There’s a ton of shite TV out there, which is a problem, yes. And I’d love it if my kids (or my girlfriend, for that matter) watched better stuff. But better materials are useless without a better approach, which is why I’m happy to see you start thinking about questioning strategy, wait time, etc. I hate to stereotype math teachers, but it’s heartening to see some of you folks starting to drop the more problems! and faster! approach that my math colleagues seem to love (these are people who are personally offended when it’s suggested that they not assign as much homework when our kids are taking CAPT tests in March).

I’m lucky enough to teach Film as Lit, which is entirely based on the idea that watching and rewatching scenes from quality movies will help students with their close-reading skills. We start Psycho today, and I’m planning on showing the entire film at least twice, if not more, over the next couple of weeks.

Re: Taibbi, I’d like him better if he didn’t read like a good-guy version of some of the worst columnists for the New York Post. He’s way too clever by half, I think–it might just be that I’m getting old, but I’d rather read someone with calmer rhetoric make the same points.

Milch body slams the sort of TV that’s rigidly episodic, stories that have an obvious protagonist, an obvious villain, an obvious complication, and an obvious resolution, all inside of a 21-minute block lengthened by nine minutes of advertising for cereal. When my kids watch TV that asks them to side with angels against demons, it makes it easier for them to accept the untruth that, in life, everyone is wholly good or wholly bad, that anyone with brown skin wearing a turban is a terrorist, etc, etc.

Contrast The Wire (I know, I know, I’m sorry), an entire season of which is the show’s smallest unit, a show which humanizes everyone on both sides of the law. Same goes for Deadwood. Same goes for John From Cincinnati. Milch has deep affection for his broken characters. My kids need more of that kind of complexity. Not The Suite Life Of Zack and Cody.

While I’m here, I’d love to know what Matt Taibbi does for you. He’s Rolling Stone‘s political correspondent and he excoriates political correspondents the same way Milch excoriates TV showrunners.

Michael, the real double-plus benefit of digital media in the classroom isn’t just that kids recognize the form. Digital media lets me pull the world into my classroom for discussion in a way that textbook prompts simply do not. I tried my best to illustrate the difference here, though I realize it doesn’t fully make my point.

I have no idea what a good, deep assessment–a really deep one, not one that just makes kids do more shiny stuff–would look like, but I think that’s where this discussion is gonna go.

How then do I, as a math teacher, recondition students to want to discover the answer to a problem when they spend at least twice as much time at home being conditioned to the stated of immediacy and laziness through the internet and television?

Will providing math in a media that students are familiar with, such as videos and the internet, help recondition them into thinkers or will it just add to the problem?

I believe that there are good thoughtful things on TV and the internet, but by what rubric to we grade such things as useful in out classroom? What problems do we propose? What questions do we ask to elicit thoughtful responses?

Deep topic, Dan, thank you.

Final thought, could this be a social problem where the solution for it resides outside the stewardship of the educational community?