12 May to 19 May

Developing students' values through a dialogue based on respect

I'm beginning to rethink an ethical issue I thought I'd worked out long ago: the extent to which I should allow my politics to shape how I teach our mass communication students. Since rejecting my culturally conservative training in literature, I've believed both that critical analysis of culture can only be done from a position of clearly formulated values, and that academics are duty bound to challenge dominance. I still hold these views, but have become increasingly uncomfortable about the extent to which students come to believe that there is a 'right' politics that they should include in their essays.

The problem crystallised recently when, having taught a paper about propaganda, I reflected on the irony of trying at the same time to persuade my students to condemn public relations strategies in contemporary warfare. Part of the answer is to encourage them to think from different perspectives, which I try to do already. But I'm coming to realise that my teaching needs to focus more on persuading students about the importance of formulating and owning their own politics as they critique the media, and that this process needs to be, as Paulo Freire puts it, a dialogue based on respect.

Donald Matheson, Senior Lecturer in Mass Communications, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.