Chapter 6 - Humor

When I started to read this chapter, I went back in time to my early days in the "corporate" world where we wore suits and casual Friday was business casual and a treat. Back then, I thought most of my colleagues would be were austere and models of professionalism. Instead there was profanity and sometimes profane humor. In retrospect, I don't think that I learned more about any subject through the correlation of humor, but when you represent a numerical minority the expectations are just not the same. For as many of the "dirty" jokes that I had heard through the years, if I would have been the author of any, I definitely feel that I would have been held accountable and that is with the men. A perceived improper joke around a female leads to HR and a harassment claim. Can you really retain meaningful information through humor? The text suggests that if you have the proper ingredients for humor, then the student learner has an opportunity to learn and retain the information. In this section of the text, I tend to disagree with the author on the utilization of humor. In the workforce, humor can get you reprimanded, suspended, or fired. Most recently, Roland Martin, a political pundit on CNN was suspended for tweeting comments about an underwear advertisement with soccer star David Beckham. The LGBT community thought his tweets were offensive. The 140 character universe of twitter has been highly destructive on careers in the attempts of humor. In our presentations, we may feel that the humor we want to use is okay, but you never know the prior experiences of the crowd and if you are pushing the wrong button. For example, what if I attended a diversity conference and the first slide was that of a Sambo with exaggerated features intended to denigrate. I would definitely not see the humor in it, but the instructor may have had a legitimate reason to frame the discussion. On the other hand, I would think that humor could be better utilized for kids, but you always have to cognizant if you are laughing together or is someone being laughed at. I don't know how many times I laughed at Wile Coyote and the Roadrunner on the cartoons and Tom and Jerry. It was usually at bad behavior. I think we may want to leave well placed humor for the professionals, because folks are paying to see their routine and they usually have an understanding of what will an will not be said. References Burmark, L. (2011), They Snooze You Lose: The Educator's Guide To Successful Presentations