Kid Culture in Schools?

Kid culture is a powerful and unstoppable force in society, yet I am continually surprised by the ways schools try to “run against the wind” by ignoring and resisting the trends. White and Walker suggest that “kid culture is often subject to condemnation, censorship, and regulation. Kid culture has always been questioned regarding its legitimacy and impact on youth and society…What one finds in schools is a negative reaction to kid culture in whatever form (rap, Pokemon, video games) through stereotypes, banning, and demeaning acts and comments” (77). As I begin student teaching, I find myself wondering why administrations fail to realize that this approach is so ineffectual.

Many teachers find themselves looking out at a sea of disengaged, uninterested students as they push the same old curriculum year after year. Perhaps incorporating some facets of kid culture (even just one or two will do at first) may engage some of these students with the material, helping them to understand the real-world relevance of what they learn in class. Many scholarly articles suggest that one of the reasons that many students do not achieve in school is that they fail to see the connection between their real-world, out-of-school activities and what they learn in the classroom. If there is no connection there, then why should students care? More importantly, how are we preparing students for life after k-12 if we aren’t equipping them with the skills to analyze the world around them?

I am not suggesting that we trash the curriculum staples that have driven our classrooms for decades. In English, for example, the classics and the Canon definitely have their place. They need to be read by students, not only because they represent masterpieces of their times but also because cultural literacy demands that citizens understand the pop-culture references that often originate in literature. Take Shakespeare, for example. Students need to know the basics of Shakespeare in order to participate in our culture, since so many cultural references revolve around his plays.

So maybe we keep the staples, but we add new ways for students to access them through kid culture. We pair the classic text Dracula with the kid culture phenomenon Twilight. We incorporate Harry Potter into British literature or folk tale classes. We use The Simpsons or Shrek to teach satire as a genre. We use Liberty’s Kids (which actually is a pretty entertaining show) to supplement a US History class or colonial texts. We bring “new media” into the classroom. We incorporate play-like behavior into our lesson plans. It doesn’t need to be fancy. It doesn’t need to add to our already-overstuffed workload as teachers. It benefits our students, and it can be implemented easily.

The whole “student engagement” thing is key here. Some students have been able to skate through the system without really interacting with a rigorous curriculum. It is sad, but that’s a fact. So we should not be surprised when some students shut down when they are assigned to read Shakespeare. We need to build a sort of ladder which allows students to feel comfortable accessing rigorous academic challenges such as Shakespeare. Incorporating kid culture and play into the classroom allows us to build those connections.

One of the biggest benefits of this approach is that it may get some students involved in their own education who haven’t been in the past. The vast majority of us have great memories of our childhoods—they give us those “warm and fuzzy” feelings, and many people spend a lot of time and money chasing the experiences of their past. It may seem a little “gimmicky,” but incorporating those classic toys into learning at school will definitely get students excited. Think LEGOs in a geometry class, for example. In the English classroom, high school students flip out with excitement when teachers read a children’s book to them aloud. Students are expected to “grow up” too quickly, in my opinion, and we often forget that high school students are still kids who enjoy play-like activities. Keeping this in mind will help us get students excited to come to class and engaged in the material. Schools need to embrace kid culture and play in the classroom, because fighting against this inevitability has failed.