The Irrelevance Of Popular Culture In Literature

Academic literature often neglects to mention the role which popular culture such as music, movies, and television play in the development of the public conscious. This is due to either its perceived lack of intellectual value, or its imagined irrelevance. Regardless of their opinion regarding its artistic merit, popular culture pop culture affects every facet of one’s daily life, and an educator who fails to remain conscious of the zeitgeist is one who refuses to give weight to the material importance of artistic expression and in doing so places the relationship between themselves and their students in jeopardy. Friere writes in “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” that “Consciousness neither precedes the world nor follows it” (Friere 14). It follows that in order to properly educate, or rather, in order to encourage the development of critical consciousness among one’s students, one must acknowledge the world as playing an active role in their student’s self-perception

In the words of Horace “The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life.” However, this principle is not exclusive to great works of literature. It is apparent that culture is the medium through which we are first exposed to the outside world as children, and as we become adults the lessons which we absorb through media become the metric through which we determine our values. We see evidence of this principle in educational children’s television shows such as Doctor McStuffins and Peppa Pig. If one doesn’t understand the culture of their students, then one cannot understand their values. Failing to engage with one’s students on such a fundamental level indicates an inherent disinterest in engaging with them as equals, and it follows that one who does not perceive their students as equals has no interest in learning from them as