Hi Brad, At 07:36 05/01/02 -0500, you wrote: (Brian McAndrews) >> Our perception of truth is shaped to a significant degree by what the >> media produces. Chomsky's 'Manufacturing Consent' helped me see this. >> So do the writings of Herbert Schiller. Below is a quote that I use >> with my students. >> I have also included the transcript of his In Memoriam.
(Schiller) >> �It is not necessary to construct a theory of intentional cultural >> control. In truth, the strength of the control process rests in its >> apparent absence. The desired systemic result is achieved ordinarily >> by a loose though effective institutional process. It utilizes the >> education of journalists and other media professionals, built-in >> penalties and rewards for doing what is expected, norms presented as >> objective rules, and the occasional but telling direct intrusion from >[snip] (BMcC) >This does not get to the root of the matter. "The media" >do not get into the game until the child has been infected >with the values of his or her social matrix of origin -- >what I call: an "ethnicity" -- thru >*childrearing*, which the parents transmit to the >infant before the acquisition of language. I agree with you. I would, however, modify your statement slightly by saying: " . . . which the parents *start* transmitting to the infant before the acquisition of language". This "ethnicity", as you call it, is sophisticated and deeply embedded by the time a child reaches puberty. Two perfect examples of this are occurring right now in Russia and China, despite 80 and 50 years' of CP-controlled media respectively. Their basic cultures were never lost but just went underground during de facto communism (China's still being de jure -- just about!). Both are reverting to type -- Russia to the Tsarist-type anti-enterprise culture, China to the family-based enterprise culture. Draconian measures in Tsarist Russia prevented almost all peasants from leaving their lords' estates and moving to the cities to start businesses. Today, despite the overthrow of communism, a Russian still has to get permission from well over a dozen different departments to start a small business, particularly if in another town. This can easily take up to a couple of years and often longer unless officials are bribed. In mainland China in 1989, when the communists acknowledged officially that state education wasn't supplying enough entrepreneurs, family-based education circles suddenly emerged from cover. By 1998 over 35,000 private kindergartens had been established and are still growing rapidly in numbers. This now continues all the way through the grades -- 54% of tertiary level schools are now private. Keith Hudson __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
