Matthew+Inglese

Matthew Inglese Reflection 3

After viewing the third video, the one involving young kids examining their food labels, I picked up on several observations. First off I cannot ignore the obvious important combination of nutritional education with media education. This an important part of everyone’s lives, and sooner children learn the value of food education the better, and what better way to learn it than to break down the media messages in food? It was a smart move on the teacher’s part because it also combined something that kids enjoy very much, eating! The romance factor played a prominent part here as kids were already actively engaged in the activity from the start, “Emotional involvement with the subject matter compels our interest” (Hobbs 89). And the teacher played into this, his interaction with the students consisted mainly of probing questions. Which is exactly what they should do according to Hoobs, “To support the development of critical autonomy, teaching and learning must be student-centered and inquiry-oriented.” (Hobbs 119) This is because the goal isn’t to ‘transmit knowledge’ but to focus on ‘meaning-making’ (Hobbs 119) where students realize things for themselves and draw their own conclusions. Hobbs next step is precision “where we acquire a shared vocabulary” (Hobbs 89), this is where the teacher pushed the kids further to know more about the food they eat. When they did not know what an ingredient was he told them to research it at home on their own time. The teacher pushed the students to learn the same vocabulary to able to dissect and discuss the different foodstuffs. Then came generalization, where students “connect romantic involvement with ideas with the precision of deeper exploration to formulate new knowledge …or apply ideas in ways that are serviceable in a particular context and setting” (Hobbs 89). In this case assuming they actually did this they would then be opened up to a wide range of information. For example one of the ingredients a child did not know was partially hydrogenated soybean oil, after looking up this term and discovering what it was that information is within proximity to a wide variety of new information, such as the origin of partially hydrogenated soybean oil, what it is made from, who created it, why it was created, and its health effects. The exercise engaged students in a topic they already liked and went from there. My only issue is that the exercise stopped there, my question is if more was covered outside of the video. It should not have been limited to the information on the food label nor stuck to the complicated hidden meaning in the ingredients, but on the advertisements and food packaging as well. The girl who bought the package of Cheetos could have been inquired as to why she thought there was a picture of a cartoon cheetah on the front and whom she thought the target audience of that product was. Or perhaps that is another lesson, but still it could have brought the lesson full circle, dissecting multiple forms of media (print and images) and different cryptic messages; from health concerns to ethics involving advertising to children. There is a lot of material present to cover. Furthermore issues of access are seen on multiple fronts in this video. The topic is centered on food and the ingredients in food products; what is healthier and what is not. The amount of access to different foods could have been discussed, they walked to a Wawa, so they were limiting themselves to what they could walk to, if one can only access foods they can walk to are their options limited? What could these limitations include? Are these limitations healthy or not so health? The students are effectively analyzing the food products though, and going beyond the ingredients themselves and being asked to research what exactly the ingredients are. More could be done in the taking action category, where a follow-up video would be useful. What actions have the students taken after learning about food labels, have they changed their eating habits? Are they educated others? And most importantly what role do their parents play? In relation to co-viewing media with children, parents should also be co-viewing what foods they eat and what they put into their bodies, instead of sending kids on the store on their own with some money, a balance of letting kids make their own choices and guiding them to smart choices, ideally, would be implemented, a form of active mediation if you will. Where mediation is “either positive, negative, or neutral… Parents may use a combination of active and negative mediation or they may exhibit neutral mediation” (Mendoza 35). By mediating a child’s eating, parents could steer their children into healthy eating habits without coming off as strict or oppressive, of course this isn’t perfect and sometimes a stern ‘no’ is in order, but constructive eating guidelines would be ideal. So as seen in “The Gold Team talks Red Bull and Nutrition Info” students learn to dissect food labels to better understand the world around them and the sometimes misleading information that food products represent.