Synopses & Reviews
McGrane and Gunderson have put together an extraordinarily provocative stream of sociologically inspired responses to television. Nothing could be more relevant to students, and in the right hands, this is a resource for a learning experience that at once maximizes critical and creative thinking. McGrane and Gunderson give new life to sociological thinking.a Jack Katz, Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
This book was created over years of discussion, classroom experiments, exercises and interaction. This book is also the process and product of the interaction of two individuals working with ideas. Its creation is the antithesis of what we are critiquing. It is the result of a dialogue and human relationship. This book addresses a very different relationship, a relationship to televisiona ].a televisionship, a one dimensional imprinting relationship without dialogue or living human interaction. It examines a relationship with Platoa (TM)s cave and the contemporary media matrix that continues its existence.
Synopsis
This book uses a social world?today's undergraduate students' ubiquitous everyday experience of television?as a vehicle for helping awaken students to the true possibilities for learning and their responsibilities inherent in achieving those goals. The book also introduces students to the social construction of reality embedded in the experience of TV. The lead author Barney McGrane is one of the most accomplished and successful teachers of sociology in the United States today and is also the co-author with John Gunderson and the late Inge Bell of the classic book for teaching This Book Is Not Required: An Emotional Survival Manual For Students.