I'd Rather Not Toon In To This Text

After reading the first three essays in Tooning In by Cameron White and Trenia Walker, I feel confused, frustrated, and decidedly not looking forward to reading any more of the text. While there were a few moments that caused me to reflect and question my current thoughts and practices, the thinly veiled attempt of the authors to shift, rather than change, the direction of classroom education was infuriating.

In the very first paragraph of the first chapter, a thought hit me: if popular culture ‘perpetuates the status quo and…hegemony,’ why are youth drawn to it? Later in the book there is talk about the general feeling of disenfranchisement felt by the majority of youth today, and how media and pop culture helps to bring them together. I suppose this could answer it partially, but there is also talk about the use of pop culture to challenge and change the power structure. Schools will always be artificial and power-filled institutions; the only way to change that is privatization. That aside, we can work to change the severity of the power structure, but by bringing in pop culture (which I’m not opposed to), we are bringing in the ‘weapon’ used by decades of youth to question and change a power structure. How can that happen without pop culture losing its edge of being ‘outside’ and therefore moldable and enticing to youth? If we are teaching them how to use a modality that is a ‘naturally occurring phenomenon’ are we not artificially using our “power” to change society in whatever twisted direction we see fit? I’m not sure where I stand on this one yet, but it seems to be contradictory.

That leads me to my primary frustration with this text so far. Page after page there are jabs at the negative effects of the current accountability movements. I am generally not in support of standardized testing as a means of measuring the progress of students, but ACCOUNTABILITY is not a bad thing. Accountability for teaching and learning is not synonymous with standardization of teaching and learning. If teachers and students aren’t accountable for whatever they are teaching/learning, what’s the point of school (and funding streams for that matter)? This text seeks not to change accountability or standardization but to impose a different standard through catchy and ‘relevant’ means. If we should bring pop culture into the classroom in an attempt to teach critical thinking, we have to be mindful of teaching critical thinking rather than just shifting a lens to match what we like better. If we are teaching students to look at something “this way” as opposed to “that way,” we are NOT teaching critical thinking—we are imposing a standard.

I found myself a bit confused about using media artifacts. There seems to be a fuzzy line of media artifacts that were pop culture and current pop culture. We can use media artifacts to establish a more engaging classroom and use them to a more complete extent, but how is that ‘pop culture?’ The text goes on to say that using these to support teaching rather than teaching them as media texts is a thinly veiled attempt at progressivism and relevance. I don’t disagree, but using something that was pop culture when it happened to investigate a time period as a whole will only be effective if we connect it to our current world. Maybe that’s what they were getting at but didn’t quite get to. I’ve used media artifacts in my English classrooms repeatedly because I teach very visual learners, and I’ve also done units teaching media in and of itself. Students are able to gain much more from the media artifacts after we’ve studied the genre of media itself first.

I love the idea of incorportating pop culture aspects as a means of unit-based/thematic instruction. Being able to bring things to life that will live with students outside of the classroom is very powerful and what every teacher desires. I want my students to generalize what we're working on in class and be able to use those processes in an effort to change their world. That's the power of pop culture in the classroom--making it real and relevant to the individual not just in the way "I" see it.

Reflecting on my stance as a teacher, I am most connected to the demystification type right now. I’m thinking that might change a bit, but generally, when I taught media, I taught it in a way that was helping students to see what they bring to the table as viewers/users and to recognize what the media was ‘going for.’

In the end of all this, I am feeling a bit less willing to use pop culture in the classroom with the motives these authors suggest. I still want to use it, but I want to teach critical thinking PERIOD. Not critical thinking with a social justice lens. Students who are taught to think can think in whatever direction they want—I should not groom them in either direction. I disagree with the author’s claim that the role of the school is to ‘enhance…values development for our children.’ The author spends 33 pages talking about how we need to get away from certain directions in the classroom and bring in pop culture in an effort (as stated on page 34) to go another way. Indeed, the author claims, don’t ‘mill’ children…unless you mill them this way.

As I’m re-reading this post, it is a bit negative/rant-like. Despite it all, I DO still have an open mind to pop culture in the classroom, but I now feel defensive and the need to tread forward very carefully with the ideas from this text. Disappointing start.