Schooling in the Light of Popular Culture

Edited by Paul Farber, Eugene F. Provenzo Jr., and Gunilla Holm

Subjects: English Education
Series: SUNY series, Education and Culture: Critical Factors in the Formation of Character and Community in American Life
Paperback : 9780791418727, 276 pages, June 1994
Hardcover : 9780791418710, 276 pages, June 1994

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Table of contents

Introduction

Part I: Foil and Folly
Adolescents and Schooling in Popular Culture

1. Adolescent Freedom and the Cinematic High School
Paul Farber and Gunilla Holm

2. Education, Rock-and-Roll, and the Lyrics of Discontent
Gunilla Holm and Paul Farber

3. Learning in Style: The Portrayal of Schooling in Seventeen Magazine
Gunilla Holm

Part II: Framing the Story
Representations of Schooling for the General Public

4. Reader's Digest and the Mythology of Schooling
Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., and Andrea Ewart

5. The Image of the High School Dropout in the Twentieth-Century Popular Press
Jeanne Ellsworth and Robert B. Stevenson

6. New York Times's Coverage of Educational Reform: The 1950s and 1980s Compared
Ohkee Lee and Michael Salwen

Part III: Plotting Lives
Narrative Accounts of School Experience

7. A Brotherhood of Heroes: The Charismatic Educator in Recent American Movies
Paul Farber and Gunilla Holm

8. Conformity, Conflict, and Curriculum: Film Images of Boys' Preparatory Schools
Gary N. Mc Closkey, O.S.A.

9. Miracle Working and the Image of the Exceptional Student
Arlene Sachs and Gary N. McCloskey, O.S.A.

Part IV: Flares and Snapshots
Telling Images of School Experience

10. Carnival, Pop Culture and the Comics: Radical Political Discourse
Olga Skorapa

11. Educational Cartoons as Popular Culture: The Case of the Kappan
Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., and Anthon Beonde

12. Education 1st!: Using Television to Promote the Schools
Lynn Nations Johnson and Gunilla Holm

Contributors

Index

Description

Many factors contribute to the way individuals come to an understanding of what schooling is about and where it might be headed. This book explores the role of popular culture in that process.

The authors illustrate how powerful and suggestive images and ideas about teachers, learning, and other aspects of schooling are constructed in the "texts" of various modes of popular culture. As a basis for further inquiry, the book describes important tendencies and patterns in the representation of aspects of schooling. It also provides examples of analytical approaches and strategies for thinking about the significance of patterns with respect to questions of meaning, power, and pedagogy in schooling practices. At the interface of educational and cultural studies, the book encourages inquiry into mainstream popular culture, and explores how this culture contributes to forms of discourse about the nature and direction of schooling.

At Western Michigan University's Department of Educational and Professional Development, Paul Farber is Associate Professor and Gunilla Holm is Assistant Professor. Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr. is Professor in the School of Education at the University of Miami.