Commentary: Helping Students Think Critically About Pop Culture

[Frank W. Baker]

Students are surrounded by popular culture that is often inappropriate with violence, sex and vulgarity, writes Marc D. Hauser, an educational consultant. In this commentary, he writes that when students want to include such video games, music or other items in class projects, teacher should use those opportunities to help students develop their critical-thinking skills to be able to recognize inappropriate materials. "Needless to say, this is not a topic of discussion and education that ever ends. But it is a topic that should be part of teachers' responsibilities," he writes

[Michele Vogt-Schuller]

I'm doing a project with a professor at UIC with my senior students on literacy and pop culture. They are having my sophomore students (this sounds complicated, but it's not), bring in pictures of pop culture in magazines, video clips and photos taken on their phones. Last week, their homework assignment was to go to the mall and photograph pictures of consumers. One kid bought a buch of awesome photos of a crazy Abercrombie sale at Oak Brook mall which included a guy buying like 50 shirts.

[Kelly Farrow]

I really appreciate you bringing this up, Frank. This year I expanded a little segment to each class that I've done for years, "The Book of the Week" (kid gives short booktalk) into "The Thing of the Week," where kids get a chance to give a short talk on anything they want. We've had kids talk about things like trips they've taken, movies, apps, and--very commonly--video games. One thing I noticed was that many of them knew that some of these games are questionable, and they front-loaded their talks w/ things like, "This one is rated M for mature, but..." or, "This game is violent, so it's not for everyone." I haven't chosen to restrict their talks and haven't kept anyone from talking about any movie or game in particular, though it has troubled me this year to see the high percentage of rated-M games that have been discussed by 5th- and 6th-grade students. I look forward to reading Hauser's comments on how to turn these short talks into something thought-provoking for the kids.

[Frank W. Baker]

Perhaps the questionable content of the media might provide you with a teachable moment with your students. Might they take positions, for example, on questions like " at what age is it appropriate for young people to be exposed to violent video games."  You might even infuse some critical thinking/media literacy questions as well with:  "who benefits when one buys/plays/consumes media"; "who rates video games," "how much do parents really know about the content of games, music, movies, etc."

[Kelly Farrow]

These are great Q's. I even think something like, "What does it mean to vote w/ your wallet?" would be relevant and helpful to kids as they start to reach the age of having disposable income and making their own independent purchasing decisions.