Journal #7: Utilizing Culture to Make Literature Relevant

In reading Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom, I found the ways that they chose to welcome diversity and culture into the classroom to be particularly interesting. Primarily, I found the push for use of pop-culture to be both expected and a strange mixture of exciting and disheartening. Drawing parallels between Hip-Hop and classical poetry isn’t a new concept, necessarily, but while I’m not against it I feel a little sad that students just don’t have natural interest in classic literature. It’s likely due to the fact that, as the handout said, the time periods from which they came are dismissible by modern standards. They just don’t see the modern applications without the pop-culture nudges.

I always have found that, to me, the older literature is more exciting to read. It’s a gateway to the struggles and concerns of the past, and it’s culturally different from what I’m used to in modern times. While the struggles are similar, the values are slightly shifted in one direction or another. This causes readers to think about what social constraints dictated people of the past. That all being said, social constraints affect modern people just as much, which leaves much more room for discussion because the modern issues are going on as we speak. It’s reasonable to assume that students aren’t going to have the same passion for the past as I do, and I have to mold my curriculum around my students and not my own likes.

The important thing to take away is that discussing modern issues is imperative if we seek to enact change. Many of the issues of the past have either been resolved, or have changed in some way that make them less relevant to the modern references. Utilizing modern references as a lens to see older texts can frame them in ways that make them relevant to modern issues. Ultimately, it isn’t about simply enjoying the books, but having an interaction with them that is valuable to in some way. If pop culture is required for students to have a meaningful connection with the past, then that’s what must be done.