Do you remember that Invisible Children campaign last year
about finding the Ugandan warlord Kony? Yeah, I hardly do either. They launched
a phenomenal YouTube video that tugged heartstrings and called for April 20th
of 2012 to be a day where people “decorated the night” to make people aware of Kony
and what he’s done. While the video was
deemed a huge success and gained millions of views in a matter of days ultimately
this campaign fell to criticism of how the charity spends it’s donations and
the necessity of finding Kony over other pressing issues in Uganda. I bring
this up because there was a HUGE following on Facebook for a few weeks but
before the April 20th deadline even came, the enthusiasm had fizzled
out. I saw one or two Kony 2012 signs around Austin but nothing like Invisible
Children had hoped or expected.
In my critical inquiry unit I’m showing my students examples
of different opinions about the same topic to assert that it is important that
they form their own opinions and make their own choices about the social issue
they will research. By making them see two sides to a story and being open to
other’s ideas while keeping a critical eye my hope is that my students will
find an issue they are passionate about and have looked at all sides of the
issue. By doing this, they will become truly engaged in the issue they research
and will want to continue to fight for social justice after they turn in their
final project. I want my students to not feel an immediate emotional surge that
fizzles out when something else more pressing comes up. Being critical will
make them create their own opinion which will make them more interested and
involved instead of being told how to think or feel.
I’m interested in learning what everyone thinks about this.
Do you think it’s important to look critically at an issue like social justice?
I feel like there are many topics everyone can agree on when it comes to
equality and social justice but at the same time there are many people who
would disagree with things I think should be universal rights. Just go read
comments on any news story about education or health insurance debates. There
are some people out there with opinions that surprise me. So I think that being
open minded and seeing both sides of an issue is still important for something
like social justice. If our students can learn why someone disagrees with them about
an issue they can know how to try to persuade that person.
I love your example of Kony 2012. I felt a lot of feelings during the Invisible Children facebook thing going on. Primarily, I felt like all of this "activism" was a cool idea, but it was so distant, everyone posting this stuff on facebook was doing just that - posting on a facebook that didn't affect Uganda at all.
ReplyDeleteI think it might be neat to compare the Kony 2012 movement to another movement, like the Marriage Equality (HRC symbol) facebook profile picture change thing that swept facebook a few weeks ago. These were different, and a lot of arguments were made that changing your profile picture was lame because it didn't actually do anything, but I disagree. I think they're completely different situations, because Marriage Equality is going on here and now, and changing your picture for a few days helped to form this wall of support (over 2 million more pictures than usual were changed in those two days) and got people talking about an issue that is very real in their communities.
Sorry, that turned into a tangent. I just thought it might be something interesting to bring to the table for your students. Also, awesome idea for critical inquiry! Open-mindedness and careful consideration of every situation rules.
I think on April 20th everyone was too stoned to do anything
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