Self-Expression Versus Imitation

In chapter 5, Hobbs articulates the importance of giving students a chance to express themselves through media. As I have had experience with 7th grade inner-city children, I understand that the media is one of the major parts of their lives as learners. They learn language, fashion, hairstyles, music, dance moves, gestures, lingo, current events, and jokes through this medium. TV becomes their parents, in many cases, and what they learn from this pseudo-parent becomes affirmed and reaffirmed by their peers, and even sometimes their teachers. Media becomes intricately intertwined with their identities and personalities. Media becomes them.

Teachers should keep in mind that when students contribute to the classroom, their thoughts are mixed into a messy concoction comprised of individual thoughts, cultural influence, and media residual. Student contributions may be convoluted and influenced by a "superpeer" that teaches information which may not always merit a teacher's praise. Hobbs says, "Educators 'must resist the temptation to glamorize student voices, and recognize that the multiple voices that students bring to the classroom, while potentially possessing some elements of resistance and transformation, are likely to be imbued with status quo values'" (pg 95). If a student creates a magazine called "Slutmopolitan" (Hobbs, pg 95), and there are stories featured in that magazine that are inappropriate for a school setting, teachers should not try to justify, in the name of self-expression and pushing boundaries, the choices their students made. In reality, what those students did was merely mimic a lower level media form that most of society would mock and regard as what my father calls "mindless trash". Though the students may have sufficiently reached the goals the teachers set for them (create a media project that expresses yourself), they did not achieve this goal in a way that would intellectually benefit or represent themselves. They didn't learn anything new about themselves or share anything thought provoking. Have we gotten to an age where "intelligent product" or "school appropriate" is a requirement needed to be listed on a rubric?

Some other questions come to mind when thinking about teaching self-expression in a world of heavy media influence-- Do teachers have the responsibility of teaching students that the media they generate should transcend cultural and/or media bias? Should/Can teachers teach students how to produce a text that isn't derived from pop culture while knowing that imitation is the first step to mastery of a skill?