“The Story of Stuff,” a 20-minute video about the effects of human consumption on the environment has become “a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation,” the New York Times says. “More than 7,000 schools, churches and others have ordered a DVD version,” the paper reports, and hundreds of teachers have written to the film’s producer to say they have assigned students to view it on the Web.
Produced and hosted by activist Annie Leonard, the video is chirpy and upbeat. An Inconvenient Truth, it’s not. To put it as benignly as possible, Leonard has a definite point of view. She defines extraction, for example, as ”a fancy word for natural resource exploitation, which is a fancy word for trashing the planet. What this looks like is we chop down the trees, we blow up mountains to get the metals inside, we use up all the water and we wipe out the animals.” The video is rife with similiar broad-brush assertions, such as Leonard’s contention that as people, “the primary way that our value is measured and demonstrated is by how much we consume.”
Critics complain that the video is stridently anti-capitalist and even anti-American. “My friends tell me I should use a tank to symbolize the government and that’s true in many countries and increasingly our own,” Leonard says at one point, “After all more than 50% of our federal tax money’s now going to the military.” The video’s line-drawing animation then shows a figure representing the U.S. government on its knees shining the shoe of a large, top-hatted figure with a dollar sign on its chest, symbolizing corporations. “As the corporation has grown in size and power, we see a little change in the government where they’re a little more concerned in making sure that everything’s working out for those guys than for us.”
Subtle, it’s not.
Equally unsubtle is the reaction of the Heritage Foundation which lambastes the video as “the very extreme left’s Greenpeace view of America.”
Essentially it tells the story of how America is not a nation to be proud of, and in fact, your child should be ashamed for living in it. For example: after implying that the radios for sale in Radio Shack are assembled by 15 year olds in Mexico, and by purchasing one, you contribute to the exploitation of the third world and the eventual end of the Earth, the film’s creator and narrator Annie Leonard says: “So MY country’s response to this limitation is simply to go take somebody else’s. THIS is the third world. Which SOME would say, is another word for our stuff that somehow got on somebody else’s land. So what does that look like? The same thing, trashing the place. (capitalized emphasis ours).”
Heritage asks how “The Story of Stuff” has found its way into so many classrooms. “While nobody denies liberal Greenpeace activists their point of view, even if factually wrong, surely airing a 20 minute political ad to little kids wouldn’t be supported by mainstream outlets, would it?” The popularity of the video has led to a debate about academic freedom and the video’s appropriateness in at least one school system in Missoula County, Montana. After getting the New York Times treatment, more will surely follow.
Sounds like another test of those 21st Century skills in critical thinking and media literacy our children are supposed to be developing.
It is our responsibility to teach our students their personal impact on our planet. That MP3 didn’t grow in a shop! Its construction had an impact! Learning to constructively criticize your personal and your country’s actions is a 21st century skill requiring critical and balanced thinking and saying that doing so is ‘unpatriotic’ is simply a step backward in these skills.
I agree, Jacqueline. Indeed, my own skill at critical and balanced thinking makes me suspicious when someone muddies the waters with overly broad, unsupportable statements. If someone is playing fast and loose with some of the facts and engaging in rhetorical excess, how credible is he or she? Don’t they trust me to agree with them based on the power of their argument and command of facts?
If I didn’t have good 21st Century skills, I’d just swallow everything someone with an agenda said to me and believe the person who shouted the loudest.
The dishonesty of this pernicious little video is incredible. Pulling facts out of thin air (cancer rates increasing when in fact they held steady the last 30 years is but one example), citing the fifties as a time when we as a nation were the happiest (was it because of the Republican administration or the move to the suburbs by millions?) What is even more disheartening is that educators feel this vile piece of propaganda should be used to indoctrinate our children.
With my 19th,and 20th century skills in place( my 21st skills are not yet fully honed) I found the video to be incredibly thought provoking and an attempt to bring to the forefront key technical issues.The “stuff” flow diagram is almost identical to publications by ORNL,NIST and others. I dont think it is appropriate for teaching in grade school but I do think it should be mandatory viewing for educators,business managers,scientists,engineers ,etc so they can sort out truth from fiction.
You teachers should just teach and not give your opinions on things and indoc our children. Home schooling is the best plan of action for most parents..give us our money so we can find a better plan when you don’t have the same ideals as me.
We trace our democray back to the Greeks. At the center of the Greek political idea was debate. They placed emmense value on rhetorical skill. Rhetoric was the heart of Greek education. Look at the curriculum in our schools in the first century of our Republic. Notice the enormous weight placed upon speaking practice. The idea was to equip each pupil with what they viewed as the the most vital skill of all, public political debate, the practice of which they deemed essential to the maintenance of our democracy. This is a profoundly conservative idea as is the cited aphorism from Lincoln, “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” However much one might disagree with Miss Leonard’s views on “Stuff,” Stuff is an enormous issue, and her video is an exemplary exercise in provocative democratic rhetoric that compells productive debate. True conservatives will not condemn but welcome her challenge as they recognize in it the very essense of our founding American idea. To keep debate OUT of classrooms—THAT is indoctrination.
In principle, I agree with you, Bill. My concern is if students–especially younger students–have the requisite background knowledge to view this critically. I tend to doubt it. Moreover, I somehow doubt Ms. Leonard sees her video as “an exercise in provocative democratic rhetoric.”
Personally, I’d be curious to know how teachers are using the video in classrooms. Regardless of how you feel about Ms. Leonard’s point of view (and I’d count myself as sympathetic to it) she’s making what are essentially political arguments. Is the video is being used to teach debating skills? Or to raise “awareness?”
In my mind, here’s the test of how you feel about “encouraging productive debate.” How would you feel about children watching a similarly skillful video that argues as passionately and one-sidedly for an idea to which you are opposed? I somehow sense that if a video called “The Myth of Global Warming” or “Nuclear Power: There’s No Other Choice” became a “sleeper hit,” well…there’s the rub. What are the chances of that happening?
I agree with you and Walt that the video has little merit in a classroom where the students lack requisite background knowledge. That is why I am a supporter of Core Knowledge, to get knowlege back into the curriculum from grade one up through teacher’s college. Oh, I am sure the video is being used outrageously to political rather than educational effect by many poorly educated teachers, but that is where we are now as a whole people: what Americans know of science, economics and history is generally pathetic. That will not change without provocation. There are two ways that can be done. We can stiffle debate and let events provoke knowledge—learning “The Hard Way”; or we can try to head off events by provoking debate that will sift the grain from the chaff and furnish us the knowledge that will keep us on top of events. As a teacher, I’d love to have that “Myth of Global Warming” video to juxtapose to “Stuff”. I am not at all uncomfortable about debate, however rough and tumble it might be. I expect debates to be sparked by “Polemics”, one of the sub-genre’s of classical rhetoric the Greeks taught us. I laughed out loud at Miss Leonard’s caricature of the Corporation Fat Cat having his shoes shined by the Government! I earnestly hope that someone with diametrically opposed views produces a video of equal polemical brilliance.
The definitive critique to the Story of Stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5uJgG05xUY