Overview:
This is the tenth lesson in the Reading Ads with a Social Justice Lens series.
Once students become accustomed to thinking about the power of advertising, they are also ready to think about how an advertisement might look from a totally different point of view. Taking on another person’s perspective can be challenging, but it is an important developmental experience and goal. By thinking about how the same advertisement might look through the eyes of others, students can consider how advertisements contribute to bias and sometimes even discrimination.
Objectives
Activities will help students:
- Take on other
people’s points of view;
- Follow steps in
the writing process; and
- Synthesize and
reflect on information from a variety of sources.
Essential Questions
- What is bias?
- How does seeing
bias against a group with which you identify affect your daily life and
choices?
- How does seeing
bias perpetuated by a group to which you belong affect your daily life and
choices?
Activities
- Ask each
student to think of an advertisement they have seen in the past week. They
should describe the advertisement in detail in their notebooks or journals. The
advertisement might come from television, radio, the Internet, a magazine or
any other source. Preliterate students may sketch the advertisement or draw it
in storyboard form or even a comic strip.
- Bring students
together. Explain that they will be talking about the impact of bias in
advertising. Tell students that bias is an unfair belief about a group of
people that sometimes leads to discrimination.
- Ask students to
look back over the advertisements they have described in their journals. Ask
students if any particular biases stand out. For example, does the
advertisement perpetuate a stereotype? Does the advertisement represent only
some people or convey the message that a particular way of living is the only
right way? Encourage students to share any ideas that come to mind.
- Now, ask each
student to look at the same advertisement from the point of view of someone else.
They might choose to think as someone who speaks a different language, whose
family has much more or much less money, or who practices a different religion.
Have a few students share how their perspective on the advertisement changes
when they look at it from a different point of view. Ask whether any particular
biases stand out?
- Sticking with
their new points of view, have students write a poem or short story or draw a
picture expressing a bias against, or
perpetuated by, their group that they have noticed in advertisements. Students
may choose to focus on the same advertisement as evidence, or they may draw
from other advertisements that have been used throughout this series. Ask them
to be thoughtful as they consider the relationship between advertisements and
biases. Give students a chance to share their work after they have completed
the process.
Reflection
Taking on different points of view
takes time and practice, but it is an important part of being a critical reader
and citizen. Ask students to try out an entirely different perspective at home
and notice what different biases come up for them as they look at advertisements.
Encourage students to think about perpetuating biases as well as falling victim
to them. Give students a chance to share thoughts that emerged as they did this
exercise.
