My world on the web
Long-running TV shows have been cancelled in the wake of the wave of Black Lives Matter protests, but this Australian series offers a different model for the police procedural.
Despite current outcries to demilitarize, defund, or altogether abolish the police after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, according to one recent poll, more than half of Americans still donât see police violence as a âvery serious problem.â If stories play a role in shaping public opinion, the legacy of American cop narratives has mostly functioned as escapist storytelling for white comfort at the expense of black experience: Crimes are solved in an hour and the good guys tend to win, when in reality fewer than half of reported violent and property crimes are solved. These shows canât faithfully address systemic racism and the reality of police violence any more than white-savior narratives can faithfully reflect black achievement.
historical narratives seduce you into thinking you really understand whatâs going on and why things happened, but most of it is guessing peopleâs motives and their inner thoughts. It allays your curiosity, and youâre satisfied psychologically by the narrative, and it connects the dots so you feel youâre in the shoes of the person whose narrative is being recorded. It has seduced you into a false account, and now you think you understand.
The second part is that it effectively prevents you from going on to try to find the right theory and correct account of events. And the third problem, which is the gravest, is that people use narratives because of their tremendous emotional impact to drive human actions, movements, political parties, religions, ideologies. And many movements, like nationalism and intolerant religions, are driven by narrative and are harmful and dangerous for humanity.
When our students read and write they draw upon their knowledge of stories â sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. The language and words and patterns become known and understood, matched and linked together. Over time, students develop what we can term a âmental modelâ. That is to say, the more we read, the more we understand, the more we develop a âmodelâ of different types of stories and their respective worlds.
We know that the earlier we read, and the greater the volume of our reading, the more fine grained and precise our âmental modelâ. For many children who join school, they are well on the way with being read to and the shape of stories â mental models â are already emerging in their minds. By secondary school, I can teach a gothic story, but most students could write a good attempt with little to no teaching. The shape of the story is already well formed in their minds.