Extreme Makeover: Home Sham Edition

ABC has a popular reality television show that airs on Sunday nights called Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The premise is seemingly simple: A down-on-their-luck family has their home renovated beyond their wildest dreams by Ty Pennington and his crew of bubbly, energetic, designer colleagues. The people whose home is renovated all have sad stories to tell – one family had a son who was deaf, and two daughters who were visually impaired – another was a family who were victims of hate crimes. Now, I know what you’re thinking — Teachingchris, how could this be a bad thing? Why would you put the word Sham in your post title? It sounds fabulous – these generous people helping the poor.

Note that I in no way want to take away from the pain and suffering that participants on the show have gone through or are going through. However, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is a horrible example of capitalist, colonial, consumerist propaganda. First off, the houses that are provided are filled, FILLED with consumer products: plasma TVs, computers, any state of the art electronic that might aid the family. These products are always provided gratis by some generous, benevolent corporation. This corporation gives away all of the furnishings or appliances or electronics in a house in exchange for repeated mentions of their name during primetime on Sunday night. How generous!

The houses themselves are environmental disasters: the originals are usually demolished, rather than renovated, and often are rebuilt four times larger than the original. They make a big show of knocking down the old house in as impressive a way as possible – nothing is reused here. As well, the costs associated with heating/cooling/maintaining the mammoth house that replaced the old one would be astronomical, and aren’t accounted for by the producers of the show. Sure, the producers do some fancy legal footwork to ensure that the new owners can afford to pay the taxes on the house, which will at least double based on the new living space. However, their large cash payment doesn’t guarantee the family will save it to pay the taxes.

What really irks me is the underlying message of the show. The families are being taught something — have more and you will be happier. Have more space. Have more gadgets. Just have more. And in a time where we’re being encouraged to limit our impact on the environment, this is just stupid. ABC and the corporations that “donate” to the show are self-serving. They are hardly the Robin Hoods they want viewers to believe they are.

Energuide Upgrades Continue…

This post has moved to my new blog — http://handymansdream.blogspot.com/2008/09/replacing-entry-doors.html — check it out there!

Back at school

I hypothesize that there is a correlation between my lack of posts, and the speed with which I’ve hit the ground running since the school year begun. Sorry for the lack of updates! Here’s the quick and dirty, so far:

We are doing a Hip Hop project with our students, partnering with the local University. We go out two mornings a week for the students to work in two studio labs – one with turntables and one with Imacs and MPCs (machines that musicians use to make electronic music from hip hop beats to drums to, well, basically, anything you can record and import.) As well, future dance teachers from the University are working with us, exploring the role of dance in society, and giving workshops on break dancing (or B-Boying or B-Girling, depending on how cool you are.) In addition, while at school, students are learning about the history and aspects of hip hop culture. We are integrating only two curricula, offering two credits – grade 11 English and grade 11 Arts Ed. We’re finding this much more manageable than the Dinner Theatre.

In addition to this project, I’m sitting on a committee working to develop a structure for the learning model for the new shared facility being built in the core of our city. This is fascinating work, as we’re being given lots of freedom to be creative. I feel so lucky to have landed back here when I did, and in the school that I did – I could have just as well landed in another school, or another city, and wouldn’t be learning as much as I am now!

In other education related news, I finished my literature review this summer. 55 pages of glory — a draft of what will be included in my thesis. Now I have some work to do around finding a theoretical framework, as well as completing my final 2 classes. I am taking one this fall — however, the final class may have to wait, as I am not keen to take it in January, with our first born coming some time near the end of that month. We are quickly preparing for his or her arrival, and working to ensure her or his entrance is as natural as possible – but more on that in a later post.