According to William Beaman, a contributor to the web-based Urban Dictionary, “pop culture simply denotes a widely accepted group of practices of customs”. This definition is rather broad, but it still captures the very idea of popular culture, which is in his words, “widely accepted”. Popular culture is everything that is “hip” and “trending”. It is the internet, top-grossing movies, best-selling books, chart-topping songs, and much more. Pop culture shapes the very society we live in, and of all groups, it sways the youth the most. Popular culture profoundly influences this generation, and it is the educator’s responsibility to nurture students that could still become productive despite being under the said influence. The root of popular …show more content…
In the event this happens, “it becomes our responsibility, then, as educators, to prepare our students/citizens, to learn how to use, consume, and to have personal power over the media” (Reynolds, 2012). If we cannot stop them from viewing popular culture, then we should at least teach them to analyze what they view. We should not let them be just idle receivers, blind consumers that absorb and believe everything they see on media. We need to teach them how to think, how to infer, how to draw meaningful conclusions out of the things that they are constantly exposed to. We should make them see how popular culture reflects society, the world and their own identities. And when they finally understand this, we must then teach them how to create their own trends. We should teach them how to hand pick which aspects of popular culture are beneficial to society and which are not. We should help them change whatever it is that they find the need to change. Popular culture is arbitrary. Who knows, maybe the next explosive trend would be sparked by one of our students. In the society that we live in, popular culture reigns over nearly everything. It is a force potent enough to be a weapon that could incite change and it is virtually impossible to block its influence. But when it starts to eat into our students’ minds we, as educators, should not be idle. We should use it to nurture creative minds capable of giving birth to fresh, new ideas. Popular culture truly is an extremely powerful force, and educators should master how to skillfully utilize