Popular Culture and Education: Implications for Our Youth's Education

I looked into Channel One and its impact on education and came across many articles similar to the ones Jeanne posted recently. For the most part, many people are not happy with Channel One's presence in schools . The main argument here is that most schools that have Channel One tend to be in poorer communities whereas schools in more wealthier communities have opted not to participate in the Channel One Program. After reading several articles with this main idea, I decided to take a look at the official Channel One website, www.channelone.com. The main feature on the home page was "Celebrity Prom Dresses" with a smaller section devoted to global warming and "Going Green". This visit to the website solidified people's concern about the program. Although the program claims to offer a balanced mix of hard news and popular culture features, a majority of these broadcasts are heavily focused on popular culture while hard news stories are minimal.

With this information, I thought about one of our questions for this project which is:
Does Channel One fragment or unify children in terms of education perspectives?

My immediate answer was OF COURSE! While lower income children waste class time with puff stories about the latest celebrity prom dresses, their more wealthier counterparts are spending valuable class time actually learning material which will help them advance academically. So yes ... Channel One is fragmenting our children. Sort of like the saying " the rich is getting richer while the poor is getting poorer" EXCEPT in this situation, the richer is getting smarter while the poorer is getting dumber."

So, my mind was made up. Channel One is definitely causing fragmentation among our youth. However, I decided to do a little more investigation and looked more broadly at Popular Culture and Education. Turns out that there are some people out there that advocate incorporating popular culture in education (see below articles).

With these new sources, I am not so sure if Channel One is causing fragmentation. I have formed new questions that need further investigation. For instance, could it be that incorporating popular culture into education will encourage children to learn about the world around them and apply what they learn in the classroom to the real world?

Steven Johnson in his book "Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter" argues that "the pop culture we soak in every day has been growing more and more sophisticated and, far from rotting our brains, is actually posing new cognitive challenges that are making our minds measurably sharper." So, could it be that children exposed to Channel One are in fact becoming smarter? Is there really a significant divide between poorer children exposed to Channel One and wealthier children who are not exposed to this program?

ARTICLES

Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson

The $10 billion video gaming industry is now the second-largest segment of the entertainment industry in the United States, outstripping film and far surpassing books. Reality television shows featuring silicone-stuffed CEO wannabes and bug-eating adrenaline junkies dominate the ratings. But prominent social and cultural critic Steven Johnson argues that our popular culture has never been smarter.

Drawing from fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and literary theory, Johnson argues that the junk culture we're so eager to dismiss is in fact making us more intelligent. A video game will never be a book, Johnson acknowledges, nor should it aspire to be — and, in fact, video games, from Tetris to The Sims to Grand Theft Auto, have been shown to raise IQ scores and develop cognitive abilities that can't be learned from books.

Likewise, successful television, when examined closely and taken seriously, reveals surprising narrative sophistication and intellectual demands.Forget everything you've read about the age of dumbed-down, instant-gratification culture. In this provocative, intelligent, and convincing endorsement of today's mass entertainment, national bestselling author Steven Johnson argues that the pop culture we soak in every day has been growing more and more sophisticated and, far from rotting our brains, is actually posing new cognitive challenges that are making our minds measurably sharper. You will never regard the glow of the video game or television screen the same way again.

Startling, provocative, and endlessly engaging, Everything Bad Is Good for You is a hopeful and spirited account of contemporary culture. Elegantly and convincingly, Johnson demonstrates that our culture is not declining but changing — in exciting and stimulating ways we'd do well to underst

AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE: SHOULD WE INTEGRATE IT INTO AMERICAN EDUCATION?

Fain, Thomas A Jr

Educating the youth of America has always been a significant challenge, and the present is no different. We will be more effective as educators if we integrate the study of the popular culture with traditional education. Doing so will result in making our youth's education more meaningful, more relevant to the world in which they live, and will allow our youth to truly understand more of what they learn. This article explains why the study of popular television programs, movies, music, and literature will greatly enhance the learning experiences of our students.

Educating the American youth is and always has been a significant challenge. Obviously, it would be wise of us as professional educators to use as many techniques as possible in order to be successful in our mission. It is tempting to become so concerned with the standardized tests that are so much in vogue at present that we don't strive enough to make education truly meaningful to our youth. We need to do more than just teach facts and mathematical formulas; we need to provide an education to which our students can relate. If we do this, our students will not only learn more, but they will retain more, and they will be better able to apply what they learn after they graduate from high school or college.

By integrating study of the American popular culture into the education of our youth, we can better provide a means for them to take what they learn out into the world as adults. Our students obviously understand the popular culture in which they live; by merging the study of this culture with traditional education, they will be better able to grasp concepts, make sense of what they learn, and acquire perspective of the world in which they live.

Furthermore, our students will have a better attitude in regards to their education if we can emphasize relevance to the world in which they are familiar. Also, integrating traditional education with the things in society that they see as important will better motivate them to learn... (see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3673/is_200407/ai_n9421958)