Does Today's Pop Culture Deliver Stupidity?

The pendulum is in motion! With every swing, new technology adds more bells and whistles to the Pop Culture Toy Chest. Information eddies and rushes from a stream that is ever-widening. No need for today's researchers to go to the library--to pull out the card catalogs and periodicals. Research is at home--at the tip of one's fingers.

Life is simple. Students today have it made. Right?

NO!

Over the past several decades, educational trends have come and gone. At a glance, it might seem that students today are on “Easy Street.” They certainly have more gadgets and study aids than ever before. They can research and write papers from their beds, propped up on pillows, in front of the television. It might seem logical that because of all of their technological conveniences, students no longer have to think. Yet, while it might seem that Pop Culture, with its technological trinkets, has delivered to today’s student a recipe for sloth and stupidity, is that actually the case?

Not really.

Getting an education in today’s schools is still pretty tough!

Kids today are expected to read at much younger ages than they did, even twenty years ago. They are rushed through the curriculum at break-neck speed, because more material is continuously added—and time is a budgeted commodity.

A group who are often characterized as lazy and spoiled, today’s high school students actually function under a great amount of pressure. Getting into a good college becomes more difficult each year. College-bound students must make outstanding grades throughout high school, while strenuously preparing for the SAT exam, because SAT scores can make them or break them. And the same happens, when undergraduates struggle to get into quality graduate and professional schools.

Students today are actually walking on a very thin tightrope. Even their games are tough!

In his book Everything Bad Is Good For You, Steven Johnson (2009) says, "The dirty little secret of gaming is how much time you spend not having fun. You may be frustrated; you may be confused or disoriented; you may be stuck." (p. 25).

Consequently, even at play, today's kids function at intense levels. To resolve game issues, they are required to undertake engineering and strategic missions that many adults would not tackle for money.

Is Pop Culture Stimulating? Yes!

Does Pop Culture Deliver Stupidity?

Hardly!

Today's Pop Culture might offer a bit of comic relief and an occasional breath of fresh air to today's students; but those same students have little time to wallow in sloth. The current is too fast for that. Kids today can barely stay afloat.

If we really want to discuss the problem for students in today’s pop culture –that is it!

Kids today can barely stay afloat.

The current is too fast!

Based on the book:

Johnson, Steven. (2005). Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Penguin Group.

M. T Anderson's Feed, A Christmas Carol & Me

Image from Booksamillion.

For Spring Break, Titus and his buddies take a trip, meet some girls, and get into a bit of trouble.

There’s nothing new about the storyline; but M. T. Anderson’s Feed is much more than the typical teen tale. It is an excursion into the future—and oddly, also deep into the present.

One might ask: “How can a book be both?” The response is: “Through excellent writing.”

In one way, Feed is a sci-fi/fantasy book that paints a picture of life sometime in the future. Yet, because of its outstanding craftsmanship and character development, Feed is also a candid reflection of the human spirit [an essence that is timeless] and a revelation of life as it already has become.

For instance: The boys who travel to the moon in Feed are just regular teen boys. They horse around and do silly things. At times, all of the kids are insensitive and callous; and that is certainly not something new. When some of them show up at a party, in their ripped and shredded Riot clothes, one might be surprised; but the tendency to wear shredded Riot clothes is actually no different than today’s wearing of expensive, destroyed Abercrombie or other designer jeans.

Because of ecological problems, many of the characters in Feed have untreatable skin lesions. Yet, there seems to be little concern about the lesions. Everyone has them. In fact, they have actually become the fashion rage. Is this any different than our own complacency about rampant anorexia, masked as an attempt to be model-like thin?

Some of the girls in Feed have actually cut themselves purposely and accentuated their lesions. On the surface, this seems especially foreign and appalling; yet, most women today have similarly “cut” into themselves to accommodate pierced earrings. Some kids today pierce themselves more severely than that; and in some cultures, human scarification and piercings have persisted since antiquity.

At first glance, the book is shocking; but on closer inspection, it is not.

Feed seems to take place after the citizens of Earth have essentially destroyed her. In a technological sense, most of the kids have a plethora of sophisticated toys. In fact, the kids themselves are basically technological toys. Almost all of them have an embedded, computerized “feed.” Not unlike today, those with more financial resources have feeds equipped with more bells and whistles.

In order to keep the feeds up and running, the physicians are essentially computer technicians. Again, those with more resources are able to afford better technical support; and those without adequate resources are simply out of luck. Unfortunately, Violet, the girl that Titus meets on the moon, falls into the latter category.

The book’s ultimate tragedy is that Violet is allowed to desist—simply because she cannot pay for technical support. Again, one might tend to be stunned by a society that could allow this to happen; but after consideration, one might decide that this scenario also hints of the familiar.

Recently, I mortgaged my soul and bought what appeared would be my dream computer system. Unfortunately, the dream didn’t last long. I seem to have bought a lemon—and soon discovered that none of my problems are covered—without my continuously paying for live support, to adjust this or that. Just last week, I had to totally scrub my computer and start over. Like most people, I am much too busy to stop and deal with computer problems. Yet, in scrubbing my computer, I lost more than time—I lost family photos, digital art, flash documents, animations, business transactions, music, tomes of research, my own writing, and much of who I actually am.

Admittedly, I don’t have a “feed”—my computer is not embedded inside my body. I don’t even wear it as a backpack [like Violet’s father had to do]. Still, it is very much a part of me. When my computer system is "down," I am cast into panic. When my computer dies, part of me dies, as well. Bottom line: I rely upon my computer—a machine is a fundamental part of the way that I function in life.

That, in itself, is a little scary.

Even more frightening, however, is the tendency to read Feed naively -- smug that its horrors lie in some distant future -- assured that the unsettling images are nothing more than an “undigested bit of beef” or at worst, a “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.”

Yet, in many ways, these horrors are already our “Present.”

After reading Feed, the truly most alarming concern is this: What then is our “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?”