The bumper sticker curriculum: learning from words on the backs of cars. (Media Literacy) Lori A. Norton-Meier.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2004 International Reading Association Inc.

"There it is, there it is!" I shouted from the back seat. "There is the Z. Right there on that sign. I win! I win!" It doesn't seem very long ago that I was a young child playing Road Sign Bingo with my brother on long family car trips. Words and letters became our entertainment as we searched for all the alphabet letters in road signs (in order, of course) or tried to find each one of the 50 United States on the license plates of vehicles as they whizzed by to unknown destinations.

How times have changed. Now, each state has a variety of license plate designs, and the number of vanity plates, which often carry new codes to be deciphered, is on the rise. Owners of vanity plates usually play with language, manipulating letters and sounds to tell us a little something about themselves in six to eight spaces. Just this morning on my way to work, I saw YRUFATT on the back of a catering van, L8R G8R on a sports car, and MOM X 2 on a minivan. However, during a recent car trip I was reminded of just how important these words on the backs of cars can be as a lesson in media literacy.

The dialogue

I had just picked up my 14-year-old daughter from school, and we were driving down the road when she said, "Mom, what does that bumper sticker mean?" "I can't see it, honey. What does it say?" I replied (making another mental note to get my eyes checked). "It says, 'The media are only as liberal as the conservative businesses that own them.'" I'm afraid I was only half listening, distracted by the problems of what to cook for dinner, e-mails I should have answered at work, and a blue sports car cutting into my lane. "What do you think it means?" I asked. "Well, it is kind of confusing. You always hear people complain about the liberal press. But that bumper sticker uses the word only, which is mixing me up." My daughter paused, then said,

   Well, I think it means that how can something be liberal
   when the people who own it are just the opposite.
   I guess it is saying how can the press be liberal when
   the people who have the money and make the decisions
   are conservative.

She paused again, and I was curious to hear what she would say next.

   You know what makes that bumper sticker hard to
   read? They split it diagonally across the center and
   made half of it white and the other half green. My eyes
   only saw the green letters on the white, and at first I
   saw 'the media are liberal.' Part of me didn't want to
   read on because it just seemed like a statement that I
   had heard a bunch of times before. But that statement
   really makes you think. It is too bad the artist designed
   it that way. I think the message gets lost.

I smiled, intrigued by her artistic and visual response. My daughter spends every free moment with a pen in hand sketching, so it makes perfect sense that she would use her visual sense to help her understand the meaning of this text. "So, Mom;' she continued, "who do you think that person is in that car? I mean why would they put that bumper sticker on their car?" I wondered how to respond, not wanting to stop her flow of thinking. I finally said, in a questioning tone, "I guess we could assume that is someone who is liberal." "I guess," she responded, not quite convinced. She paused and then added, "This one is just confusing. I don't know what that person is trying to tell me about what they think." She looked away in quiet contemplation. "Morn, how do you know if what someone puts on a bumper sticker is true? Are the media really owned by conservative businesses?" Wow, I thought. This is a pretty heavy conversation for a short commute home. And so I replied, "I don't know the answer to that; do you think there is a way we could find out?"

At home, my daughter went straight to the Internet but questioned whether the information she found there was accurate. This search led to new questions: What does it really mean to be conservative? How can I separate fact from opinion? Are there any facts? What company or organization created that bumper sticker, and what reasoning do they give for making the statement? Do they have any evidence to back up their claims? The questions continued to come; however, the investigation had to end, as school homework needed her attention. Yet, it was at that moment that I was able to visualize what a media literacy curriculum might look like and what it could do for our students.

Hobbs (1996) stated that "at the heart of the media literacy movement is the open, questioning, reflective, critical stance towards messages," which was certainly the experience my daughter had with this particular bumper sticker. She not only constructed a new understanding through talk when confronted with a text but also had to confront confusion in relation to the role of the media in our society. Through this short conversation, I am reminded of how important a simple text such as a bumper sticker can become in our quest for media literacy.

The bumper sticker curriculum

Many years ago, I found the bumper sticker to be an important tool in teaching my students about print. After getting the idea from Margaret Mary Sunlentic and writing a letter to a bumper sticker company, I received a box of nearly 500 bumper stickers. This became one of the most popular literacy boxes in my room (others included pins, menus, tray liners, door hangers, brochures, and the like). Anytime we opened a literacy box, we would dump out the stickers and begin the conversation. We would compare and contrast; look for patterns; sort and organize while talking about letters, shapes, colors, and designs; and certainly discuss their many meanings.

One evening, I watched how my students' parents, who previously did not know one another, gathered in conversation around this box of bumper stickers. They laughed and talked excitedly about the various political, humorous, biting, and thoughtful messages, and they considered the messages their children would receive about print and language as they "messed around" with the items in the box. This box of bumper stickers has become an incredible catalyst for conversation and learning. Let me share some of the conversations I have heard over the years.

Using visual messages--Visual literacy

When I first use the bumper sticker literacy box with a group of students, I like to take time to simply explore its contents. We begin by covering an open floor space or large table with a black cloth. I like the black background because it gives the students a sense of what these stickers might look like against the bumper of a car. The stickers are dumped on the table, and we work together to spread them out. We begin with one simple question, "Which one catches your eye?" and a follow-up question, "Why?"

It is interesting that, almost every time, students select the same bumper sticker. It is a simple design: A blue, white, and red stripe waving across the length of the sticker has one word written though the white stripe in bold, black, block letters--Eracism. It is typical for everyone to agree on the choice, but why? What makes this sticker so striking? The conversation races around the circle of students, and finally they decide that it's the simplicity and straightforward message that draw you to it. Many of the other bumper stickers have too many words and are clouded by illustrations and a myriad of colors and fancy fonts that are hard to read.

It is through this discussion that the students typically generate a variety of questions as they begin to think like advertisers:

   How do you decide which font to use--what is easy to
   read?
   When is it appropriate to use a fancy or detailed font?
   Are there certain colors that are more pleasing to the
   eye?
   How big do letters need to be to be read by people in
   the car behind you?
   When is it better to use a visual image rather than
   words?

It is apparent at this early stage of exploration that the students are beginning to see the importance of the way a bumper sticker is visually presented to affect meaning and response from an audience. It is with this critical eye that a reader must approach any new bumper sticker text.

Understanding audience--Critical literacy

In any literacy event, we have the author's intended meaning and the reader's constructed meaning. This speculation often becomes a focus of conversation around the bumper sticker literacy box: What do you think the author intended in creating this bumper sticker? Was the author successful in the delivery of that message? Is that the message I received as a reader? What other messages might be the result of this text?

The students begin to discuss such questions from a critical stance. The bumper sticker as a catalyst for critical thought and reflection became apparent to me one day when I asked small groups of students to take their stacks of bumper stickers and create categorizing systems. One group, after a great deal of discussion, determined a simple plan for sorting based on the question "What are they trying to sell me?" These students initially began by sorting into two simple categories: selling something or not selling something. However, after going through the entire stack, they determined that all but one of the stickers was selling something.

That one bumper sticker contained the following words: "My best friend ran off with my wife and I sure do miss him." One wiseguy in the group decided that the sticker also needed to go into the "selling something" stack. He argued, with a smirk, that it was selling "the importance of friendship." The group members agreed and decided they would need to come up with a new categorizing system because of their conclusion that, when it comes to bumper stickers, everyone is selling something!

Making identity statements--Personal literacy

Another extension of the bumper sticker literacy activity came from an eighth grader who one day posed this question to a group of his peers:

"Which bumper sticker would you put on your car?" The discussions were grand as students began to look at how bumper stickers could represent them personally. This consideration led to many new questions:

   What do I want people to know about me?
 
   What do I want the back bumper of a car to say about
   me?
 
   What will my parents and friends think about what
   this bumper sticker says?
 
   What kind of misunderstandings (fights, damage to
   my car) might be created by this bumper sticker?

At this point in the activity, someone will inevitably start a conversation about creating our own bumper stickers. Students want to play with the power of words and their messages to invent themselves as individuals by designing a socially shared text. My bumper sticker literacy box now contains many new student-created designs--evidence of their growing understanding of media literacy from the backs of cars.

From the backs of cars--Media literacy

Media literacy should be about helping people to become sophisticated citizens rather than sophisticated consumers. The mass media, in other words, should be understood as more than a collection of texts to be deconstructed and analyzed so that we can distinguish or choose among them. They should be analyzed as sets of institutions with particular social and economic structures that are neither inevitable nor irreversible. Media education should certainly teach

   students to engage media texts, but it should
   also ... teach them to engage and challenge media institutions.
   (Lewis & Jhally, 1998, p. 109)

As this Lewis and Jhally quote states so eloquently, it is not the goal of a media literacy curriculum to merely understand the world but to change it. Through a box of bumper stickers, I have seen students discuss, question, and critique the use of print and visual images and how these texts are used by various organizations and individuals to influence and manipulate thinking. One day, I returned to my empty classroom to find the following message (in the form of a bumper sticker) scrawled on the top of the box in bold, black letters: "BEWARE OF THE BUMPER STICKER! May cause thinking."

Underneath, in parentheses, was this smaller text: "and irritation." Let's hope this box of bumper stickers leads to many more intellectually challenging lessons in media literacy--with a dose of irritation that leads to action.

REFERENCES

Hobbs, R. (1996). Media literacy and the "big tent." Retrieved June 17, 2004, from http://www.medialit.org/ reading_room/article394.html

Lewis, J., & Jhally, S. (1998). The struggle over media literacy. Journal of Communication, 48(1), 109-121.

The department editor welcomes reader comments. E-mail nortonme@iastate.edu. Mail Lori Norton-Meier, Iowa State University, Curriculum and Instruction Department, N107 Lagomarcino, Ames, IA 50011, USA.