung's appearance and behavior suggested that Simon Cowell would not be enjoying what would happen next. It is your judgement of Hung that forms the opinion before you hear him sing, which only confirms what you already decided upon in your mind. The next video obviously plays on that expectation.
A Susan Boyle reference might be closer to your memory to get the gist of what we're getting at. You can't possibly judge a book by it's cover. Unfortunately, we do -which is why we feel guilty when we're then blown away by talent. We applied the same level of judgement as we did on William Hung, and look like jerks in the process. This is our bias.
If you need an actual definition, you'd find bias as a, "prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair."
Because of our tendency to judge before actually taking the time to be considerate and listen, shows like The Voice have become a response. Case in point:
Now the idea behind The Voice is to remove all bias from the judge's path to hearing what essentially is the only important aspect of a singer -their voice. Duh. However, no one is shocked by the idea of a nun with a talented voice. Churches have songs too. The shock in this case is our bias against nuns -we don't think they're capable of being current and trendy. We don't think nuns listen to the radio. It's much like the same logic students apply towards their teachers when they make some form of cultural reference. Apparently you all think we plug into a wall and shut down at the end of the school day. We have lives too, kids. Apparently, so do nuns. Lesson learned.
We'll be progressing further with our unit on Native American writers, by covering some more recent work concerning the Native American community today. Bias is now a tool we will use to assess the writing we encounter. Now that we realize we're not all exempt from having a bias, it's an important element to identify in writing, and it relies heavily on our ability to distinguish fact from opinion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/us/wind-river-indian-reservation-where-brutality-is-banal.html?_r=0
As we cover the NY Times article, "Brutal Crimes Grip an Indian Reservation", consider the author's bias. If we can understand how the author might feel about the subject, we can then look at their motivation for writing. Questions to ask include:
How does what I'm reading tell me how the author thinks?
Why does it matter what the author is thinking?
Inversely, how might the author's opinionated thoughts affect their writing?
If I decide to side with the author's opinion, what could the author gain from my approval?
Everyone has an agenda (or motivation) behind their actions, we've established that in this class. By understanding what bias is and learning how to catch it, we can become more aware of how other's might want to try and push that agenda on you.
