I think this reading got much more in depth into the theory of perception than I was prepared for. It took the idea of the “most photographed barn in America” to a new place for me. But as much as I appreciate Percy’s effort to explain and give examples, I have to agree with Joel that a lot of it just went over my head. I understand the point about discovery that he makes, that the first person to see a thing, or one who discovers a thing on his/her own without previous knowledge of it, has a certain advantage over those whose conceptions of the thing have been “tainted” by a previous idea of it. This reminds me of a discussion we had in Dr. Wittman’s 5010 class yesterday, where he mentioned a scientific experiment on perception. Those of you who are in that class will remember. When people were given glimpses of a picture on focus, they knew what it was immediately and could describe it. When shown a picture first as very blurry and then clearer and clearer as if came into focus, they tried to figure out what it was before it came clear, and so had a harder time identifying it, because as it came into focus, the real picture was not the same as the one they had originally imagined. This disparity between their first conception and the real image confused them and made them reexamine it.

This seems to be the same phenomenon that Percy is describing in regard to the tourist who expects the Grand Canyon to mirror the postcard, or the family who craves a “real” feeling of Mexico and cannot find it in touristy Taxco. I think it is an apt perspective for this class because no matter how objective we try to be in out ethnography, we already have preconceptions of what a classroom ‘is supposed to look like’ and this changes our experience for us from a pure experience to one that is measured against all the other classroom experiences we have had.

There is a balance that needs to be met here, because in order to create the ‘pure’ experience that would give us the greatest objectivity, we would have to be brand new to classrooms, and as such would not know what to look for as interesting or different from other classrooms, but on the other hand, as familiar as we are with classrooms, we have to teach ourselves how to see the familiar in an unfamiliar way. We have to learn to stand back and try to see the classroom through the experience of the students (as do the two men in ‘the most photographed barn in America’ watch the tourists, or the man familiar with the grand Canyon watches the tourists and sees it anew in their eyes.) In this way we will begin to see the classroom in a new light and can get a new perspective of it.