Short Assignment 4 Critical Reading: “Why Popular Culture in Education Matters” William Reynolds

Follow along & Review Your Own Responses 1.Who is the author of the piece? [i.e., Who is the author of “Why Popular Culture in Education Matters”?] William Reynolds

2. What is his stand on the issue he’s addressing? He’s addressing this question: whether or not popular culture documents should be taught in the schools.

3. What are his interests, qualifications, or possible biases? He has edited a series called Cultural Studies Toward Transformative Curriculum and Pedagogy. To be selected as an editor, a person must be recognized as an expert in his/her field. If Reynolds is an expert in cultural studies, he may have a predisposition, or bias, to see value in all types of cultural documents, not just the highbrow ones. He is also, most likely a teacher because he groups himself with teachers in his phrasings: “It becomes our responsibility, then, as educators…” (Reynolds 24).

4. What was his intent when writing this piece? His intent was to influence educators to use pop culture documents in the classroom. He wants them to do this because he believes young people must learn to analyze pop culture documents in order to avoid being at the mercy of them, shaped by their messages.

5.Who is the intended audience? How can you tell? Though he writes about youth, he is not writing to them. He is writing to other teachers. He uses complex, off-putting language like “carceral”; he refers to authorities young people may not know (like Freire); and he uses language that indicates he’s writing to other teachers. For example, he calls young people “our students”.

6. How does the author support his contentions? He doesn’t provide a lot of detailed support. He keeps things mostly on a theoretical, abstract level. But the little bit of support he uses is academic in nature. He quotes scholarly sources, like a book published by Giroux, and he also cites a book that he himself wrote.

7. What language has he used to convey his ideas on this topic to his audience for this purpose? He uses the language of an educated person. His sentences are very complex and his vocabulary is extensive. He writes about the “symbolic order,” pedagogy,” and “critical consciousness.” These are not the kinds of words and phrases we use in everyday life.

8. Based on your own knowledge and experience, what do you think about his ideas, intent, language, or support? *Consider this response – it appears to be only a summary. How does this need to be revised? *Start with the summary as this response does – but then go on to add your own response – providing examples from your knowledge and experiences to discuss his ideas, intent, language, or support in relation to your opinion. In “Why Popular Culture in Education Matters,” Reynolds argues that instructors should teach pop culture documents in the classroom. Reynolds suggests that pop culture, the conveyance of which is increasingly controlled by fewer and fewer companies, teaches people sets of ideas about themselves and their world. To keep youth from being enslaved to these corporate-generated ideas, he believes they need to be taught to analyze pop culture. Educators need to empower students by giving them the tools to process pop culture in an informed way. If they don’t do this, students will be at the mercy of pop culture. They will lose their freedom, their power to shape their own identities. Instead the will be shaped by what they see and heat in the media. According to Reynolds, teaching young people to analyze pop culture helps preserve their freedom to shape themselves, and this ultimately, it helps to preserve the democracy, which, without a conscious, aware populace, would crumble. Work Cited Reynolds, W. “Why popular culture matters.” Intellectbooks.com. Intellect, 12. Jan Web. 5. Sept

9. How well does the author achieve his goal? Your response depends on how you have evaluated the author’s success in achieving his goal. Make sure you have included specific reasons to defend your opinion.

10. Define the following terms / concepts used in Reynolds’ article: – Carceral (paragraph 2) – “in the Freirean sense” (paragraph 3) – Hegemonic (paragraph 4) – WMD (paragraph 4) – The canon (paragraph 5) Carceral: having to do with a prison “in the Freirian sense”: according to Paulo Freire – who believed in a critical pedagogy – (Critical pedagogy is not only a theory and a philosophy of education but also praxis-oriented social movement first described by Paulo Freire and after him developed by many others such as Henry Giroux as an "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action” (Wikipedia.org). philosophy of educationPaulo FreireHenry Girouxconsciousness Hegemonic: the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group WMD: weapon of mass destruction The canon: a collection or list of sacred books accepted as genuine – but used here to refer to the accepted list of books that all students should read