“Can popular culture be used in schools to enhance education?” This question is one that evokes a multitude of feelings in those who hear it. In some, it proposes the concept that anything can be used as a teaching tool and is gladly embraced. In others, it conjures up visions of children watching videos of Lady Gaga and texting friends rather than learning.
Contrary to the opinions of many in our world, there is more to pop culture than music videos and cell phones. However, even they can be used as a teaching tool.
“If my students, future teachers, get an opportunity to experience firsthand using pop culture they will be more likely to embrace popular culture as a tool to use within their classrooms as well.”
She goes on to extol the use of video clips in class by saying, “Video clips interspersed within lecture, whole group discussion as well as small group discussion can help get direct discussions to the heart of the issue as well as help to make connections to valuable concepts.”
An example of using video in the classroom is depicted in the following clip by Lisa Friedrich-Harris, the director of college writing at Baker College:
Despite the fact that we live in the 21st century, many in our world still have an aversion to using pop culture as a teaching tool. Maybe it’s because they are unaware of how it can be used in the classroom. All someone has to do is look at the history of this planet. Throughout history, societies as a whole have used some form of their pop culture as a teaching tool. One example of this would be in prehistoric societies where cave paintings were used by the old to teach the young about the world they live in.
Pop culture won’t cure cancer or manufacture automobiles, but to dismiss it as pure nonsense without studying its benefits will leave our worlds teachers with one less instrument to educate students with.
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