Curriculum and Popular Culture: Building Bridges and Making Waves.

This paper explores the potential of incorporating elements of popular culture such as music, film, and court trials as a bridge to help students traditionally alienated by the canonical texts they confront in the “standard” curriculum to conquer and gain a critical understanding of those texts. Sometimes complex, canonical texts can be intimidating and alienating to certain students, especially those with limited exposure to these texts. Those same students exhibit the critical and analytical skills that would serve them well in-class around elements of popular culture. Several units were designed for an urban high school population that combined a major film or genre of popular music with a canonical text of similar themes. The first unit analyzed for the project begins with “The Godfather Trilogy” and incorporates Homer’s “Odyssey”, while the second unit joins Richard Wright’s “Native Son” with the film “A Time To Kill.” The paper hopes to call attention to the need for more teacher-conducted classroom research and also to encourage creative approaches to instruction that emanate from the worlds and perceptions of the students and are based on a sound theoretical framework. (Contains 11 references.) (BT) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Curriculum and Popular Culture: Building Bridges and Making Waves Ernest Morrell Graduate School of Education Language, Literacy, and Culture Division University of California, Berkeley Send Correspondence to: morrell©gseis.ucla.edu N N 00 Paper presented at the annual meeting of the rq American Educational Research Association Cr) New Orleans, LA April 2000 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION CD PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as V) E-Entsor re.I I received from the person or organizaiion originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. 1 TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE As class was ending and I packed up the video camera equipment, I could still hear students arguing over the role of women in classic Greece as compared to today. Several students approached me to ask my opinion or to further argue their point. This lasted through most of the passing period and, not wanting them to be late to fourth period, I hurried them off to their next class. As I continued to clean, I thought back to the presentation. How a nervous Paris bumbled through the first book but recovered nicely during the question and answer portion, how Shalia and Chan went toe to toe for five minutes about whether Penelope should be excused for her actions. I remembered Hong and Jasmine patiently articulate to the group why Athene had to disguise herself as a man when providing aid to the young Telemachus. Shalia and Lien, however, were adamant. “She didn’t do women today any favors,” I remember Shalia saying, “just think where we’d be today if all women felt that way!” Almost everyone had participated in the discussion that lasted the entire period. Everyone except my three boys in the back. I’ll ask them to move closer tomorrow if none of them are presenting. Today’s class was truly inspirational as well as enlightening for myself both as a teacher and researcher. I hope that all of the other presentations go as well. The Odyssey is one of the most difficult texts to read and understand and this “remedial” English class is having fierce debates questioning the author’s intentions and interrogating characters’ motives! I think of the research project and wish that my intended audience of educators and fellow researchers could have witnessed this event. However, that not being possible, I feel compelled to describe this project to the best of my ability and explain how the results of this presentation were achieved. -Excerpt from field notes This paper seeks to explore the potential of incorporating elements of popular culture such as music, film, and court trials as a bridge to help students traditionally alienated by the canonical texts they confront in the “standard” curriculum to conquer and gain a critical understanding of them. During my years of teaching high school English and taking graduate courses, I read about and experienced first hand how complex, canonical texts could be intimidating and alienating to certain students. I found this to be particularly true for the population I worked with at East Bay Highl. A majority of my students had limited exposure to these texts and, when they did encounter them, usually had bad experiences of feeling ignorant or incompetent. Early in my teaching career when I East Bay High is a fictitious name used to protect the anonymity of the school site where I conducted this research.