Grand Theft Auto 5, Australian culture, and how the American press misses the point

Read this opinion piece by Claire Hosking on Polygon about the issues with Grand Theft Auto and the controversy it has been causing in Australia.

Polygon - Grand Theft Auto 5, Australian culture, and how the American press misses the point

I think this might be my favorite part of the article.  It's interesting to see how education promotes open channels of communication and understanding in a way much unlike the way we were brought up to think:

" THIS IS, IN PART, AN EDUCATION ISSUE

Australia has a less polarized view toward speech and art than America and many internet commentators. We're more likely to participate in public debates about it, more likely to feel heard and have more faith in judging it.

Part of that is the way media literacy is taught in schools. In my state, for our university exams, we were taught a unit on how TV, books, poems, ads and films use techniques to reinforce implicit meanings, and one on how different viewpoints read texts differently.

We had to be able to compare and contrast our own interpretations of a text with how other ideologies might interpret it, such as feminist, Marxist, capitalist or classical works. We were required to form our own personal judgments about the values of the text and how well they were expressed. You could have any interpretation you wanted as long as you could cite the bit of the text that led you to those conclusions and lucidly explain why.

We bake cultural awareness and critical thinking into our education. This helps Australians feel empowered to judge media, but also to tolerate when other citizens or companies act on their judgments and reject some media. As such, I think Australia usually strikes a good balance between ensuring citizens can speak truth to power, and giving them the skills to do so, and ensuring that certain kinds of speech don't harm the less powerful."