Four Approaches To Using Popular Culture In The Classroom

Pop culture has been seen in the past to be a main ingredient in making our country’s I.Q. drop, or well, that the overall population is going to become dumber because of its rise. However, Malcolm Gladwell has felt differently, and decided to produce an article on how pop culture has effected the smarts of our country. In Malcolm Gladwell’s article “Brain Candy”, Gladwell effectively uses rhetorical appeals to prove his argument.

Pop culture, what does this term even mean? It seems to be a word that contains subjects of media, social structure, and society as a whole. According to the dictionary, pop culture is defined as “cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people”. In the society we live in today, we are constantly surrounded by pop culture, either that is with television, magazines, different sources of social media and/or exposure to others. Due to pop culture being such a dominant contribution into our world today, it has effected many parts of society. The domination of social media has created idealistic views that are stressed upon female adolescents in particular. Upon media’s influence, traditional tactics and work have been modified in order to keep up with our technology oriented society. This alters the schools and education systems. Through the use of television, social media and other means of pop culture, serious study is necessary due to the negative effects it has on the younger generation and the effects it has for their futures.

     In comparing the sixties and the nineties, my first thought was how much popular culture has changed since then and how different society is today. The strange thing is, the more I tried to differentiate between them, the more similarities I found. Both the sixties and the nineties were about youth, creativity, free-thinking, and expression. With the nineties coming to a close and the popularity of anything ?retro," I decided to compare the fashions, people, music, and issues that defined pop culture in the 1960?s and its influence on pop culture in the 1990?s.

Popularity is one of the most prevalent themes in adolescents’ experience in school and social development. It shapes how they interact with peers, adults, and their selves. This theme is explored and emphasized in popular culture from musicals like Wicked with its popular song titled “Popular” to television shows like Sabrina the teenage witch, Glee, 90210, etc. How popular an adolescent is defines who they are, in that it shapes where they stand amongst peers and their self-perception of their self-value. Psychological research and theories support much of the popular culture perceptions and beliefs about popularity.

In this peer-reviewed academic article the central argument was that in many schools only Caucasian music and literature is being learned about instead of Native American music. This is an issue because children in school now are not able to learn about a different culture due to the limitation of only learning about Caucasian music and literature. Also, another issue is that since the world is made up of many different cultures, the students should be learning about more than one to get a better understanding on that culture. The result of this is children will understand the history of Native Americans and the different types of music from other cultures. Another result is that children will not understand the meanings behind these types of music and literatures.

To develop, encourage, and embrace cultural consciousness, students in third grade will work together to create a multicultural environment, where the teacher will help students develop a positive attitude towards different race, ethic and cultural groups, in addition each student will receive equal educational opportunities (1997). Countries and Cultures Around the World is an integrated social studies unit that will promote an atmosphere of inquiry in the classroom and help students gain a broader appreciation for other cultures. The unit is comprised of interdisciplinary lessons, with activities that teach social studies, literacy (reading and writing), art and music.

The idea of pop culture has many different opinions surrounding it. Some people believe that it’s a God sent to us, others think it's the devil. Chris Hedges and Melissa Ames both have opposing opinions on this topic. Hedges, in “American Psychosis,” discusses that pop culture is bad because we focus too much on superficial topics and not enough on the real problems in our world. Whereas, Ames, in “Engaging ‘Apolitical’ Adolescents: Analyzing the Popularity and Educational Potential of Dystopian Literature Post-9/11,” suggests that pop culture is a unique tool that you can use to understand politics and our world’s problems. Both authors struggle to convince their peers to believe their ideology and they both have unique ways of doing so. By

In conclusion, there is both reluctance and openness towards whether pop culture should be studied at an academic level. Pop culture has a value in sociology, the interests of students and a lack of resistance from students and professors. There are more positive resources that support pop culture as an academic study than there are ones of reluctance. From the evidence stated in above paragraphs, it is evident that there is much support for a new form of

Pop culture is fascinating. Whether it be a popular new movie or an album by an artist, there is always something in store for everyone to love about it. RuPaul once said, “The point about pop culture is that so much of it is borrowed. There's very little that's brand new. Instead, creativity today is a kind of shopping process—picking up on and sampling things from the world around you, things you grew up with.” What he means by this is that ideas have been reused throughout music, movies, shows, novels, etc. over time. Nowadays it is a rarity to find anything original as many ideas are recycled or borrowed.

Through the administration of non traditional forms of teaching, the individual is able to expand his or her horizons in compliance with the remainder of society. The involvement of the arts is crucial to schools across the nation because they "improve employability, eradicate inequality, and help prevent crime" (Furedi 15). In doing so, such lesson plans are insinuating a more beneficial approach to the decline of the developing generation. They not only denote an advantageous appeal to expanding one's intellect as well as "offer creativity, challenges, participation and engagement" that are promising to one's "personal growth and development" (Development Education. ie). Popular culture teachings go beyond promoting academic achievement through the endorsement of individual growth. Because scholars are instructed to think beyond the standards and associate key factors of modern life to education, they are even more motivated to strive in the pursuit of creativity and the search for self identity. Popular culture is critical to one's attainment of goals and dreams through personal experiences solicited in

The study of culture is very important to our society, as we have been studying our past and identities for as long as we can recall. Studying our cultures allows us to understand each other as a people, so we can comprehend what we have done, and possibly, what we may do. As we study American popular culture, we see something that began as almost nothing, to a group of patterns that has captured the minds of not only the American people themselves, but the whole world, as well.

Let's take rap. Some kids who like rap talk like rappers, dress like rappers, eat like rappers, and treat women like rappers treat women. Is it because they're influenced by what they see on TV or hear on their favourite rap artist's album?” Glen Chiacchieri makes it clear that there are many aspects of culture that are dependent on Music, and that music has been, and that the way people lived there lives are affected by music and popular culture.

What pops into your mind first when you think of popular culture in today’s day and age? The latest dirt on celebrities or the latest iPhone release? The latest controversial issue or the latest iTunes hit? Regardless, pop culture encompasses all four of these concepts and many more, which consume the world we live in each and every day. Think about education. At first thought, your mind may not make the connection between the newest Taylor Swift song and the highest ACT score, but the linkage between the two becomes undeniable when you dive deeper. Ponder this: each day millions of kids walk into school buildings across the United States, each of them glued to a little slice of pop culture, a.k.a. their phone. And each day these millions

“For most of the twentieth century, [popular culture] has been denigrated by intellectuals of all ideological stripes as either meaningless escapism or a dangerous narcotic” (Cullen 2). Popular culture is a form of escapism; however, I would argue against those intellectuals calling it meaningless, because, as we have also learned from Cullen, the elites will reject new forms of popular culture. Returning to escapism, an example we have seen is in comic books. Adolescent boys would turn to comics as a source of escapism. For example, lower-class second-generation Jewish immigrants, searching for their place to fit in society, created Superman. Their comics appealed to young boys, in a post-Depression era, with

Popular culture is a term that holds various meanings depending on where it 's being defined and the context of its use. It is usually recognized as the language or people’s culture that prevails in a society at a point in time. As social researcher Brummett explains in his book “Rhetorical Dimensions of Popular Culture”, pop culture reflects the characteristics of social life, where the publicly are most actively involved. Popular culture is known as the ‘culture of the people’. This culture is determined by the interactions between people within their daily activities, for instance, dressing styles, use of language, greeting rituals and the ways that people behave in public, etc. are all examples of popular culture. Popular culture is also diverted by the mass media (Abbott and Sapsford, 1987).