I'm alive

Alstatt, Robert
Title In Class Essay 3

Today the world is fast pace with so much getting filter thru multiple eyes. Know one really knows the truth. Shekhar Deshpanda has written an article “The Confident Gaze” describing how this filtering is being played out in the magazine The National Geographic. Deshpanda worn the readers of the National Geographic that we must understand how National Geographic and other forms of educational publications are used. Deshpanda from his article writes “It is a magazine of choice of teachers of history, anthropology and culture in general schools” (Deshpanda). I remember my days as a youth and going to the school library. You know there was no internet in my day. The way I would see other cultures and what I thought to be outrages or even odd was to look at the National Geographic magazine. I would imagine that I was the great hunter after the big cat or even Tarzan sometime yelling” ahhhh ooo ahhhh” or something like that. Deshpanda brings interesting perception and uses it to tech us to not get fooled by the glossy some what staged pictures of these magazine. Taking from Deshpanda article, “While we admire the accomplishments of its photographers to bring us the rest of the world, we forget that the photographs and the contexts in which they are placed represent a very conscious effort by the editors to make the world a happy place and a happy place for the Western eye” (Deshpanda). I see can see why Deshpanda is concerned and I do feel that he has a point. The National Geographic as do other magazine, do depict images that are eye catching. These magazines are in business to make money and we many not what to think it the west is where the money is. The magazines do a great job of providing us with picture of place that we may never get to go to or will only see in them. Yes are this picture stage setup yes but we readers understand this and want this. These magazines are only providing what we as there clients expect. Further more I do not believe that the National Geographic magazine has ever been adoptive buy the educational board as accredited teaching material. I believe that the magazine is a publication that sales a view of what you are missing out there. They are not trying to be a text book, but they are trying to be entertaining and informational. Readers of these styles of periodical need to use them for conversational starters, to bring out question to used them in discussion in education and not as the educator.