08 Oct Why popular culture still belongs in the classroom
From Shakespeare to Harry Potter, films, television and digital media, popular culture has always told us something about the society that creates it. Dr Karen Brooks argues that the texts young people enjoy can have an important place in education — alongside the classics.
One thing guaranteed to rouse the ire of social commentators and make parents anxious about their children’s education is the role that popular culture plays in the classroom — never mind in society generally.
The term ‘popular culture’ itself is often laden with negative connotations. Conjuring notions of lowbrow, mass-market entertainment, popular culture — whether it be what we watch, listen to, wear, eat or read — has frequently been linked to the ‘dumbing down’ of society.
This alarmist position is both conservative and more than a little naive. After all, what is popular culture if not that which engages the populace and reflects the social ideas of the era in which it thrives?
Popular culture is nothing new
When popular culture is discussed, it can seem as though it suddenly manifested itself with the arrival of television or rock ’n’ roll.
But just as reality TV, streaming series, games and other forms of entertainment capture enormous audiences today, other forms of cultural entertainment reached and spoke to the masses over the aeons.
Roman author Pliny describes with great disgust the spectacle of elephants and lions tearing each other apart to the cheers and jeers of audiences in the Colosseum.
Narratives about young people disrespecting their parents’ wishes and defying authority — or stories containing sex, drugs and plenty of gore — are certainly not exclusive to our era. In this regard, Achilles always shows his heel, while the defiant and besotted Romeo and Juliet should stand up and be counted.
Just as Homer’s verses of gods, war, love, lust and death were chanted to adoring audiences in Ancient Greece, or Shakespeare’s plays about revenge, murder, intrigue and sex were watched by ordinary people, contemporary audiences consume stories through movies, television, books, games, music and digital media.
Time, it seems, is what endows many stories with gravitas and the glamorous sobriquet of ‘literature’ or ‘art’. Because they were written or performed in the past, despite the commonality of their themes, they accrue a legitimacy and authority that their contemporary cousins sometimes appear to lack.
Why the classics can be a hard sell
The verses of Homer and Wordsworth, or the narratives of Austen, Dickens and Eliot, may be written in beautiful, evocative prose, but they can also be dense and difficult for younger people to read and grasp.
Furthermore, it can be hard to relate to a man who takes 20 years to find his way home in an age of satellite navigation, let alone two young people who meet and rapidly decide they cannot live without each other.
Contemporary stories, on the other hand, often immediately resonate with their target audiences.
Harry Potter, Star Wars, superhero stories, graphic novels, fantasy, television series, music and games all draw upon many of the same themes that have occupied storytellers for centuries: love, loyalty, identity, courage, betrayal, good and evil, belonging and the heroic quest.
Young people relish and recite these stories. More importantly for educators, they understand and relate to the languages in which they are being told — visual, aural, digital and written.
It is therefore understandable that a child might initially value Harry Potter above Odysseus or a graphic novel above a poem written hundreds of years ago.
Teachers and parents can talk about the merits of classic literature, but unless young people can discover some relevance in those works, we risk making them appear remote rather than remarkable.
One doesn’t have to replace the other
This does not mean emptying classrooms of Shakespeare, Austen or Dickens and replacing them with whatever happens to be trending.
Popular culture can be used not at the expense of traditional texts, but alongside them.
That is where things become interesting.
A contemporary film or television series can open discussions about gender, families, relationships, class, identity and power. A modern adaptation can provide an entry point into an older novel or play.
The film Clueless, for example, remains a clever updating of Jane Austen’s Emma. Examining the similarities between the two can help students see that while clothes, language and social customs change, human preoccupations often do not.
Likewise, the Harry Potter series, The Chronicles of Narnia, Lemony Snicket’s books and the work of Australian children’s writers such as Andy Griffiths all offer material that can be explored beyond the simple question of whether children enjoy reading them.
They deal with friendship, love, loyalty, fear, authority, power, right and wrong and the choices people make when confronted by difficult circumstances.
Those are hardly trivial subjects.
Teaching children to look beneath the story
Studying a text in context allows even something deceptively simple to reveal greater complexity.
Who created it? Who was it intended for? What was happening socially or historically when it appeared? What values does it reflect? Whose point of view does it present? Who might be missing from the story?
These questions can be asked of a Shakespeare play, a novel, a movie, an advertisement, a television program, a graphic novel or a piece of digital media.
This is one reason the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture can be so limiting.
If a particular text — whether it is a beloved children’s picture book, a popular screen series or the poetry of John Keats — engages a student and teaches them something about who they are, where they are and the society in which they live, then which text is chosen may matter less than how it is used and the connections drawn between it and other texts.
There sometimes remains a mindset that if something is entertaining or fun, it cannot also be educational.
Of course it can.
The real lesson is learning to think
None of this overlooks the continuing responsibility of education to introduce young people to great literature, challenging ideas and works they might never encounter on their own.
Rather, teachers can use a variety of stories, ideas, debates and forms of communication to enlighten students.
Perhaps one of the most important lessons we can pass on to children is not simply the ability to memorise passages, formulas and dates, but the ability to think critically and creatively about their culture: what it produces, what it consumes and their own relationship with it.
The way we communicate has changed enormously since this article was first written. Young people now encounter stories and information across books, film, streaming services, games, social media and countless digital platforms.
That makes the ability to question, interpret and critically examine what they read, hear and see more important, rather than less.
The challenge for education is not to erect an artificial barrier between culture deemed worthy and culture deemed popular. It is to give students the skills to recognise the difference between simply consuming something and understanding it.
And, most importantly, to empower future generations to make informed choices about who they are and the contribution they make to their families, society and the world.
About the author
Dr Karen Brooks is an Australian author, former academic, newspaper columnist and social commentator. She spent more than 20 years in academia, specialising in popular culture, education and cultural studies, and is now the author of historical fiction, historical fantasy, young adult fantasy and non-fiction. She lives in Hobart, Tasmania.
Editor’s note: This article was first published in 2006 and has been lightly edited and updated for a contemporary audience.
