Within schools, their goal is to help keep the children’s mind engaged in helpful knowledge and skills for future developments. In the book, “Tooning In”, it aims at the idea that the “popular culture” has shaped its role in society perspectives regarding youths and adolescents’ lives. Popular culture itself is engaging into a useful tool for teaching and learning in which everyone is positively benefiting from. Society has centered popular culture as the pinpoint of cultural identity for which it provides the connection to world access. Such popular culture factors as MTV and the internet has helped many gain access to the world. Furthermore, besides world access, popular culture has taken a more effective approach towards social studies, enhancing the opportunities for students to connect.
One of the most influential factor of popular culture is MTV. MTV and music is one of the many ways in which many people can reflect through struggles, emotions, and so forth. Music is powerful. It’s the rhythm that many people becomes inspired and share their talents with everyone else. MTV has been very influential not just to people but other aspects of popular culture as well. I rarely associate myself with MTV but it’s been the driving force of the music industry. Teachers that I know of, love to play music in the background because it helps balance the mood of the students as they work on their assignments.
From my experience, not only does music inspire me but it’s something that I can relax to and rely on to help lower stress. When I’m done or just plain bored to death, I can always turn on my music and lay there, listening to the words of the song and maybe even sing a long. In addition, music isn’t just one ethnicity; it belongs to everyone. My music selection range from hip-hop to classic to soul to rap from Eastern Asian to America. “MTV has led may to recognize the power and influence of popular culture” ( Tooning In, p. 10 ).
Another influential factor of popular culture that came from our own creation; technology, has provided the main stream for communication overseas besides the telephone. “Technology and television fill in that void and become their chosen method of communication and information about the world ( Tooning In, p. 33 ).” Technology such as television and the internet has given society the opportunity to tune into world news every day and every hour.
Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, and all those other sites that are popular among youths steadily keeps the youth involved in their personal lives. These sites have helped me find my personal space and I am able to keep in touch with my friends all over the United States. I find that the internet helps not only me but everyone up to date on current events, find history, and many useful things. Sometimes, I wonder what the world would be like if the internet never existed. Would the world today be wasting away stamps and air-mail?
Moreover, popular culture has taken a more effective approach in social studies. “Tooning In” simply states that, “social studies teachers who provide opportunities for students to create these emotional connections, through their incorporation of popular culture, will achieve the goal of powerful social studies teaching and learning. If teachers were able to connect something of popular culture to the everyday student affairs, it can have the student feeling that what they are doing or participating in is of interest. Also, they become critical thinkers at the same.
For example, I am one of those students who particularly does not find interest in social studies. I always listened and connected to the subject but I never found an interest in it. If some type of popular culture was taken into effect, maybe I would have had an interest in the subject. In the seventh grade, my social studies class was actively involved in social studies. My teacher would always play a musical background related to the subject and put students into groups and give them a part in which we would find a debate. This allowed us to critically think about what we were going against and made us sound like we knew what we were talking about.
From MTV to the internet to the walls of school, popular culture has come a long way making it efficient for society to open its doors to other various learning tools. Popular culture in school has taken an effective approach in students to help them benefit from information. However, the best way to summarize the positive of popular culture is : “Popular culture can potentially provide a forum for the development of critical media literacy in our students; by recognizing the political, social, and cultural aspects of media literacy a true multiculturalism built on alliances, “freedom, liberation, democracy and critical citizenship” could exist in our schools” ( Tooning In, p. 33 ).
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