"Popular culture is intimately connected with education, mass communication, production, and a society's ability to access knowledge" (James Campbell, Popular Culture; as cited in Reynolds, 2012).
When one thinks of popular (pop) culture, one tends to think of music, fashion, T.V shows, movies, art, or style; but rarely does on think of education or how pop culture relates, influences, and effects education or curriculum.
Pop culture according to dictionary.com is defined as "cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people" (dictionary.com, 2015). Whereas, Wikipedia defines it as "the entirety of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, images, and other phenomena that are within the mainstream of a given culture, especially western culture of the early to mid 20th century ans the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century" (Wikipedia, 2015).
In essence, pop culture has to do with everything we do and engage in everyday. How people relate, how people connect, and even our different perspectives are largely influenced by pop culture. We cannot move about in a whole day and not be affected in one way or the other by popular culture, be it in what we wears, ads we see, things we buy, and even foods we eat. In this, education is not left affected as there also is now a change in how learning occurs, and how education is delivered to students. Especially in an age wherein the use of technology is growing and we are all interconnected technologically, rarely are educators seen in front of the classroom teaching and telling students that which they should know, but instead, students are engaged, active, and leading their own learning, utilizing technological tools available to them.
Also, so many aspects of pop culture are used as teaching tools; such as movies, music, ads, books, websites, blogs, and even social media platforms. These are not only used as teaching tools but also promoted in the education community; to be used as it fits into the curriculum, and even to stretch the curriculum.
The drawback to this is that, individuals and students are so 'plugged in' now inside and outside of the classroom, that there appears to be a false sense of reality in which many live. With the prevalence of social media, which allows you to create different platforms to present/represent yourself/ build personas, there appears to be a blur between reality and pseudo-reality.
So why does pop culture matter? Well, a way to combat the aforementioned is to hone in on the influence that popular has on education, as explained by Reynolds (2012). It is important to recognize the importance of pop culture, as it is a part of our everyday life, but also it is important to teach our students an understanding of pop culture and the impact it has on our lives as individuals, but more importantly, how they can understand, navigate, and discovery the influence they desire pop culture to have on their lives as members of society.
References:
Dictionary.com (2015). Pop Culture. Retrieved July 11, 2015 from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pop%20culture?s=t
Reynolds, M.W. (2012) (Ed). “Why Popular Culture Matters,” Popular Culture. Retrieved July 11, 2015 from http://bit.ly/1B25znl
Wikipedia. (2015). Pop culture. Retrieved July 11, 2015 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_culture
Pop culture according to dictionary.com is defined as "cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people" (dictionary.com, 2015). Whereas, Wikipedia defines it as "the entirety of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, images, and other phenomena that are within the mainstream of a given culture, especially western culture of the early to mid 20th century ans the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century" (Wikipedia, 2015).
In essence, pop culture has to do with everything we do and engage in everyday. How people relate, how people connect, and even our different perspectives are largely influenced by pop culture. We cannot move about in a whole day and not be affected in one way or the other by popular culture, be it in what we wears, ads we see, things we buy, and even foods we eat. In this, education is not left affected as there also is now a change in how learning occurs, and how education is delivered to students. Especially in an age wherein the use of technology is growing and we are all interconnected technologically, rarely are educators seen in front of the classroom teaching and telling students that which they should know, but instead, students are engaged, active, and leading their own learning, utilizing technological tools available to them.
Also, so many aspects of pop culture are used as teaching tools; such as movies, music, ads, books, websites, blogs, and even social media platforms. These are not only used as teaching tools but also promoted in the education community; to be used as it fits into the curriculum, and even to stretch the curriculum.
The drawback to this is that, individuals and students are so 'plugged in' now inside and outside of the classroom, that there appears to be a false sense of reality in which many live. With the prevalence of social media, which allows you to create different platforms to present/represent yourself/ build personas, there appears to be a blur between reality and pseudo-reality.
So why does pop culture matter? Well, a way to combat the aforementioned is to hone in on the influence that popular has on education, as explained by Reynolds (2012). It is important to recognize the importance of pop culture, as it is a part of our everyday life, but also it is important to teach our students an understanding of pop culture and the impact it has on our lives as individuals, but more importantly, how they can understand, navigate, and discovery the influence they desire pop culture to have on their lives as members of society.
References:
Dictionary.com (2015). Pop Culture. Retrieved July 11, 2015 from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pop%20culture?s=t
Reynolds, M.W. (2012) (Ed). “Why Popular Culture Matters,” Popular Culture. Retrieved July 11, 2015 from http://bit.ly/1B25znl
Wikipedia. (2015). Pop culture. Retrieved July 11, 2015 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_culture