Media in the classroom

Madonna Power Point

The historical artifact I selected is Madonna. I grew up to Madonna, to my parents hating Madonna, to my friends later picking on me for still listening to Madonna, and to my husband laughing at me for liking Madonna while still surprising me with an occasional CD by Madonna. It isn’t necessarily her music that I love, though some of it I find incredibly entertaining – it is more her personality that I admire. Now, I do not agree with many of her choices and/or actions but I am so impressed by her confidence and drive to do what she wants. She has always had the guts to do what so many others can barely dare to dream about doing. Therefore – though I do not worship Madonna or really view most of her choices as great inspiration for my daughters, I do think she is an important figure for her bold display of who she is.
I often wondered why she seemed so over the top in some ways and, in my research I came to some conclusions that I can’t truly support as well as I would like but will give the title of “clues� to my thinking. First, I feel she is over the top because of her upbringing. She is one of 8 children, later to be one of ten children when you add in her step-siblings. Not only this, but her mother, the woman she was named after, died when she was only six. For both these reasons I believe I could argue she is attention seeking because she missed out on a great amount of attention and possibly love as a child. This is more personal than historical though.
As far as historic significance, Madonna was just 21 when Margaret Thatcher was named prime minister. This position of power for a female was not at all common during this time frame. Viewing Margaret Thatcher in a position of power could have been inspiration for Madonna and other females to take on non-traditional, more powerful roles.
As far as her pushing sex so blatantly and repeatedly, especially in connection with religion, I would argue that historically, based on my findings, this was happening during a time when homosexuality was being scrutinized to a greater degree than today. Also, sex scandals of Clinton and other prominent figures were in the news. Now, obviously I wouldn’t cover this portion with my students at all (in fact I probably would not ever bring Madonna into my classroom for any reason if possible-but she is interesting), but seeing the connections she has to history would be interesting. I have to admit though, after looking so much information up – mostly what I found for the choices and changes of Madonna through the years can be explained by personal journey and growth more so than historical impacts. I thought I would find more for her choices in topics as far as religion, abortion, and sex in her music are concerned. I didn’t find nearly as many connections as I was initially hoping to uncover.
I would not use this timeline in the classroom because the sexual content would not be needed in my language arts room; although, I see the value of such a timeline and think the students would be very interested in doing this themselves. I know I enjoyed looking up information on my artifact and the time frame in which she has lived. This would be an excellent activity for showing connections and reasons for choices/actions.