Readings, Week 1

For this week's assignment we were to read the first three chapters of "Tooning In: Essays on Popular Culture and Education" by Cameron White and Trenia Walker.

Not surprisingly, these folks are speaking my language, albeit from an educational system perspective. They are wading around the same areas that I am, exploring similar concepts with different labels. It was no surprise to see them discuss the broadening of educational goals, recommend media literacy, complain about NCLB and so on. It felt like old home week and another indicator that there are factions, splinters within the educational field that do "get" adolescents from a developmental and social justice perspective.

Social Efficacy
They justify the inclusion of popular culture by acknowledging young people's need for "social efficacy" and that this skill/need is rightly a responsibility of the educational system. Social efficacy is a concept I've seen over and over again in the health, mental health and out-of-school time segments under other names. Twenty dollar language, but it might have more traction that social and emotional learning or, our stand by -- healthy/positive youth development. 

Given where our country seems to be today, I have low expectations for the sort of social overthrow the writers advocate for, despite my own passionate desire for it be a reality. They accuse the "standardization and accountability movements" (p. 2) -- railing against the machine that ultimately funds their system and perpetuated by our own institution (and others). I love the radical perspective: that we hold up and prize our democratic society which addresses the needs of young people with a "school praxis (which) has virtually turned our schools into prisons... Kids are in school to be molded into appropriate acting citizens."

Aren't we lucky, I ask myself when confronted with this depressing truth, that the human spirit – especially when it is young – rises above? OBEY CONFORM BUY But not all of them do! They make their own truth, style, story, meaning. It thrills me to imagine the possibility created by strategies like the ones recommended here.

I agree, "neutrality is an impossibility" (p. 11). And at times it feels like participating in the youth serving community at all means treading carefully through and working hard to sustain neutral ground. To upset the status quo means risking your funding, job, livelihood and what little impact you are actually having. The whole "should we reject the abstinence funding" dilemma faced by public health departments is a perfect example. The lesson -- maybe you need to compromise your principles if it means getting resources when there are none. How long will we let that be our best practice? And on the national level? Is health care reform that doesn't make it possible for all citizens to get health care really reform?

Media impacts on social relations
I think it is important to see that the peeking through all the ugly stuff associated with dominant "mass commercial culture" (standardization, commoditization, consumerism) are some positives. First, I agree that social relations being formed through the "sphere of consumption" isn't exactly the best possible situation, but isn't it great that otherwise lonely or isolated people can "find each other" through a TV show or fashion or product? As long as it has some pro-social characteristic, I'm hard pressed to condemn it.

I also believe that web 2.0 is essentially changing these "mass media" dynamics. Mass media's death bed is a long ways off, but already it's function is changing dramatically. Web 2.0 has been an amazing accelerator for creation and especially creation through appropriation. Andy Warhol must be partying in his grave to see today's young people mash up and remix and get famous in not 15 minutes, but 5. We are shifting further and further from the receiver model and the idea that consumers and predominantly passive. I believe these next generations are and will be active with their consumption and media patterns. They don't wait for their TV show to come on at 8, they go find it, prerecord it, download, stream it. That said, big budgets will continue to shape the landscape's general features and  agenda. I continue to look for ways that new media will address this problem. For example, what's the relationship between the dramatic increase of news and political blogging, the downward spiral of newspapers and investigative journalism and the polarized but popular TV news programming?

Youth Status
Gisela Konopka (my work organization's figurehead and namesake www.konopka.umn.edu) would have loved the discussions about young people's status. She believed, as these writers note, that there is merit and importance to children as children and teenagers as teenagers – that they are not simply the value associated with what they will someday contribute. That youth is not "primarily a preparation and training for adulthood" (p. 32). I believe that this is particularly radical thinking in the education field -- and our culture in general. One of my coworkers talks about how young people have, as a basic need, the need to play. "How should we evaluate effective playtime?" He says, mocking the youth-serving community's thirst for evaluation and proven practices.

Learn
I'm very interested in the discussion about "meaning" in this reading. "We are at a point in which information no longer produces meaning, in fact it is the opposite that occurs" (p. 19 quoting Baudrillard) in relation to socialization and the "implosion of meaning." The claim that "once society gave meaning to images; now images give meaning to society." (p19) is evocative, but seems too simplistic because it is one way. Isn't meaning tied to both the information and the associations that viewer brings? Must read Baudrillard at some point.