Thinking pop literacies, or why John Howard should read more.

Thinking pop literacies, or why John Howard should read more. The author reviews the relationship between 'literature'and pop culture, arguing that both are part of an intellectualcontinuum, and that to attempt to extol ex��tolalso ex��toll ?tr.v. ex��tolled also ex��tolled, ex��tol��ling also ex��toll��ing, ex��tols also ex��tollsTo praise highly; exalt. See Synonyms at praise. one and demonise Verb 1. demonise - make into a demon; "Power had demonized him"demonizealter, change, modify - cause to change; make different; cause a transformation; "The advent of the automobile may have altered the growth pattern of the city"; "The discussion has the other isnot only based on false and simplistic sim��plism?n.The tendency to oversimplify an issue or a problem by ignoring complexities or complications.[French simplisme, from simple, simple, from Old French; see simple premises, it is exclusive anddestructive. She reminds us that 'All education is based onassumptions about standards and quality. We carry values in our mindsthat subtly but continually remind us of gradings and shadings ofimportance and significance.' And that this needs to beacknowledged. Education is not value-neutral, objective or ethically andintellectually pure. She draws attention to 'the dire state ofdebates about education in Australia', and offers a more positiveand proactive agenda is offered for 'putting the pop into theliteracy'. Postmodern troubles cannot be adequately handled by modern means.Zygmunt Bauman Zygmunt Bauman (born 19 November 1925 in Poznań) is a Polish sociologist who, since 1971, has resided in England after being driven there by an anti-Semitic purge organized by the Communist Party of Poland. (1) ALL EDUCATION IS BASED ON ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT STANDARDS AND QUALITY.TOO OFTEN we teachers and librarians do not admit these assumptions toourselves, let alone to those who are being taught or instructed in theintricacies of the information age. We carry values in our minds thatsubtly but continually remind us of gradings and shadings of importanceand significance. My aim in the next few pages is to ask all of usinvolved in education--particularly librarians and teachers--totemporarily disconnect from the outcome-based education This article or section may be confusing or unclear for some readers.Please [improve the article]or discuss this issue on the talk page. , genericcompetencies, mission statements and strategic plans that flood ourinboxes with overlarge attachments and ruin our meetings with overblown o��ver��blown?v.Past participle of overblow.adj.1. a. Done to excess; overdone: overblown decorations.b. rhetoric. For a moment, de-centre content management. Let us not thinkabout what we are teaching, but why we are teaching. Let us not thinkabout computer literacy Understanding computers and related systems. It includes a working vocabulary of computer and information system components, the fundamental principles of computer processing and a perspective for how non-technical people interact with technical people. , but the subtleties of information literacy Several conceptions and definitions of information literacy have become prevalent. For example, one conception defines information literacy in terms of a set of competencies that an informed citizen of an information society ought to possess to participate intelligently and andthe building of knowledge, (2) wherever we may find it in the digital oranalogue world. Such a transitory replacement of 'the what'with 'the why' reveals our assumptions about teaching andlearning, reading and writing. For a moment, we will embrace PaulHager's description of learning 'as a contested and poorlyunderstood concept.' (3) Such a definition reminds us why so muchmoney and time has been spent on software and hardware, whilelibrarians, information professionals and teachers have been starved ofresources, made redundant or disrespected as minor players in themanagement of education. My task in this paper is to probe culturalvalue in the contemporary environment of teaching, learning andlibrarianship. First, there is attention to the dire state of debatesabout education in Australia Education in Australia is primarily regulated by the individual state governments. Generally education in Australia follows the three-tier model which includes Primary education (Primary Schools), followed by Secondary education (Secondary Schools / High Schools) and Tertiary . Second, a more positive and proactiveagenda is offered for putting the pop into the literacy. To unravel thescale of this contestation and miscomprehension of teaching, learningand cultural value, we commence at the top. Rubbish That old aphorism aphorism(ăf`ərĭz'əm), short, pithy statement of an evident truth concerned with life or nature; distinguished from the axiom because its truth is not capable of scientific demonstration. to the effect that 'a week is a long time inpolitics' does not state the half of it. Between 20 and 22 April2006, John Howard For other persons of the same name, see John Howard (disambiguation).John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian politician and the 25th Prime Minister of Australia. triggered the most ruthless attack on education withinmemory. Then, with the press and public attention safely diverted fromthe claims of corruption in and of the Australian Wheat Board, the PrimeMinister could get on with the business of validating the current war inIraq by drawing simple historical and nationalist connections with the'heroic diggers' just in time for ANZAC Day Anzac Day25th April, a public holiday in Australia and New Zealand commemorating the Anzac landing at Gallipoli in 1915 on 25 April. Yethis political 'week'--of three days--will have lastingconsequences for those of us who teach for a living, rather than simplytalk about it. The Prime Minister moved on to other issues. His attackson professionalism, intelligence, expertise and the value of scholarshiplast much longer than the next news cycle. On Thursday 20 April 2006 John Howard stated on radio that 'Imean we all understand it's necessary to be able to be literate andcoherent ... and we also understand there's high-quality literatureand there's rubbish, and we need a curriculum that encourages anunderstanding of the high quality literature and not the rubbish.'(4) Ponder the phrasing: 'I mean we all understand'and--again--'we also understand'. There is no evidencepresented or experts consulted. Merely repeating words like 'weunderstand' and 'rubbish' does not make the statementstrue. Once the Prime Minister of a country starts using words like'gobbledygook' and 'rubbish' to describe an Englishcurriculum, all the crazy cold warriors defrost de��frost?v. de��frost��ed, de��frost��ing, de��frostsv.tr.1. To remove ice or frost from: defrosted the windshield.2. To cause to thaw.v. themselves to find reds,not only under the bed, but also in our classrooms and universities. Theword 'Marxist' was used more often in mainstream press duringtwo days in April than in a whole year on Trotskyite blog spots.Suddenly I realised to whom these commentators were referring. Anyonewho works in a school or university, and reads widely, is dangerous.They must be Marxists. The editorial from The Australian on 22 April2006 reads as follows: One of the more bizarre aspects of the controversy is the postmodern fixation on Karl Marx as an appropriate filter though which to examine literature. For one thing, he was an economist, not a literary critic. For another, his writings inspired the deaths of perhaps 100 million people around the world, and this tragedy is better learned about in history classrooms. And teaching high school students to interpret literature through ephemeral 'isms' is, by definition, a way to produce students with dated knowledge. (5) It is important for those of us who do read, rather than those whoare merely critical about other people's reading, to rebut To defeat, dispute, or remove the effect of the other side's facts or arguments in a particular case or controversy.When a defendant in a lawsuit proves that the plaintiff's allegations are not true, the defendant has thereby rebutted them. TO REBUT. thisnonsense with clarity, boldness and frequency. This opinion--in anational newspaper--was wrong factually and in interpretation.Post-modernism and Marxism are divergent theoretical and politicalformations. If Marx is blamed for Stalinist purges, then Charles Darwinis responsible for Nazism and Jesus of Nazareth caused the Crusades.Social scientific causality causality,in philosophy, the relationship between cause and effect. A distinction is often made between a cause that produces something new (e.g., a moth from a caterpillar) and one that produces a change in an existing substance (e.g. ('A' creates 'B')requires more proof than the woolly thinking of a newspaper editorwithout epistemological awareness or historical reasoning. Even moredisturbingly, this editorial was cut and pasted into diverse websitesand blogs to increase its circulation and 'truth effect', not'truth'. (6) The tragedy of this 'debate' is that serious points ofdiscussion about teaching and librarianship have been smeared with thetar of obfuscation. In these two days in April, four separatediscussions, about literacy, the English Literature English literature,literature written in English since c.1450 by the inhabitants of the British Isles; it was during the 15th cent. that the English language acquired much of its modern form. curriculum, popularculture and post-modernism, were merged and blurred. All four topicswould have some value in being raised for public debate, but assuming aconvergence was a mistake. Literacy has been much more than the encodingand decoding of print since Richard Hoggart published The Uses ofLiteracy in 1957. The Prime Minister is fifty years out of date in thisdebate. The discussions about the English Literature curriculum havetheir origins in claims made by Colin McCabe in 1981 that Derrida--anevil Frenchman--was destroying the pleasure and purity of great Englishbooks through his 'foreign' ideas. So the Prime Minister istwenty-five years out of date on this issue. To abuse popular culture as'rubbish' is to repeat Matthew Arnold's argument--made in1869--in Culture and Anarchy. In this context, Arnold was'protecting' the middle class from a revolutionary workingclass, using claims for the greatness of 'literature' to blockdisempowered, barely literate citizens from thinking about theconditions of their own lives. Literature was a replacement forpolitical consciousness, a salve salve(sav) ointment. salven.An analgesic or medicinal ointment.salve v.salveointment. for socialist thought. Further, the'great writers' that the Prime Minister is protecting, such asWilliam Shakespeare, were profoundly popular playwrights in their owntime, commenting--often with humour--about the pompous, prideful men whohold power. The issue is not the division between high culture andpopular culture. To put it another way, the problem is not in 'thepop'. The goal for effective teaching and information management isto facilitate a dynamic, energetic and relevant culture that encouragesthought, debate and a dialogue with the time from which it emerges. While the comments on literature, popular culture and literacy weredated, the attack on 'post-modernism' was the strangest inthis carnival of ignorance. I have not mentioned the word post-modernismin a classroom since 1993. This is a controversy without a cause.Theories of Liquid Modernity (7) from Zygmunt Bauman and JohnUrry's research into mobilities (8) are intricate, well-citedand--indeed--famous investigations of the social, cultural and politicalenvironment of our time. These recent and important works and words areunmentioned by any of these self-appointed commentators on knowledge. I hold Australian journalists responsible for reporting thisverbiage verbiage - When the context involves a software or hardware system, this refers to documentation. This term borrows the connotations of mainstream "verbiage" to suggest that the documentation is of marginal utility and that the motives behind its production have little to do with as fact. Their lack of the most basic research in ideas thatare often fifty years old is stunning. Not surprisingly, that bastion oftabloidization, A Current Affair, continued this beatup--sorry--'debate'--on its program of Friday April 21. Todiscuss this issue, two 'experts' were approached. One voiceagainst the Prime Minister was the head of a parent and teacherassociation. The other view was provided by a journalist from a Sydneytabloid. So a mother of school children and a(nother Nother - A parallel symbolic mathematics system.E-mail: <karhu@cs.umu.se>. ) journalist wereseen to offer more relevant views than the thousands of hard workinglibrarians and primary and high school teachers in this country, or thehundreds of well qualified and internationally credentialed academicswho could offer commentary about curricula change and histories ofcultural value or critical theory. The Prime Minister has stage-managed this attack on educationwithout mobilising expertise. His lack of research or evidence wasunmentioned and un-assessed by all but a minority of journalists.Earlier in the year, the courageous Maxine McKew Maxine McKew (born 1953) is an Australian Labor parliamentary candidate and former award-winning journalist. As a broadcaster, McKew hosted a number of programmes on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television and radio, most recently Lateline and The 7. on the ABC's 7:30Report was able--in three short questions--to demonstrate the completelack of substantiation or verification of his claims. McKew: Where do you think we've gone off the rails? You seemedto blame post-modernism today. Too many assignments on'isms'--feminism, environmentalism--too much of that? Howard: We've too much of a stew and a concoction of issuesand causes. Now they're part of it, but you've also got toteach the sequence. You've got to say something about the ruder inwhich things appeared. You get to understand why was it fully thatEuropean settlement occurred in Australia, rather than teach too muchabout whether it should have occurred. I mean, it did occur and ratherthan waste our energy in the pejorative pejorativeMedtalk Bad…real bad about the character of it, weought to, first of all, understand some of the causes of it and some ofthe background of it. McKew: Why do you see a deficit on this? Are you getting complaintsfrom parents or have you talked to, say, history teachers? Howard: It is self-apparent. It is obvious to me thatthere's-McKew: Why so? Howard: From talking to Noun 1. talking to - a lengthy rebuke; "a good lecture was my father's idea of discipline"; "the teacher gave him a talking to"lecture, speechrebuke, reprehension, reprimand, reproof, reproval - an act or expression of criticism and censure; "he had to people. The increasing number of people Italk to, younger people, who don't have a full understanding ofsome of these things. (8) Two words drill holes through the Swiss cheese that is MrHoward's argument: his use of 'people' and'things.' When used, these terms infer generalised thinking, alack of analytical precision and a deficit in research. The damagecaused when a nation's leader probes the hornet's nest ofeducation on the basis of 'people' and 'things'needs to be noted and remembered. The Australian newspaper continued this blind disregard of fact andhistory, while using 'post-modernism' to batter and abusethose who teach. They even printed the words of Giles Auty, an oldThatcherite ideologue, who gained some influence--although not much--asa member of the Art Working Group for the National Curriculum forEnglish and Welsh As an adjective "English and Welsh" refers to England and Wales.English and Welsh is the title of J. R. R. Tolkien's valedictory address to the University of Oxford of 1955, explaining the origin of the word "Welsh". schools in the early 1990s. He was also a writer forThe Spectator in the United Kingdom between 1984 and 1995. We learn muchof the political tenor of the national newspaper from the fact thatAuty's CV was convincing enough that he was appointed a nationalart correspondent for The Australian. In moving from art to education,Auty continued his confident Renaissance Man Renaissance mann.A man who has broad intellectual interests and is accomplished in areas of both the arts and the sciences.Noun 1. aura, thanking the PrimeMinister for raising this literacy issue, but offering an extension ofhis views: 'does he--or most parents--appreciate fully the extentto which Marxist ideology hides behind the mask of post-modernism?'(10) Auty does not stop this factual error from bleeding into his nextmistake. He conflates Marxism with Communism, and then Marxism withcritical literacy Critical literacy is an instructional approach that advocates the adoption of critical perspectives toward text. Critical literacy encourages readers to actively analyze texts and it offers strategies for uncovering underlying messages. Then in the blistering denouement de��noue��mentalso d����noue��ment ?n.1. a. The final resolution or clarification of a dramatic or narrative plot.b. of disasters, Autyblames post-modernism, Marxism, Communism and critical literacy on'the man in question,' Michel Foucault Michel Foucault (IPA pronunciation: [miˈʃɛl fuˈko]) (October 15, 1926 – June 25, 1984) was a French philosopher, historian and sociologist. . Eh? There is somethingpiquant and funny about placing labels on a man who denied and displacedthem all his life. Michel Foucault was not a post-modernist. By some interpretations,he could be claimed as a post-structuralist, but even that label doesnot sit well. Foucault described his work as part of modernity,disconnecting from the 'posts' that floated around his name.Whatever critiques or criticisms we may have of Foucault, and there arelibrary shelves full of these detailed interrogations, there must be anacknowledgement that this man changed our thinking about history, powerand knowledge. Few have any influence in their entire lives on the worldof ideas. Foucault is one of those transformative writers. The notionthat an intellectual irrelevance like Auty would dare critique a man ofthis intelligence is bad enough. That The Australian newspaper wouldpublish this white noise is worse. Perhaps the greatest sadness from this whole ignorant interlude inthe history of Australian education are the grounds on which Autycritiqued Foucault. This narrow man described Foucault as 'apromiscuous masochist whose areas of interest were in torture, drug-useand totally anonymous sex anonymous sexPubic health Any sexual activity in which the partners' identities are unknown–often intentionally to each other at the time of the activity's occurrence. See Bathhouse, Glory hole, Sex club. .' (11) Similar descriptions could moreaccurately be deployed to certain skinny celebrities and well-paidprofessional footballers. The point is that this critique would not bedeployed on these young women and men with a liking for bulimia bulimia:see eating disorders. and gangbangs, cocaine and multiple partners, because they are heterosexual. Toabuse a scholar's ideas because he is gay is homophobia at its mostgrotesque. A liking for leather and bondage is not the basis of ascholarly critique, or even a journalistic one. We use another word forthis type of approach. It is called discrimination. If Auty was actually being courageous, it would have been moreeffective to abuse a theorist actually associated with post-modernism,Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard (July 29, 1929– March 6, 2007) (IPA pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ bo.dʀi.jaʀ][1]) was a French cultural theorist, philosopher, political commentator, and photographer. . But he would not suit Auty's politics.Baudrillard is heterosexual. In fact, he is so heterosexual that he ison to his fourth wife. He is also alive, so any lies, misrepresentationsor in accuracies about his life and ideas could result in legal action.Also, Baudrillard rarely uses the term 'post-modern'. When hedoes, it is a term of abuse that describes the sentimentality of Westernculture, so celebrated and performed by writers like Auty. Baudrillardprobes war, capitalism, America and the media. He is as dangerous as avirus in an airport. It is much safer to attack the dead leather queen. Besides having written for The Spectator at the height ofThatcherism, Auty also contributes in Australia to Quadrant, themagazine read by conservative old men when their exclusive golf coursesare closed. In a June 2000 article, he showed a deep and pathologisedhatred for the left, with an additional twist that was absent from hisideological excursions in The Australia. Auty is a Christian. Such adetermination of faith is not a problem in and of itself. However whileblaming Marx for all the darkness in the world, Christianity becomes thebasis of all hope. He states: Christian fortitude was a major factor in helping Western families survive both the Second World War and the process of rebuilding during the 1950s ... However, the 1960s saw a marked dilution of such sterling virtues, as improving prosperity led not to gratitude but to increasingly mindless hedonism. Until the 1960s, drugs were used by only a minute minority in Britain. Today in most Western countries three quarters of all urban crime is connected to drugs. Next time your car or house is ransacked or you are held up at knife point, do please offer a hymn of thanks to the sixties. (12) The oddity of the Auty's discourse is that he attacks'progressives' and 'Marxists' for their'intellectual dishonest.' Yet this man continues to bepublished despite his scapegoating, irrationality and fear-mongering.What is required is a cool, balanced and factual analysis of history,literacy debates and educational scholarship. Let's be clear here. These commentators that align'post-modernism' and 'Marxism' are wrong. Whilepost-modernity signifies many meanings, theories and approaches, anoverarching principle of the paradigm was that it critiqued grandnarratives, like Marxism, feminism and post-colonialism--basically allthe groups and theories most despised by the neo-conservatives. Such apremise--obviously--was the pathogen in the post-modern paradigm.Post-modernism became one of the grand narratives that it critiqued. Butto suggest that 'post-modernists' and 'Marxists' aresynonyms, is about as accurate as blaming Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein(born April 28, 1937, Tikrit, Iraq—died Dec. 30, 2006, Baghdad) President of Iraq (1979–2003). He joined the Ba'th Party in 1957. Following participation in a failed attempt to assassinate Iraqi Pres. for 11September. The Prime Minister chose a specific moment to raise thisissue. He could have summoned these concerns at any time. Remember, hemerely repeated the questioning of English Literature enacted by ColinMcCabe 25 years ago, and repeated the views from Auty's Quadrantarticle of six years ago. But Mr. Howard required a circuit breaker circuit breaker,electric device that, like a fuse, interrupts an electric current in a circuit when the current becomes too high. The advantage of a circuit breaker is that it can be reset after it has been tripped; a fuse must be replaced after it has been used , todisconnect the fusing of his government with scandals from theAustralian Wheat Board. Once the literacy/popularculture/post-modernism/literature bucket was thrown over the press, thecorruption scandal was washed away. The goal for politicians and journalists in Howard's Australiais to stop citizens looking in the mirror, to stop us from seeing how weare all implicated in questions of literacy standards, reading level andrate, and the flattening of debate and dissent. The goal for librariansand teachers in Howard's Australia is to use logic, reason andresearch to demand not only more from our students, but from ourleaders. How often have we seen John Howard reading a book? What abouthis Cabinet? What about the backbenchers? What about the Opposition? Ihave certainly seen the Prime Minister at the cricket, rugby andCommonwealth Games Commonwealth games,series of amateur athletic meets held among citizens of countries in the Commonwealth of Nations. Originated (1930) as the British Empire games, the series is held every four years and is patterned after the Olympic games; women have participated . If he exchanged one of those sporting photoopportunities to show him reading a novel or a recent non-fictionrelease, then he could make more legitimate comments about literacy,reading and scholarship. The aim of the second half of my article is totake up one issue in the Prime Minister's discussion of'gobbledygook' and 'rubbish' to show that theproblem is not in popular culture. The problem is in a devaluing ofeducation. The solution is a reconstitution of schools, universities andlibraries through literacy. Popping the sandstone Throughout the history of schools, universities and formaleducation, popular culture has been intentionally and actively excluded.The separation of pop from art, without overtly addressing embeddedclass-based notions of cultural value, served to disenfranchise dis��en��fran��chise?tr.v. dis��en��fran��chised, dis��en��fran��chis��ing, dis��en��fran��chis��esTo disfranchise.dis generations of students from their own social frameworks and literacies.The strength of teaching the popular, to summon Stanley Aronowitz'sand Henry Giroux's phrase, is that it creates 'a language ofpossibility'. (13) Following their challenge, my goal is totransform literacy into, not a static object to measure in terms oflearning outcomes and examinations, but the matrix of educationaldialogue about the pathways from information to knowledge. When literacyis defined in this way, it moves freely through historical definitionsof cultural value. This is the mode of project outlined by Shapiro andHughes: Clearly, defining information literacy broadly, so as to constitute both a liberal as well as a technical art, and turning that definition into a curriculum are major challenges both intellectually and practically, and deserve extended discussion and collaboration among educators and information-systems professionals, humanists, and computer and information scientists. (14) Within their vision, there is no separation of 'old' and'new' media, and an intricate collaboration between form andcontent, media and message. For some theorists this information literacyconflates with the phrase 'blended learning,' (15) The resultis an active determination from librarians, teachers and students ofappropriate media for the correct context. Understanding a softwarepackage or being able to re-tell a novel's plot is not enough.Understanding how the selection of software, hardware, media andlanguage frame and filter ideas for specific audiences and contextsremains the goal, and one that is increasingly important. (16) If we grant culture a history and politics, rather than anintrinsic value Intrinsic Value1. The value of a company or an asset based on an underlying perception of the value.2. For call options, this is the difference between the underlying stock's price and the strike price. and stability by using words like 'rubbish'and 'gobbledygook', then greater attention is placed on thefunction and circulation of representations. In pondering thestratification of cultural systems, literacy has a purpose, impetus andagenda. Such a goal was witnessed most poignantly in RichardHoggart's The Uses of Literacy. (17) Born into a working-classfamily in Leeds and educated at his home university, he went on to be anadult education tutor at the University of Hull. He taught literature topeople who had been blocked from access to higher education. From such acontext, The Uses of Literacy weaves Hoggart's personal experienceinto the text. Fascinatingly, and appropriately for his student cohortat the time, he deployed the tools used to study literature to a muchwider range of cultural productions such as music, magazines andnewspapers. There was an attention to sport, pubs and working men'sclubs. Discussion of language was punctuated with talk about familystructures and gender roles. For Hoggart, culture became the method tolink literary analysis and social inquiry, text and context, universityand social justice. Hoggart's example is important. Popular culture circulatesideas to a wide audience. While high cultural practices are associatedwith excellence, these standards are established and circulated throughprecise historical periods. Teachers and librarians often work with highculture rather than popular culture. But the aim of good teaching andeffective librarianship is to deny and &centre the easy and assumeddivision of art and pop. The trap of these categories is that teachers,writers and researchers spend too much time legitimising the choice oftopic against the faceless forces of the elite, rather than exploringthe political impact of these representational formations. If adiscussion about the role and purpose of popular culture in education isnot made, then our classrooms become museums. Teachers become guidesthrough the dusty relics of books and ideas. Education becomes trappedin an infrequently visited library stack. The conservative cry to go'back to basics' is often code for returning to safe, seamlesscultural formations that offer no challenge or argument against thecurrent political order. (18) Conversely, popular culture is formedthrough the gritty transformations of society through industrialisation.It is a site of commerce and commercialisation, but also play andtransformation. Such judgments and movements of value have profound consequencesfor the determination of legitimate knowledge. Te Ara, the Encyclopediaof New Zealand New Zealand(zē`lənd), island country (2005 est. pop. 4,035,000), 104,454 sq mi (270,534 sq km), in the S Pacific Ocean, over 1,000 mi (1,600 km) SE of Australia. The capital is Wellington; the largest city and leading port is Auckland. , while not mobilising user-driven content like Wikipedia,maintains rigid notions of cultural quality. As Russell Brown Russell Leslie Brown (born September 17, 1951) is a Scottish Labour Party politician. He is Member of Parliament for Dumfries and Galloway.Russell Brown was born in Annan, Scotland, and attended the local Annan Academy. revealed If there is one part of the site that grieves me, it is the section on New Zealand music. The last (15) years have seen an emergence of national identity in our popular music that is as significant as the arrival of a characteristically New Zealand literature in the 1930s. (19) Libraries, knowledge, education is embedded in the judgments andvalues of popular culture. Yet recent popular music--some of which isincredibly innovative and pivotal to the re-makings of identity--suffersfrom the qualitative determinations of the powerful. Literature isframed as important to nation building. Music is youthful trash.Actually, New Zealand popular culture, through Flying Nun Records,Auckland Pacifica electronica This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone and/or spelling.You can assist by [ editing it] now. and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, hastransformed Aotearoa/New Zealand far more than literature or culturalcriticism. John Docker cut to the political chase when he realised that Radical intellectuals who despise popular culture suffered from the pride of intellect: they believe in their bones that because working-class people are not formally educated then they lack consciousness, lack the ability to be critical, to make choices, to say no ... Only the educated--which means only those of the middle and upper classes who have been university-trained-have the ability and the right to be rational conscious beings who can combine pleasure with discrimination. (20) The neo-liberal emphasis, tethering education and employment, meansthat it is effortless to attack schools and universities for theirdeclining standards, mediocrity and responsibility for the economicdownturn. It is also extremely easy to discredit music, film, televisionand the World Wide Web--or the media generally--for causing the demiseof civilisation. Actually new modes of living, thinking and writing arecreated on dance floors, in darkened cinemas and through hypertext.Intellectual standards in research, writing and scholarship must not beconfused with reactionary determinations of cultural 'quality'and 'value.' A sad, but evocative example of how the teaching of popular musiccan change lives popped into my inbox in 2005. It reads From: Sent: Thursday, 19 May 2005 12:30 PM To: Tara Brabazon Subject: A 'New Order' in my life Dear Tara, Well, it sure has been awhile! I have been wanting to write to youfor awhile, but i have so much to tell you that i didn't know whereto start! What made me get off my arse and finally write to you was somethingthat happened last night ... but i will start at the beginning. Over thepast couple of months i feel like i have had a huge awakening, or anepiphany Epiphany(ĭpĭf`ənē)[Gr.,=showing], a prime Christian feast, celebrated Jan. 6, called also Twelfth Day or Little Christmas. Its eve is Twelfth Night. or something, it sounds so cliched cli��ch��dalso cliched ?adj.Having become stale or commonplace through overuse; hackneyed: "In the States, it might seem a little clich��d; in Paris, it seems fresh and original" but it is seriously like ihave been born again! As you know, i have had a few issues over the pastcouple of years, and these all came to a head 2 months ago, when iattempted suicide. A couple of weeks after that i went to Melbourne tostay with my step brother for a couple of weeks, and it was there thatmy whole outlook on life changed, i had many conversations with my broand his housemate house��mate?n.One who shares a house with another.Noun 1. housemate - someone who resides in the same house with you , and through these i came to finally accept myself asa person and the world as imperfect but full of amazing experiences, ihave spent too long fighting life--complaining about things, beingdepressed about things and basically not taking responsibility for myown happiness. To put it simply, i guess i have am growing up. i now seethings so differently, i love and accept myself and everyone else aspart of the universe--not just the physical universe but the spiritualcycle of life as well. I am no longer self destructive--i eat healthilyand exercise regularly, and i have stopped cutting myself for MYSELE notfor anyone else, because i finally see that more than anything i washurting myself (and certainly not just physically). So anyway, back to why i finally wrote to you ... last night i wasat my brother's house (who i couldn't be closer to) and wewere listening to music, as we do. i have to admit, i used to be a bitof a music snob--i had my (narrow) likes and wouldn't really stepoutside the square. But, with the help of my brother, my new attitudeand a few herbs, i am appreciating so much more music now. so lastnight, we were listening to New Order, which i have never liked untillast night, i loved what i heard, but knew nothing about them, and whenmy brother educated me on Jan curtis's suicide i finally realisedthe significance and the powerfulness of the music. it made me think ofcultural studies and what you taught us about pop culture and i feellike i understand so much better now. i wanted to tell you all of this,as it feels as though the things you said to me back in first year, andthe things we talked about both in class and out of class mean so muchmore to me now. i always wanted someone to 'fix' me, to give me theanswer, i didn't think i had the strength to do it myself, but herei am! This is all my own doing ... the psych didn't do it forme--you were right- it was something i had to do when i was ready, and idid it. To think that i could have willingly cut my life so short scaresthe hell out of me now, but i guess sometimes you have to hit rockbottom before you can start climbing back up. Peace and love ... It is often a cliche that a song saved our lives. In the case ofthis young woman, the cliche has a core of truth. Even moresignificantly, it is education that provided an alternative path, adifferent way of thinking. Popular culture was the language oftranslation. Such an e-mail serves as a reminder of the powerful andlife affirming capacity of popular culture. The difficulty in presentingthe optimistic potential and role of popular cultural forms is thatsince Richard Hoggart wrote The Uses of Literacy in 1957, and since thebirth and development of cultural studies through the 1960s and 1970s,the political environment has changed. John Hartley John Hartley may refer to: John Hartley (poet) (1839–1915), Yorkshire John Anderson Hartley (1844–1896), Australian educationist John Hartley (tennis player) (1849–1935), English clergyman who won Wimbledon captured theliberating context that framed the paradigm during this earlierprogressive time Cultural studies is politically a child of the 1960s, when political radicalism was not only liberating but hip ... when the boundaries between politics, music, sex and drugs became blurred, and when alternative, counter and sub cultures sprang up to claim attention like so many doggies in the window. (21) Now that the long 1960s is over, pedagogical ped��a��gog��ic? also ped��a��gog��i��caladj.1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of pedagogy.2. Characterized by pedantic formality: a haughty, pedagogic manner. terrorism ispatrolling the limits of acceptable teaching, learning and curriculum.There is a re-establishment of 'basics' and 'fundamentalprinciples.' The playful and excessive tackiness of popular culturehas difficulty surviving in classrooms punctuated by such ideologies andnarratives. Affirming an 'agreed' collection of literary texts ispart of an ideology of tradition, religion, family and nationalism.Strange ideas, pictures, rhythms and sounds provoke a citizen to thinkoutside of these structures and values. Popular culture is pivotal tothe shaping of our identity of building an image of ourselves, and thealliances that facilitate the creation of community. It is also sensualculture, effecting the body through the propulsion of laughter, thespringing of tears or the energy of dancing. In offering narratives ofemotion, transposing literacy beyond lettered representation, popularculture teaches and values different skills, senses and sensations.James Schwoch, Mimi White and Susan Reilly referred to this process ascritical citizenship: We invoke a different way of reading media culture as a part of an alternative theory that opposes current trends in American education, trends that exclusively emphasize excellence, discipline, achievement, and quantitatively verifiable production. (22) The goal of such a process is to create an environment of inquiry,questioning and critical thinking, rather than acceptance, denial orcompliance. In recognizing that immersion in popular culture offers aframework of learning, change and thought, the purpose of schools anduniversities also changes in response to this confirmation. (23) Theconstitution of media knowledge, based on movements of the body ormovements through mouse clicks in the World Wide Web, is not bowing to aculture of equivalence or denying cultural value. Instead, new criteriaare created to understand the changes to politics and how we commit toinformation. We must not deny pop, but create thinking pop, a moreexpressive and interpretative matrix of ideas. A key strategy in our schools and universities is not only'managing,' but enjoying and caring for, students withlearning difficulties. A strategy to assist those who may come from arange of cultural and linguistic communities is to mobilise popularculture with theoretical and pedagogical rigour rig��our?n. Chiefly BritishVariant of rigor.rigouror US rigorNoun1. . We all have learningdifficulties, strengths and weaknesses. But those who can interpret andwrite a form of prose valued in formal examination methods arecelebrated and validated through education and life. Those who can copyand develop dance steps or hold an expansive knowledge of popular musicare rarely celebrated for these skills. Learning difficulties are alwaysdiverse in origin, cause and orientation. Behavioural difficultiesbecome overlaid with linguistic, cultural or familial dissonances. (24)When students are showing difficulties with more conservative ortraditional literacies, and losing confidence through constant testingthat reinforces their sense of inadequacy and failure, popular cultureis incredibly important for its translation role. Margaret Finders hasrecognised the relevance of this remedial role, confirming the functionof popular culture in 'identity maintenance.' Further, shetransforms her theory of critical literacy to incorporate 'both howto use and how one is used by popular culture.' (25) Perhaps thereis no better statement of the profound, deep and ambivalent role of popin the contemporary classroom and library. There is no point incelebrating students' popular culture without question or critique.There is a need to acknowledge, understand and contextualise thesetexts. Lisa Patel Stevens recognised the importance of this pop cultpedagogy: I was 11 years old when MTV (Music Television) burst onto the burgeoning scene of cable television in 1981. You would have been hard-pressed to find an adolescent more enraptured by the big hair, dreamlike plot sequences, and over-the-top fashions of music video than I was. However, this was a world that was distinctly separate and removed from the dialogues and actions found within my junior high school classrooms. This dichotomous relationship between school and popular culture permeated my development and practices as a literacy educator. (26) Throughout her career, Stevens worked between this disjuncture dis��junc��ture?n.Disjunction; disunion; separation.Noun 1. disjuncture - state of being disconnecteddisconnectedness, disconnection, disjunctionseparation - the state of lacking unity ofeducation and popular culture. In a desire to converge these spheres,she assembled a checklist of questions for her students, to createthinking pop. For each portion of popular culture that we shared, we also modeled the inquiry process for students by answering six questions (a) What is the piece of popular culture? (b) Who is the intended audience? (c) Who is not the intended audience? (d) Who stands to benefit from it? (e) Who stands either not to advance in society or even to be hurt by it? and (f) What does this popular culture and its positioning say about U.S. society at large? (27) I have taught popular culture at university for thirteen years andStevens has provided the most succinct model for revealing the politicalcomplexity of these texts. When I have used these questions--in fact herwhole article--my students have responded with great enthusiasm, debateand discussion. (28) They learn critical literacy, and apply thesedifficult ideas and terms with greater ease because they are using andtranslating them in their own context. Those teaching students mustbegin with a respect of their language, experiences and difficulties. In such a time of flux, popular cultural representations of the webshadow this new history. How wired and unwired citizens think about theinternet and web is framed and shaped by already existing popularculture. No longer trapped within the utopian and dystopian dys��to��pi��an?adj.1. Of or relating to a dystopia.2. Dire; grim: "AIDS is one of the dystopian harbingers of the global village"Susan Sontag.Adj. binary, theinternet and web has become a thinking space for popular culture,allowing citizens to explore the movements in meaning between'old' and 'new' media. By placing Google, the Weband the Internet in popular culture, rather than isolating'technology' from 'culture,' or evenworse--assembling a barricade between old and new media--a moreintricate, complex and accurate history of communication can emerge.Older media always provide information about the cultural formationsthat transcend it. Emails have 'CCs'--Carbon Copies. Web siteshave home 'pages'. Older ways of thinking about space andidentity move from print to text and analogue to digital. Greater focusis required on how different modes and media of information encourage ordiscredit particular social values and groups. For example, young peoplefetishise mobile phone ring tones. Older men are the booming audience ofthe i-Pod. Wired senior citizens use email more than any other socialgroup. More attention is required, not to the application itself, butthe sociology and context of the user. The moment of a Fordist--one sizefits all--internet is at an end. That is why attention to educationalpolicy funding levels and the development of media literacy skills isrequired. There has never been a greater need for more specialised andsubtle pedagogies. Each medium extends the senses. Books and cameras extended thepotential of the eye. Radio and listening devices such as mobile phonering tones and the i-Pod extend the capacities of the ear. Televisionincreases the convergent literacies of eye and ear. Gaming and computerapplications more generally forge links between the eye, ear and hand,while also changing how we commit to and understand information. Asconvergence increases, older technologies and literacies are not lost,but feed their values into the mixing desk of 'the next bigthing.' Just as disco survives in house music, just as jungle livesin 'drum 'n bass', so is the capacity to read printperpetuated in the i-Pod, enabling the negotiation of a menu on theilluminated screen. Aural aural/au��ral/ (aw��r'l)1. auditory (1).2. pertaining to an aura.au��ral?1adj.Relating to or perceived by the ear. literacies, from radio, mobile phone ringtones and other leisure technologies, allow the listener to rapidlyrecognise the song emerging through the headphones. Reading print is notlost as a skill, but is layered and enmeshed en��mesh? also im��meshtr.v. en��meshed, en��mesh��ing, en��mesh��esTo entangle, involve, or catch in or as if in a mesh. See Synonyms at catch. with other literacies andcompetencies, such as scrolling through text on a screen. Popular culture emerges from these contradictions and confluencesin media and social life, reflecting how older social structuressurvive, are fragmented or changed. Literacies are formed and rankedwhen communities claim interpretations of symbolic forms. Someliteracies are more important than others. As seen through JohnHoward's 'intervention' in April 2006, those in powerclaim their books, media and language as quality and part of educationalcurricula, while discrediting the rest. Those operating outside of thesevalues may resist, or their literacies and texts may be lost or buriedby the dominant group. Yet struggle does not always result inresistance. Audiences, consumers and citizens seek out environments inwhich they are comfortable and understand the signs and codes. Rarely dowe gravitate grav��i��tate?intr.v. grav��i��tat��ed, grav��i��tat��ing, grav��i��tates1. To move in response to the force of gravity.2. To move downward.3. to those images and ideas that make us uncomfortable orthat we do not understand. The electronic revolution that Google hascontinued has made possible the reproduction and dissemination ofcultural symbols, but also the careful filtering and selection of adigital environment to ensure that the empowered users of the web arecomfortable and unchallenged. Obviously, I am a believer in reading books. But I have alsodanced, sung, played music, watched television and spent far too muchtime mucking around with videos and DVDs. I have a dense dedication tomy I-Pod. In such an intricate environment of visual, sonic, tactile andolfactory olfactory/ol��fac��to��ry/ (ol-fak��ter-e) pertaining to the sense of smell. ol��fac��to��ryadj.Of, relating to, or contributing to the sense of smell. stimulation, literacy has fragmented into multi-literacy. Whatwas 'literacy' fifty or and one hundred years ago is simplynot sufficient to interpret an information-saturated and mixed mediaworld. Print is no longer enough. Sean Cubitt, having watched theexplosion of video recorders in the 1980s, realised that Video's readers are already intensely 'literate.' The codes and conventions of moving-image media, now almost a hundred years old, are dense and complex. I would argue that there is a kind of Chinese Box effect in the history of twentieth-century media, TV subsuming film, video subsuming TV. (29) The Chinese Box Chinese box may refer to different topics: Chinese boxes, may refer to nested ornamental boxes; this usage is frequently as a metaphor for many layers of encapsulation, similar to Matryoshka dolls or the layers of an onion continues through digital television and DVDs. Weneed to teach children, adults, students and citizens how to be literatein many media and textual forms, and how to evaluate and balance theirpotentials, weaknesses and strengths. These technological ensembles areinterconnected media that are organizing society in new ways.Inter-personal relationships are being mediated by telephones, emailsand instant messaging Exchanging text messages in real time between two or more people logged into a particular instant messaging (IM) service. Instant messaging is more interactive than e-mail because messages are sent immediately, whereas e-mail messages can be queued up in a mail server for seconds or . They were similar mediations in the analogueenvironment by letters, cards and flowers. To repeat: the problem is notpopular culture. The concern is that teachers and librarians are notbeing given a chance to teach the literacies required to transform theweb, I-Pods and DVDs from leisure applications into the starting point Noun 1. starting point - earliest limiting pointterminus a quocommencement, get-go, offset, outset, showtime, starting time, beginning, start, kickoff, first - the time at which something is supposed to begin; "they got an early start"; "she knew from the for a critical and reflexive research process. Nearly twenty years TWENTY YEARS. The lapse of twenty years raises a presumption of certain facts, and after such a time, the party against whom the presumption has been raised, will be required to prove a negative to establish his rights. 2. ago, Carolyn Marvin published a fascinatingbook titled When old technologies were new. The title alone demonstratesthe prescient pre��scient?adj.1. Of or relating to prescience.2. Possessing prescience.[French, from Old French, from Latin praesci nature of her argument. She showed that 'we are notthe first generation to wonder at the rapid and extraordinary shifts inthe dimension of the world and the human relationships it contains as aresult of new forms of communication.' (30) Social change is alwaysaccompanied by a nostalgic desire for simplicity and continuity. Such adesire is understandable and carries forward an important lesson.Instead of demarcating new from old media, teachers and librarians mustfocus on how we extend and develop already-held knowledge andcompetencies. Every 'new medium' emerges from another: every'new literacy' is grafted from a precedent analytical skill.Marvin mobilised this argument, confirming that 'the early historyof electric media is less the evolution of technical efficiencies incommunication than a series of arenas for negotiating issues crucial tothe conduct of social life.' (31) Popular culture is a thinkingspace, an opportunity to reassess our values, skills and literacies, andto test our commitment and desire to seek out alternative views andvoices. There is no 'revolution' in media technology, justrevelations in ways of organizing society. The integration of student popular culture into the curriculum andlibrary resources allows students to feel comfortable in their textualenvironment, while being challenged to develop new analytical skills. Ifboth the text and literacies are foreign, then our students for whom aschool or university is disconnected from the experiences of theirfamily and friends are further alienated from the curriculum. There is areason for perpetuating this disconnection. Shelly Hong Xu stated that'teachers often shy away from Verb 1. shy away from - avoid having to deal with some unpleasant task; "I shy away from this task"avoid - stay clear from; keep away from; keep out of the way of someone or something; "Her former friends now avoid her" student popular culture and feel thatthey have a moral responsibility of keeping popular culture out of theofficial school world.' (32) Such an assumption continues the linkbetween low literacy and social disadvantage. Actually the point of popchallenges the suppositions of librarians and teachers as much asstudents. Popular culture, when integrated into education and teachertraining, prepares schools and universities for managing diversity.Gretchen Schwarz confirmed these challenges and potentials. Today's teachers deal with diversity at every level. Many seem unprepared. Media literacy incorporated into teacher education and professional development may benefit teachers by helping them understand the 'other,' by helping them challenge media notions about gender, race, class, etc.; by introducing them to alternative pedagogies; and by offering them resources and techniques to empower their own students. (33) Choices about media value are political decisions. The benefit ofeducation is that it provides alternatives, answers, views andtrajectories in a political environment of blame and grievance. Whilethese choices may not always result in economic benefits, it createsthinking space. The aim is to use the texts and contexts of our studentsand provide diverse ways of interpreting and shaping the history,geography and politics around them. Learning is socially transformative. That is why phrases like'the basics' and a determination of 'rubbish'require more attention and greater critique. We require new goals andstructures to address systematic and structural exclusions in schoolsand universities. (34) To explore and renew a commitment to mediaeducation and popular cultural studies is a reminder of the revelatoryimpact of the best education and teaching differences: From: To: t.brabazon@murdoch.edu.au Subject: Intro to Cultural Studies Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 22:39:44 +0800 Ms. Brabazon, Today's tutorial was so excited ... I didn't have tutorial systems at my university in Japan. So, I'm enjoying uni life here. Today's topic was difficult for me, but I could think many things. Especially about culture or 'cultures'.. I wanted to say about that question ..., but I was so shy, I was stupid ... So, now I want to say my opinion a bit here ... sorry. I think each person has each culture, even though they're same nationality. Cause we live our own life by ourselves and we're different person. No one can live same way with me. So, we should discuss about difference of cultures and we should know each other. I had stereotypes before I come here, still now, I think I have. Therefore, I'd like to change my mind and make wide my horizon. That's all.... I'm interested in your lecture and tutorials. So, as much as possible, I'd like to try to say my oponion in tutorial. Teacher is the job of my dreams!!! I want be a teacher (lecturer?!) like you, tara! I'm looking forward to attend next lecture and join next tutorial. Thank you for your kindness. The demonisation Noun 1. demonisation - to represent as diabolically evil; "the demonization of our enemies"demonizationcondemnation, disapprobation - an expression of strong disapproval; pronouncing as wrong or morally culpable; "his uncompromising condemnation of racism" of popular knowledge has repressed our studentsfor too long. We have continued to isolate schools and universities fromthe lived experience of the citizens we are meant to be educating. Popis a medium and method to manage classroom diversity and facilitate acritical interpretation of texts and contexts. There is a need to find astrategy to assist students who are not prepared for higher-levelwriting, reading and research skills. The first step is to transformconsuming pop into thinking pop. The second stage is to demand that ourpolitical leaders read more. (1) Z. Bauman, 'Universities: old, new and different',from A Smith and F. Webster (ed), The Postmodern University? Contestedvisions of higher education in society, (Buckingham: Open UniversityPress, 1997), p. 24. (2) I acknowledge John Bagnole and John Miller for their innovativediscussion of information literacy, digital information literacy,information competence, information technology and informationgathering. Please refer to 'An interactive information literacycourse for international students: a practical blueprint for ESL (1) An earlier family of client/server development tools for Windows and OS/2 from Ardent Software (formerly VMARK). It was originally developed by Easel Corporation, which was acquired by VMARK. learners', Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, Vol.6, No 4. March 2003,http://www-writing.berkeley.edutesl-ej/ej24/al.html, accessed on May 27,2006. (3) P. Hager, 'Changing pedagogy: productive learning',Oval Research Working Paper, No 16, 2003, p. 1. (4) J. Howard, in R King, 'Howard blasts OBE as rubbish.'The West Australian West Australian commonly refers to people or things from Western Australia.Specific things to which it may refer include: the newspaper The West Australian; , 21 April 2006, p. 1. The conservative nature of TheWest Australian is confirmed when recognizing that on the same page thatthis news item was reported, the bold heading read, 'Happy 80thbirthday', Ma'am alongside a picture of Queen Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth, or Elizabeth, may refer to: Living peopleElizabeth II, Queen regnant of the Commonwealth Realms Deceased peopleBohemia II (5) 'Editorial: Giving out bad Marx, The Australian 22 April2006, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,18884921,00.html, accessed on 25 April 2006 (6) For example, please refer to 'Education Watch--MirrorSite,' 25 April 2006 http://usersbigpond.net.au/jonjayray/educ.html, accessed on 25 April 2006 and'PM canes 'rubbish' postmodern teaching,' AustralianChristian Lobby Website, 21 April 2006,http://www.acl.org.au/national/browsestw?article_id=9081@printer=l&from=printer, accessed on 25 April 2006. (7) Z. Bauman. Liquid Modernity), (Cambridge: Polity, 2000). (8) J. Urry. The complexities of the global,' published by theDepartment of Sociology Noun 1. department of sociology - the academic department responsible for teaching and research in sociologysociology departmentacademic department - a division of a school that is responsible for a given subject . Lancaster University Lancaster University (officially the University of Lancaster) is a collegiate campus university in Lancaster, England. The University is frequently placed in the top 20 UK universities in national league tables and in the top 10 for research, notably with its 6* Management .http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/papers/urry-complexities-global.pdf, 2 May 2004 (9) M. McKew and J. Howard, 'Coalition rock-solid. saysHoward, 7:30 Report. http://www.abc.netau/7:30/content/2006/s1555373.htm, accessed on 6 June 2006 (10) G. Auty, 'Top Marx for our educators,' TheAustralian, 21 April 2006, p.14. (11) ibid. (12) G Auty, Post-modernism's assault on Western culture,Quadrant, June 2000,http://members.optushome.com.au/jimball/Post-modernism.htm, accessed on25 April 2006 (13) S. Aronowitz and H Giroux, Postmodern Education, (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota. External linkUniversity of Minnesota Press , 1997), p. 181 (14) J. Schapiro and S Hughes, 'Information technology as aliberal art: Enlightenment proposals for a new curriculum Educom Review,Vol, 31, 1996, p.2. (15) J. Eklund, Driving the Future of e-learning, (Sydney: AccessTesting Centre, 2003). (16) Frode Hegland is currently working on the Liquid Informationproject. His goal is to make all documents editable and every wordencasing a potential hyperlink. Once more, the focus is on increasinglythe 'access' to information not attention to the literaciesrequired to manage it. Please refer to Jason Walsh Jason Walsh is an Australian ten-pin bowler. He finished in 4th position of the combined rankings at the 2006 AMF World Cup. During the final round he finished in 3rd position. , 'Informationwants to be liquid,' Wired News 25 January 2005,http://www.wired.com/news/culture/1,66382-0.html, accessed on 27 May2005. To view the Liquid Information, project, please refer tohttp://www.liquidinformation.org/history.html, accessed on 27 May 2006. (17) R. Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, (London: Transaction. 1908) (18) For example, the former Australian education minister, DrBrendan Nelson Dr. Brendan John Nelson (born 19 August 1958), Australian politician, has been a Liberal Party of Australia member of the Australian House of Representatives since March 1996, representing the Division of Bradfield, New South Wales. stated that 'I think too much of the curriculum isdominated by contemporary television and media ... So you've gotthe kids studying Big Brother and Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead of TS Eliot and Thomas Hardy. Now I'm not suggesting theyshouldn't study contemporary lads and the impact they' have onour evolving society and cultural values But I think we diminish andimpoverish im��pov��er��ish?tr.v. im��pov��er��ished, im��pov��er��ish��ing, im��pov��er��ish��es1. To reduce to poverty; make poor.2. ourselves if we educate a generation of young Australiansthat are unfamiliar with Patrick White Noun 1. Patrick White - Australian writer (1912-1990)Patrick Victor Martindale White, White anti Jane Austen and the greatauthors of the past 200 to 300 years', from C Johnson, Bring backthe three Rs: Nelson," The West Australian. 12 August 2005, p.1. (19) R Brown, 'Information Entrepreneurs, 2 September 2005Public Address.net, http://publicaddress.net/print,2494.sm, accessed on9 September 2005 (20) J. Docker, 'In defense of popular culture', Arena,No. 60, p 86 (21) J. Hartley, The Politics of Pictures. (London: Routledge,1992), p. 16. (22) J. Schwoch, M. White and S. Reilly, Media Knowledge: Readingsin popular culture, pedagogy, and critical citizenship, (New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : StateUniversity Press, 1992). (23) Henry Giroux Henry Giroux, born September 18 1943 in Providence, is a US cultural critic. He is one of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, and is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, media and Peter McLaren confirmed in 'Mediahegemony: towards a critical pedagogy Critical pedagogy is a teaching approach which attempts to help students question and challenge domination, and the beliefs and practices that dominate. In other words, it is a theory and practice of helping students achieve critical consciousness. of representation,' that'pedagogy occurs wherever knowledge is produced, wherever cultureis given the possibility of translating experience and constructingtruths, even if such truths appear unrelentingly redundant, superficial,and commonsensical.' This argument builds into a strongpresentation of a critical pedagogy with strong attention to visions ofand for the future. This chapter is included in Schwoch, White andReilly (eds), Media Knowledge, p. xxiii. (24) Mary Rohl and Judith Rivalland monitored the complicateddetermination of these learning difficulties in 'Literacy learningdifficulties in Australian primary schools,' The Australian Journalof Language and Literacy, Vol 25, No. 3, 2002, pp 19-40 (25) M. Finders. '"Gotta be worse": negotiating thepleasurable and the popular,' Journal of Adolescent & AdultLiteracy, Vol. 44, No. 2, October 2000, p 146 (26) L. Stevens, 'South Park and society: instructional andcurricular implications of popular culture in the classroom,'Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. Vol 44, No 6. March 2001, p548. (27) ibid., p 552-3 (28) Stevens' reflexive deployment of these critical questionshas much to do not only with her emergence in MTV MTVin full Music TelevisionU.S. cable television network, established in 1980 to present videos of musicians and singers performing new rock music. MTV won a wide following among rock-music fans worldwide and greatly affected the popular-music business. , but the tightrelationship between Generation X and popular culture For my broaderdiscussion of the sociological and political connection between Gen X See generation X. and popular culture, please refer to Tara Brabazon, From Revolution toRevelation: Generation X, cultural studies, popular memory, (Aldershot:Ashgate, 2005). (29) S. Cubitt, Timeshift: On video culture, (London: Routledge,1991), p. 3. (30) C Marvin, When Old Technologies were Near, (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1988), p. 3. (31) ibid., p. 4. (32) S. Hong Xu, 'Teachers' full knowledge ofstudents' popular culture and the integration of aspects of thatculture in literacy instruction,' Education, Vol. 122, No. 4, p.721. (33) G. Schwarz, 'Media literacy prepares teachers fordiversity,' Academic Exchange, Spring 2004, p. 224. (34) Barbara Comber revealed in 'Literacy, poverty andschooling', English in Australia, Vol. 119, No 30, 1997, that'the myth that youth unemployment, poverty and crime are largelythe result of low levels of literacy have come to be heard as the'truth' in contemporary Australia. Admitting to being ateacher or teacher educator frequently unleashes a series of uninvited un��in��vit��ed?adj.Not welcome or wanted: uninvited guests.uninvitedAdjectivenot having been asked: uninvited guests verbal attacks about what a lousy job teachers are doing and how youngpeople can't spell, don't know what a verb is, and so on.Taxi-drivers, shop keepers, TV current affairs current affairsnpl → (noticias fpl de) actualidad fcurrent affairscurrent npl → (questions fpl d')actualit�� f hosts and casualacquaintances all have horror stories to offer as evidence,' p. 23. Tara Brabazon is the Professor of Media in the School of Computing,Mathematics and Information Sciences at the University of Brighton The University of Brighton (formerly Brighton Polytechnic until its re-designation in 1992) is a multi-site university based in the city of Brighton & Hove (England). andDirector of the Popular Culture Collective. She is the author of sixbooks: Tracking the Jack--A retracing of the Antipodes (Sydney:University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales, also known as UNSW or colloquially as New South, is a university situated in Kensington, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Press, 2000), Ladies who Lunge:Celebrating difficult women (Sydney: University of New South WalesPress, 2002) and Digital Hemlock hemlock,any tree of the genus Tsuga, coniferous evergreens of the family Pinaceae (pine family) native to North America and Asia. The common hemlock of E North America is T. : Internet education and the poisoningof teaching (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2002). Heredited collection, Liverpool of the South Seas South Seas,name given by early explorers to the whole of the Pacific Ocean. In recent times the name has been used to mean only the central Pacific, the S Pacific, and the SW Pacific. : Perth and its popularmusic was published by UWA Press in January 2005. From Revolution toRevelation: Generation X, popular memory, cultural studies was publishedby Ashgate in March 2005. Playing on the Periphery: sport, identity andmemory was released by Routledge in February 2006.tara.brabazon@popularculturecollective.com Manuscript received June 2006 This is a refereed article