Kevin, I agree with a lot of what you said here. I am teaching at a community college institution right now, and I've got an interesting cohort of students. Some are super talented high school juniors and seniors, taking college courses for free because the state of Ohio allows this. Some are folks my own age, back in college looking to change careers or start a new career midlife. Some are recent HS grads who don't know what they want to do with their lives just yet, whose parents won't pay to send them away to school without a plan, so they are knocking around the local CC for awhile.
What I see in some of my students is an appalling lack of preparation for basic college level work. I'm talking the ability to write a simple declarative sentence. To put together an essay with a beginning, middle, and end. To speak three sentences in a row without a "like" or "um" thrown in there. To use spell check the way God intended it to be used. To capitalize proper nouns. To send me an email that doesn't read like a ransom note. I would never argue for taking away from the basics, language arts, math, science and social studies, in favor of pop culture studies. I just think there's room at some universities for an exploration of the themes and ideas that flow from pop culture, what it says about our society's current state, the economics of the business and how that's changing, etc., etc. I'm putting my money where my mouth is right now and actually running for school board in my local community, because we are cut to the bone in terms of electives (we got no pop culture at my local HS, that's for sure) and are in danger of sending our middle schoolers home at 12:30pm every day for lack of other things to teach them. The world of education is changing in good ways and bad, and I want to prevent the bad. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kevin M. Sent: Monday, October 31, 2011 1:32 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [TV orNotTV] Snooki as a microcosm for the human condition On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 9:34 PM, Karla Robinson <[email protected]> wrote: > I beg to differ. > > If we, as a culture, spend a large portion of our discretionary time with > media, shouldn't we study it? Shouldn't we have symposia where we discuss > why reality TV is so popular? What it might be doing to our culture? You all may or may not have noticed, but since I got my own place and got out of a home setting where I was subjected to endless hours of reality TV and televised battles over cupcakes, I've distanced myself from it. Because I try to speak on things I know about or am passionate about; if I'm not watching a show, I try not to write about it one way or the other. To perform an exhaustive analysis of Snooki and the Situation, someone would have to actually subject themselves to watching Jersey Shore. And having seen roughly one episode (under extreme duress), I'm not willing to take seriously the wisdom of anyone who would do such a thing. Mike Judge deserves a medal for watching as much as he did to mock it on the new Beavis and Butthead series. I only have a BFA in Communications so I guess I can only stand back and envy your PhD. But too often we want to instantly ascribe whatever is current with the same sort of reverence we used to hold classical art, and it just isn't merited. Through time and distance we will see what actually influenced this generation, but we are too personally involved to know now. In short, there is a big difference between waxing philosophical and talking sh*t. There just isn't enough meat on the Jersey Shore bone to get any nutrition out of it. I forget who Marc Maron's most recent guest was on WTF, but I liked his idea that if he could have all the raw footage from Jersey Shore, he could probably edit it into an entirely different series in form, texture, and intent. If something like that were to happen, I'd take an interest. As it stands, it is just another fad and soon it will be gone, just like so many other fads. One other point: I teach at what is essentially a vocational school (albeit a unique one), but even there I can see the gaping chasm in our educational system. Studies are revealing an increase in suicide rates of college students, and professors are complaining that third and even fourth year students cannot compose a 500 word essay on a given subject. The course I teach is required for entering students of all majors, and it is designed to review the basic skills they need to succeed. And for the first few months our course wasn't taken seriously by the administration or the students. But now we have hard data to crunch and it is revealed that students who did poorly in our course (lacked the basic skills) all dropped or were booted from their programs. In other words, the basic skills matter, even to people who enter into specific vocations where they think they do not. When we waste time out of an academic calendar for Madonna-studies and Jersey Shore and texting slang, we are losing something as a culture. Though our pop-culture might be strengthened, what is the prize for that?. While we are building up that skillset, what are we neglecting? Every generation will have its escapist fare (I once watched Gilligan's Island and The Monkees with alarming frequency), but there's no need to dwell on it. Put simply: It doesn't take a two-week seminar to determine why we need to escape from our day-to-day lives, nor does it take an assemblage of learned individuals to determine why Snooki would want to appear on her own TV show. But if anyone did want to determine those things, I'd point them to this message board, where people wiser than me have already discussed these and other issues in depth and for free, thus allowing universities to pursue more noble endeavors. -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
