Gerald graff pop culture in academics free essay sample

Teenagers can also relate to whats going on in their own lives with the pop culture world. Sometimes its hard for teenagers to understand a certain topic but if teachers can explain it to them in a way that they can understand using pop culture, teachers should be allowed to do so. Pop culture should be allowed in the classroom as long as its used in an educational way and can help students learning. Graff talks a lot about street smarts in his essay. We all know someone who is street smart but they just dont do to well in school and are unable to do well in academics. Some people may feel that its a waste of intelligence and knowing so much about life isnt going to help you academically. Graff feels that its not those students fault and those students can be helped. We will write a custom essay sample on Gerald graff pop culture in academics or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page He states that What doesnt occur to us, though, is that schools and colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street smarts and channel them into good Gonzalez 2 academic work (peg. 380). Meaning schools and colleges should be held accountable for not being able to help those street smart teenagers and elf turn their knowledge of life into academic work.Teachers should help these students learn how to understand the academics their teaching them with examples of the street smart knowledge they already obtain. Personally, feel that street smarts beat out book smarts in todays world. Street smarts is something thats real knowledge to me and can help someone in the future unlike book smarts where everything feels unreal. Graff speaks of his own experience in school and how he felt he was the typical teenage anti- intellectual. All throughout high school Graff hated reading and books.The only thing he truly cared for was sports, and the only reading he did was reading sports magazines. Graff says IL have recently come to think, however, that my preference for sports over schoolwork was not anti- intellectualism so much as intellectualism by other means (peg. 382). What Graff is saying here is just because he had rather choose sports over schoolwork doesnt make him unintelligent it makes him smart but in a different way. I can personally agree with Graff. Im not very interested in academic work but I ere up watching sports.Sports are full of challenging debates, arguments, analysis, and statistics. You can debate which team is better so why not use that same tactic but a different topic. Remember being in class not doing my work and talking about football or basketball. If a teacher was to explain reading or writing to me with using sports as an example I probably wouldve understood what they were saying and succeed in school. Have teenagers analysis sports topic and have them relate to them and see if they agree or disagree with that sport topic. Schools should create debates or arguments that teenagers can relate to. It will get teens to feel more involved and they might actually engage in the Gonzalez 3 conversation. We should be able to incorporate sport topics in school because not many students find educational topics very understanding or interesting. Teachers can easily use sports as a topic in every classroom discussion. Music in pop culture today has such a big influence on students. Everyone listens to at least some type of music any chance of the day they get.One of the main influences is hip hop music. Hip pop is all over the radios and you can find it in at least the majority of students phone players, pod, or even CDC. Music has a huge influence on myself, personally. Music helps me concentrate and even helps me learn academic material better. It even helps my mind grow and develop better. Music actually improves communication between the right and left sides of the brain, allowing you to gain better comprehension and memorization skills which develop your brain to a higher level.Music has so much to do with metaphors and understanding lyrics and truly understanding the meaning of song. It even helps to improve reading and comprehensive skills. Take Tuba Shaker for instance, his rap music has such meaningful metaphors which should be used in the classroom because they can truly help teenagers understand the meaning of a metaphor and students will actually be interested in the topic. Music is such a complex language that even incorporates mathematics, science, history, physical education, coordination, and even mental ability.Most teenagers find hip hop artist like Tuba interesting because they can relate to Tubas music about daily life struggles bout gangs, drugs and growing up in the ghetto. Since teenagers go through these struggles we should help give them something to relate to so they can know the real world isnt perfect and a lot of people can be going through the same struggles as you. Gonzalez 4 Most people will disagree with the fact that schools should allow pop culture influences in education.That schools are made for learning academics and nothing else, like pop culture, should influence anything not academic. An argument could be that pop culture is a bad influence and can send the wrong message to managers. For instance that sports can send the message of promoting violence and that teenagers should stick to their own personal friends and not communicate with other groups of people. It can cause tension in the classrooms over debates because not everyone has the same opinion about a certain team.Or the simple fact that not everyone is interested in sports or have knowledge of sports and they dont want teenagers to feel as if they dont fit in. A lot of people will have negative comments about music in education and academics. Most will argue that music send the wrong usage to teens. Some can even say rap music like Tuba exploits women and uses vulgar language. It promotes violence and criminal like activity. Which in some rap music and even Tubas music is true. He uses extreme vulgar language and talks about the thug life.It even includes sexual conduct in his rapping. Some can even say hip hop music period is distracting and if we promote music in schools. Like this, it will promote teenagers to get the wrong idea about school and education. That teens will go out and join a gang, become sexually active, and do criminal like activity. Even though some teenagers have a hard life and can relate to this music we should not remind them of their personal lifes and keep everything strictly academic. In conclusion, you can see that there is a positive and negative to having pop culture in todays education. I personally feel that there should be a connection to education which Gonzalez 5 teenagers like should be able to be interested in as long as its educational. Not everyone will have the same opinion as Graff and I so there should be an option to be able to take classes which you can use pop culture n your learning process or if you want to keep it strictly educational you should be able to as well.