This video is an educational source about how to properly
use phone etiquette in the 50’s. It is meant for young adults, specifically
Native American young adults, in order to teach them how to be polite on the
telephone. I think at the time this was a very important educational source
because telephone calls were becoming a more common means of communicating
business transactions and events through.
I think that it is a very important educational tool today
in the fact that it shows just how important the ability to properly
communicate through these new sources was becoming. It also shows how much the
importance has changed on the phone and electronic education. Although the
telephone is still a means of business and extensive communication, there is
less emphasis on how to properly communicate on the phone because of the many
other electronic ways to communicate in our society. As a kid I was taught how
to properly portray myself on social media, and less so how to answer and use
the telephone.
This video shows not only how important the education of
using this new technology of the time was, but also how much the use of this
particular technology has transformed into use of a different technology. The
society based around this technology was much more formal than I believe it is
today. With all of the casual means of communication, I believe that today
there is less of an emphasis on how to be proper in speaking and more of an
emphasis on how to properly write important communication.
I thought it was interesting that they taught them such basic things as please and thank you. It seems like everyone in our culture, regardless of whether they actually use them, knows to use these words. I wonder if they have to teach them this because native american culture is different, or if they are making racist assumptions.
ReplyDeleteI found this film to be more outdated than some of the others. It is funny to see how this has changed from this point because now most families do not even have landlines. It is interesting that it was necessary to be told to say "please," "thank you," and "I'm sorry," because now everything is so impersonal and fast paced. I also found it interesting that below the film it noted that this film was aimed at Native American youth. I think that could be useful to our class by showing the roles of different groups of people in this information society. Clearly, these simple words were not considered "universal" in 1950.
ReplyDeleteThis film was interesting to me in particular because I work at the Telefund where I teach students how to call and speak with alumni. While we are teaching all kinds of students, unlike how this film was aimed toward Native American youth, we still have to instruct callers on how to do some things that you would consider fairly common sense, i.e. saying "Thank You!"...perhaps a training video would be more effective than me saying it over and over again.
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