As this section of my youth/popular culture online inquiry “notebook” comes to a close, I’d like to contribute some final thoughts about my inquiry into youth and popular culture and its potential for shaping my pedagogy.
I’ve been thinking more and more about Christopher Noxon’s work, Rejuvenile: Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-up (2007) and work by Curtis White, namely, The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption, and the Culture of Total Work (2008).
Both authors explore the ways facets of American culture shape everyday lived experiences, but Noxon subsumes and co-opts “youth” culture by framing it as a political response taken up by those who construct (re)imagined notions of their childhoods in their adult lives. From Noxon’s perspective, adults are (re)claiming “youthful” or “childish” traits, such as an interest in games, popular culture, and even childhood foods, in resistant response to consumerist culture.
It seems market democracy and the consumerist culture breezing in on its tailwinds are producing a sector of adults who would rather enact rebellious youth culture through their consumption trends than partake of other “adult” concerns as framed by previous generations.
What’s interesting to me is that while these people may be acting in a “spirit of disobedience” to resist a “culture of total work,” they are also co-opting with adult social capital, some of the best and more enriched aspects of a youth culture that is often (mis)represented in the adult realm.
What’s problematic, as far as I’m concerned, is that market culture often frames adolescence as a “passing through” from the treasures of childhood to the total and legitimate freedoms of adulthood. By framing youth this way, adolescence becomes a transitory, nowhere space that positions its inhabitants, people aged 13-19, as politically neutral, inscribable, rebellious to adults, and yet politically insolvent.
This transitory “space” is the geography on which, adult culture works to indoctrinate youth so that they will assimilate into adult consumerist culture, ready to buy marriages and homes, merchandise, and “security.” There is a gap in the discourse surrounding adolescent experiences that is not manufactured or edited by adults. For instance, the merchants of intellectual industry, those otherwise known as publishers, serve as gatekeepers for youths’ intellectual work and writing.
Though there are journals such as Young Scholars providing some small market share for work created and research for and by youth, cultural tropes and stereotypes about adolescent youth do not reflect an acceptance of youths-as-scholars or creators of intellectual discourse.
It seems that as a culture, we want adolescents to educated without contributing to the mechanism of education. We want them to read, but not to be read. We want them to write, without writing to publish. Within the confines of middle and secondary education, we perpetuate the notion of adolescent-as-novice and provide little room for them to create, construct, or enact academic and cultural expertise.
That isn’t to say there aren’t institutions supporting this kind of work. The College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska will be hosting a youth colloquium in January 2009 that will provide spaces for youth to serve as academic and cultural experts while contributing to teacher education. This move to bring adolescents into the collegiate arena to serve as experts is an encouraging display of investment in youth education, and I can only hope this colloquium will become a trendsetter within academic circles.
It’s not that youth aren’t creating sophisticated and rich intellectual work. As Earnest Morrell (2004) notes, however, this evidentiary displays are found far outside of academic texts and in the discourse spaces of everyday living (like napkins, journals, graffiti, poetry, lyrics, and other spaces outside school texts). Helping students to see the evidence of their thinking in these spaces is what popular culture pedagogies can help teachers to do.
As an instructor within freshman composition courses, I can now construct pedagogical practices with my students that will contain those popular culture artifacts my students feel represent their subject positions and interests. I, in turn, can show them my “take” on popular culture artifacts, and in the reflexive construction of our shared pedagogies, teacher becomes learner, while learners become teachers.
Because of my work in a popular/youth culture and literacy course, I have come to understand that the classroom space is not an oasis free from the influences of popular culture or the outside world. Students bring with them perceived and constructed representations of that outside world (and its cultures) that influence their sense of who they are and what the need from their instructor.
Moreover, most students cannot name (without assistance) where their notions of education come from or where their sense of education is affirmed (or disavowed) within the cultural spheres. Critical practices that question relationships of power and powerlessness can go a long way to help students identify their assigned and constructed subjectivities, which is why looking at popular culture as a site for learning is so important.
Critical pedagogy can also help students to name and explore the literacies they bring with them to classes, as well as the literacies teachers are trying to pass on to them. No one enters a classroom as a blank slate. Finding ways of uncovering and utilizing the literacies students bring with them is a powerful tool with which to construct and explore meaning.
That being said, when one decides to use popular culture and critical pedagogy together, one should be prepared for the complex responses students will have as what has previously been invisible becomes visible. Close, critical examination of cultural artifacts and practices reveal complex issues such as gender and racial discrimination (and tension), issues of classism and poverty, and a host of other difficult-to-discuss inconsistencies and inequities.
As I prepare my curricula for the next term, I will be thinking more and more about co-construction (with my students), and the cultural artifacts we could employ in our inquiry work surrounding rhetoric. When that curricula becomes more clear, and when I have finished constructing my syllabus and course structure, I will post them here. Until then, should you wish to explore youth culture and popular culture, and its potential in the writing classroom, I suggest you read:
Morrell, Earnest. Linking Literacy and Popular Culture: Finding Connections for Lifelong Learning. Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc. Norwood, MA: 2004.
Dyson, Anne. The Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write: Popular Literacies in Childhood and School Cultures. Teachers College Press; New York: 2003.
Qualley, Donna. Turns of Thought: Teaching Composition as Reflexive Inquiry. Heinemann; Portsmouth, NH: 1997.
Brodkey, Linda. Writing Permitted in Designated Areas Only. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 1996.
Fisher, Maisha. Writing in Rhythm: Spoken Word Poetry in Urban Classrooms. Teachers College Press, Columbia University: 2007.
Dewey, John. The School and Society & The Child and the Curriculum. Dover Publications; New York: 2001.
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