Gay Igloo Recipient (January 2009)
Professor Mark Lipton, University of Guelph has never had any interest in setting foot on routes that have already been laid out for people to follow. Since his teen years, he has created his own path based on his passions and what he believes is important.
As a gay teenager in Toronto, Lipton attended two high schools before finding an alternative school that suited his needs. Because media studies didn't exist when he was beginning his undergraduate studies in the mid-1980s, he picked and chose courses and universities — including the Ontario College of Art and Design, York University, the University of Toronto and Concordia University — that would give him the scope of media education he sought.
Reading Neil Postman's Teaching as a Subversive Activity inspired Lipton to pursue his master's and PhD degrees in media ecology at New York University under Postman.
“I was interested in studying the ecology of media — how media change affects media environments, looking at the relationship between media and culture.”
Because Lipton wasn't afraid to take risks and create his own research questions, Postman took him under his wing.
By the time he was 22, Lipton had completed his master's degree and began teaching a full course load while working on his PhD. Within a few years, he was appointed director of the master's program in media ecology.
“I believe good research comes from the personal, and because I was teaching so much, I decided to let my research grow out of my experiences in the classroom,” he says. “When I showed my students media like print advertisements, I was constantly struck by their unsophisticated readings, so I wanted to study their strategies of meaning making.”
By studying the way 175 first-year students analyzed visual media, he was able to learn how young people were making use of media and constructing meaning. This allowed him to adapt his curriculum and pedagogy accordingly.
While teaching at NYU, Lipton also began teaching English and media arts at the Harvey Milk High School for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, intersexed and questioning youth in New York City. Even though it meant an even heavier workload, teaching at Harvey Milk was important to him because he didn't have that kind of support system when he was a teenager, he says.
“I think it's important that young people have a safe space. I was also interested in studying the problematics of a gay and lesbian high school.”
Lipton created a 12-minute multimedia piece called Listening to the Voices of Students at Harvey Milk, documenting his perceptions and experiences of his two years with the school.
After teaching 15 different courses over 10 years at NYU, Lipton received a Mellon Foundation Fellowship to teach at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was hired specifically to help set up Vassar's new media studies program. Soon after his arrival, he met a woman in the process of starting the Children's Media Project, a not-for-profit arts and education organization focusing on media and technology.
Through that project, he wrote a proposal to receive funding from New York State to create an anti-smoking curriculum for middle-school children. After U.S. tobacco companies lost a class action suit, they were required to give each state a lump sum of money, part of which had be used for anti-smoking education. Lipton obtained more than $700,000 for his anti-smoking curriculum from the New York State Children's Health Initiative, which was administered through the United Way and Dutchess County's Children's Services Council.
Lipton himself began smoking at age 14 and has been trying to quit ever since. Because his parents and teachers smoked, he was never told not to, he says.
“Kids need to be told why they shouldn't smoke. It's about having the information to know why to say no. I think we should let kids know how they're being manipulated and ripped off and try to move them to action.”
His workbook, Smokescreens, and textbook, Smokescreens: From Tobacco Outrage to Media Activism, are now used in middle-school classes throughout Dutchess County. Lipton, who was appointed director of media education for the Children's Media Project, also conducted media literacy workshops for parents and teachers and was involved in setting up a youth media drop-in centre that helped students create anti-smoking public service announcements. These were shown on television stations throughout the Hudson Valley.
Lipton was drawn back to Ontario last year to be closer to his family and because he wanted to research the province's media literacy curriculum, which is one of the oldest in North America.
While teaching last year at the University of Toronto, he found he wasn't able to pursue his research interests fully.
“By coming to Guelph, I've been liberated to pursue my research the way I see it and to continue to do important work. I do things because no one else in the community is doing them and it needs to be done.”
Lipton has just written a report for the Ontario Medical Association and the Ontario Campaign for Action on Tobacco, giving his assessment of a tobacco curriculum called “Wise Decisions.” He finds fault with it because it's funded by Canada's three big tobacco companies and focuses on decision-making around smoking, rather than spelling out the dangers of smoking.
He's also written a piece about copyright for media teachers in Ontario that will be published in an education journal called Orbit. And he has an article about the history of the condom coming out in January in an anthology called Culture and the Condom. In addition, he's editing a book on visual communication about evaluating web design.
Lipton says U of G has encouraged him to continue to make his own path. He has designed and is teaching a fourth-year special studies in English course called “Digital Literacies.”
“Given that I'm interested in conducting a survey of media education in Ontario, I wanted to design a course that would help me in conceptualizing some of that work. This course looks at digital culture and the school's responsibilities.”
Half of Lipton's teaching responsibilities are in Guelph-Humber's media studies program, where he's currently teaching “Mass Communication.” In the winter, he'll teach a course on subcultures.
“I think it's important that undergraduates in media studies understand the full range of cultural forms of expression,” he says.
(Reference from article by - RACHELLE COOPER , "At Guelph" November 24, 2004 - Volume 48, No. 18.)
