Questions for Harry and Heather and You

"Both efforts threatened the right of children to participate within the imaginative world of Harry Potter..." (p.170) To what extent do we threaten the rights of students to participate within any worlds other than the ones we dictate in the reading and writing curricula we design for them? How diverse are we in selecting texts, themes and worlds for our students? What subliminal messages do we send them through the texts we choose for them? I am, for example, admittedly appalled and somewhat embarrassed by the dominant theme of death and suicide that permeates the novels and plays we have chosen for our IB English curriculum. How do we transition from a world that is comfortable for us to one that is both comfortable and "cool" for our charges? (Here I use comfortable in the sense that I am knowledgeable about the present works we use, not that I am necessarily comfortable with the repetitive themes)Would I be comfortable with Harry Potter somewhere in our curriculum?

I have nothing against Harry Potter. Okay, so I haven't read Harry Potter, but I'm just sayin' when it comes to book choices, to what extent do we pay attention to what students really want to read? We push the "great books" but not always with students and their tastes in mind. I found it quite interesting that when I assigned my British Authors Novel of the Year Project, only a few students chose books from the extensive list of British authors provided by the librarian. That, of course, meant I had to do some fast cheat reading to verify their titles, but it was a welcome exercise in teacher/teen taste in novels.

I like Jenkins statement that "None of us really knows how to live in this era of media convergence, collective intelligence, and participatory culture." I am probably one of the best examples of this phenomenon. Although I do put forth efforts to learn about and even use some of the new methods and technology, I do not necessarily enjoy them. There are times when I experience information overload. Extensive media coverage of breaking news such as Hurricane Katrina, Columbine, 9/11, and recently,the death of Michael Jackson, at some points just becomes noise and clutter to me.There were moments, for example, when I longed for the days when all I would have known, all I would have needed to know, was that Michael Jackson died. Just that and nothing more. No collective intelligence, no participatory culture. What does one do with all the excessive information? As I talked to others, I saw how these changes, this excess, produced "anxieties, uncertainties, and panic." I stand uncomfortably between the groups that"'embrace the potentials of the new participatory culture" and those who fear them. Where do you stand?