Category Archives: literacy

“… Cut off by the devil white man from all true knowledge”: On Making Sense of Malcolm One Page At a Time

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I’m currently in the midst of a revamped unit with my 11th graders involving concurrently analyzing The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Broken Spears. We’ll be reading additional texts and watching films related to Thoreau, Subcomandante Marcos, Gandhi, the South Central Farmers, and whatever else we can cram into the next few weeks before the school year ends. I thought I’d share a resource I used in setting up this unit as well as a strategy I attempted in conjunction with this resource.
I guess now is as good a time as any to make this confession: I like to rasterbate. Uploading images to the online rasterbator, a PDF of the image stretched to the size of your preference is created. It’s an instant poster maker and the effect it has is a useful (and cheap) resource for decorating a classroom. That said, I decided to experiment with simple game play using a rasterbated image. As students filed into my class at the beginning of the quarter, I handed each of them two random sheets of paper, announcing that they all held pieces of a puzzle and needed to (preferably quickly) assemble the puzzle on a wall.

Period 2 struggles to put the puzzle together.

Period 2 struggles to put the puzzle together.

Period 3 doesnt do much better...

Period 3 doesn't do much better...

The simple experiment yielded a couple of useful insights: my kids took way longer assembling the puzzle than I thought they would. The dynamics of collaboration that I was hoping for not only sprang to life but helped garner additional buy-in from some of the quieter students in the class. Further, the sense of ownership of the picture by the students was powerful. We were able to analyze numerous components of the iconic photograph of Malcolm X (once it was revealed) as the students were looking at the picture from a well-developed perspective. (On a side note it is interesting that both classes that assembled the picture immediately guessed that it would be a picture of Obama once finished…) Though the students didn’t read a lengthy introduction or fill out an initial KWL chart about Malcolm, they were able to articulate their prior knowledge as well as any questions or thoughts that arose during the activity. By the time I handed each student her or his own copy of the book to mark up and write their names in, the students were prepared to engage in dialogue with the leader they spent 30 minutes assembling; even if I thought it was 15 minutes too long, the time still felt well spent.

A completed puzzle [sheets taped sideways are not the result of improper teaching!]

What that Annoying Pop Song That’s Always On The Radio Says About Learning

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I’m fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in my car. It’s Los Angeles, after all, and working and going to school on opposite sides of town lead toward frequently lengthy commutes. Left alone in a silent room long enough and I’ll go crazy – as I am now, sitting in the jury selection room of a Los Angeles courthouse sans headphones. In any case, a lot of my time is spent in the car either arguing to NPR & talk radio or shuffling through CDs (remember those?) and listening discriminately. A week and a half ago, as I was listening to my umpteenth live Otis Redding album for the umpteenth time I felt a profound sense of understanding of the nature of catharsis and learning within song structure. I wasn’t able to put this into words but had a clear understanding of how something as short-lived as “Try A Little Tenderness” inculcates theories of learning within Redding’s performance (James Paul Gee would call this “tacit knowledge”).

That being said, in a generally unscientific way, I’ve been thinking about what “liking” a song or certain style of music tells us about learning. I’ve been trying to put this into words and I think contextualizing it case-by-case may be the easiest way for me to do this over time. Today I’ll jump in with a look at what Top 40 hits mean to my teaching practice.

 

The Repeat Offender

I’m fascinated with pop culture. I revel in it. I’ve talked about this before. What I like about something like a pop song is that, though it may be “catchy,” it’s not necessarily something that you “like” right away. It doesn’t take a genius to correlate repetition with – if not pleasure – at least acceptance. I’ll provide a schmaltzy example: A few months ago, you couldn’t sit through an hour of top 40 radio without hearing Florida’s “Low.” It was… okay. Of course repeated exposure made it infectiously anthemic. The song (in the words of Gladwell), “tipped:” It was used in a sequence of Tropic Thunder, was used as part of a controversial dance routine, and – within my house – became the short-lived theme song for our resident basset hound.

So what? In terms of learning, we can take a lot away from “Low,” or “Paper Planes,” or “Blame It.” I didn’t “like” these songs because someone told me about them. I didn’t like them because I was regularly reading about how they were made, their history, or their relevance in modern day society (like a frivolous blog post). Instead, I liked these kinds of disposable songs because I experienced them first hand. I interacted regularly with them. I became immersed in contextual uses of these songs next to station IDs, ringtones, film montages, karaoke performances, and personal singing in the shower. We can’t divorce learning from doing from experiencing in this sense. I’m not going to like math by learning about it abstractly; I am going to like that T.I. single* if I’m involved with it. I may make comments about it online, discuss it with friends, and generally use it in my everyday practice. Why aren’t we doing these same things in our classes? Why aren’t English standards being situated within the current economic crisis? Why aren’t we broadly engaging our students in curricula that immerse them in their own experiences? I realize many teachers are indeed doing this and may balk at such questions. However, a look at the landscape of professional development and the continuously bemoaned world of standardization and assessment don’t look toward a different approach at both schooling and education.

I’d also caution people to look toward this analysis as a draconian endorsement of repetition. I do think that revisiting concepts and ideas is a necessary piece of the learning process. However, the analogy of liking a song after hearing it the 37th time on the radio to improving better at English after the 37th essay isn’t the strongest to make. Monitored, situated and repeated practice will get us where we want to go. I liked “Low” more once I contextualized it within a nightclub setting. And heard it in a movie. And talked about it being a “guilty” pleasure with friends. And unbashfully “performed” it for a disinterested hound.

As a final thought, I’d throw out that things as silly and frivolous as pop music and pop culture are necessary additions to our classrooms. Look what is on the student folders as they shuffle in. The patches on their backpacks. The distorted tones of interrupting cell phones. The music played during pep rallies. This is the world that we, as a community, exist within. It is the world that is likely of more import to a student than what may be assessed within your classroom. However, this doesn’t need to be a separate world. Immersing popular culture within my classroom is more than trying to appear cool or hip to my students (they see through that charade immediately!). Instead, illustrating how these “outside” aspects of society not only connect to my curriculum but are actually at the heart of what I teach help students experience (more so than “understand”) the way that English is a part of what will help them become agents of change. The Chris Brown and Rihanna media storm, for instance, became a natural turning point of discussion and understanding when my class read Othello and discussed domestic violence. I realize this may state the obvious, but it needs to be stressed: there is no textbook or curricular guideline that will teach you what aspects of contemporary culture to use in the classroom. We need to engage and understand our society just as our students. We need to learn from them. As a community, we need to build on shared experiences within class.

 

* As an aside, I’ve been thinking about how T.I. is exemplary of the current problem with hip-hop these days: it’s forgettable. There are a handful of songs by T.I. that I like but I can’t remember a single lyric by him. The draw for all of these songs are the hooks – sung by Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, John Legend, etc. The main attraction – as he’s supposed to be seen – is filler for each hook-laden hit. On the other hand, my fascination for T.I.’s Road to Redemption will require further elaboration at some later point. 

Border Crossing: Normative Discourse (Art Sand Mines)

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I want to contrast experiences in my classroom and in one of my graduate seminars.

At this point, I can reasonably predict what will transpire in my 11th grade classroom when introducing students to the writing process. Admittedly, the way I teach writing has changed dramatically over the years – the old me would probably scream in horror at what looks rather prescriptive at the onset (there’s a pragmatic purpose behind the way I teach reading which will need to be saved for another post). The point is that, generally, my 11th grade students are both frustrated and initially overwhelmed with what I expect their essays to looks like. Yes, each body paragraph really does need that many quotes. Yes, you really do need that many sentences of analysis. Yes, you really will be writing an essay each week. Once students get used to these (usually) higher expectations within the class, we settle into a rhythm and students are encouraged to incorporate more of their own voice. However, peering at the expectations of a Standard English writing regime is daunting for students initially. I explain that they are preparing to read, write, and dialogue critically in Standard English, the language that they will need to use in order to cause change in the future. Confronted with the hegemonic realm of “the other” is – I’d say at least partially – part of the distress of writing; it’s literally a kind of culture shock.

Meanwhile, in one of my graduate seminars today, another respected colleague presented on rap music. A few hands went up when she asked who considers themselves “rap aficionados.” I’ll spare you the demographic analysis of who raised their hands (psst: their was a correlation with ethnicity!). In any case, after showing a certain rap video for discussion, it was worth noting how the class responded. Literally students were stalled to speak due to the overwhelming nature of the video: its images, the lyrics, the sound – it was all too much. In general the conversation about rap at times felt like a few of us pointing out how, yes, lyrics like these really are a kind of “transformative resistance.” No, Ice Cube isn’t just offering pessimism in his video. Like my students, the colleagues in the seminar that were not exposed to rap before got a nice long, uncomfortable mad-dogging from the other, today. And while my students are expected to at least be able to code switch into the language of power, the other future academicians are likely to leave Jay Z, Ice Cube, The Coup, and rap music at large as an interesting exercise. A tasty aperitif of the other, digested and forgotten. 

When Critical Goes Too Far: Let’s Discuss

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This started as what was going to be an email to a colleague. However, I’m thinking that posing this as a discussion maybe a more fruitful dialogic exercise.

My situation is as follows: I have a class of upstanding and exceedingly bright individuals. These students regularly point the way toward large-scale change but hesitate at taking the small step (humongous dive?) toward action. In any case, I recently used the song “Police State” by Dead Prez as the beginning of a writing assignment. It’s a song I’ve used in the past and one that kids generally enjoy (though hip-hop is not at all the apriori musical preference of my students). However, after the experiences and reflections of the lockdown, of critical analysis of the election, and after a lengthy review of Critical Race Theory, I think something snapped … in a good way. The kids are way engaged and on-board the Critical Theory train. They regularly use the word “proletariat” (as it’s mentioned in the song) to describe the conditions of the campus. Students discuss if racism or classism is the bigger issue at hand. A student is writing an essay talking about how Obama is going to be a part of “the problem”.

So on the one hand, I’m thrilled – the kids are vocalizing their concerns from a clear, “Critical” (with a big “C”) stance. They’re bringing up their own topics for our daily discussions. They looked at this video, for instance, and were able to empathize and critique the key arguments made. One student is providing the class with additional resources, such as this video he’s asked to screen tomorrow.

And so my query for you is about this: It may seem odd, but I’m worried that my kids are a little too critical. They are heading toward being too one-sided in the dogma they endorse.

I plan to rectify this; I have had some teaching peers preaching the concepts of critical pedagogy but not quite executing them. Instead, I see their students as mindlessly unengaged in their thinking due to the totalism these “progressive” teachers impose. So, that being said, I have specific ideas on how to balance the theoretical base of my students. However (and although I will likely only hear from one or two of you), I’d like to open this post up as a collaborative space for discourse. Do you see a need to fix this situation? How would you approach it? What’s your take on the process of critical discourse in your classroom?

(As for the  picture – here are some anthropologists of the future – specifically the year 2158 – doing fieldwork and observations at the ancient site of Manual Arts High School circa 2008. Taking notes, these anthropologists were asked to stay as quiet and reserved as possible as the natives do not like being disturbed.)

“I am the disordered creator of the most obscure routes, the most secret moorings”: On Fear and Letter Writing

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You know how everyone has these insane little fears that make no sense whatsoever to anyone other than themselves? I’m not talking like a fear of spiders or a fear of clowns or anything like that. I’m talking more about idiosyncratic/ideosyncratic (yes, I invented that second word. No, I won’t define it).

In any case, one example would be this weird fear I occasionally have that my joints will freeze up and just like become paralyzed. For instance, walking from car to kitchen with a ton of groceries, my fingers could be trapped in this weird gripping apparatus of plastic bag handles (yeah, I know its bad for the environment, but this is hypothetical so bear with me). What if, after finally resting the bags on the ground, I find that my fingers are still in this gnarled position of paralysis? Forever? A rather silly, inane fear, right? Something like that.

Anyway, one of these “little fears” I’ve had lately is of the loss of the art of letter writing. I’m not talking about some sweeping account of letters as only a group like the New Yorker would predict. Instead, I’m imagining that the practice will just slowly fade out of favor. With Blackberries (which I suspect get an overly bad rep from folk like me) and email and texting and hands-free cell phone use and walkie-talkie chirps (“Where you at?”) and –gasp- blogging, is it really necessary to actually write now a days? Is a response even necessary beyond a simply affirmation or confirmation of time and location?

I used to write the hell out of emails to friends. Real long and rambling and drunkenly enthusiastic in tone or overly ambitious in candor. I would feel like I was having fun writing up these diatribes. To some, these were a one way conduit of information and I was rather selfishly imposing my words on unassuming readers browsing through their inboxes. For others, these would become a part of a network of exchanges. That’s when sparks would really fly. (I’m again reminded of what I continue to bring up as “magic” in a non-David Blaine, non Western kind of way.)
Case in point, some of my favorite things to read are letters. I get a thrill out of these soliloquies set on paper. Of course, they’re not soliloquies, all letters are intended for someone. They are more like monologues when read unilaterally. However, aside from when they are bound into big collections of one author’s letters, all letters inevitably have a recipient who then becomes author and author becomes recipient ad nauseum. The key here is that when letters are paired with responses, they – together – become dialogue. It’s the convo that contains possibility. I think this is why I’m so thrilled about slowly consuming the Elizabeth Bishop/Robert Lowell bound book of correspondence.
(And as a major diversion, it’s worth noting the use of “consuming” here. Anyone who’s seen my bookshelf and my music shelves and film storage will attest that I’m something of a terribly overwrought consumer – though I’m partial to the notion of an archivist. In any case, let’s think about what it means to “consume.” The proper way to really partake in a book or a film or musical composition is to consume it. Kill the author in a way that will make Barthes smile and make the work one’s own, frame-by-frame, page-by-page, Measure For Measure. A rather one-sided –and delicious – dialogue if there ever was one, eh?)

So I come back to this trivial fear. Sure, I can always be a part of a dying breed that still do the letter writing thing – like a hopeless vinyl (and now, to an extent CD) fetishist. It’s scary to imagine confining oneself to 140 characters all the time, despite my fascination with Twitter and texting. I remember deliberately being interested in the form of the epistle. My handwriting never developing much beyond a gnarled scrawl  – I suspect writing both left-handed and right-handed as a child didn’t help develop this foreign thing called penmanship – I never really venture far from a keyboard when it comes to letters. However, printing letters on yellow tablet paper, on pages from library books (oops), and whatever else was lying around helped me better grasp the possibilities of the letter. I distinctly remember a brief period of typing letters on big manila envelopes sometimes adding an additional letter inside the envelope other times the envelope acting as nothing more than a glorified postcard to the bemusement of mailmen and women.

I think similar experiments will yield value and understanding in the digital age. Periods of extraneously long subject headers, toying with the CC and (shudder) BCC field also pock a blemished emailing career.

Ultimately, however, I think the value of the digital letter will be of access. Granted, it’s all too easy to discreetly forward the screed received in an inbox. However, what about open letters as policy and not as exception? The sole versus between Daye and I, I think was a worthwhile dabbling in such a project.  On the other hand, however, there is certain glee in cherishing, rereading, connecting with a letter in a wholly and completely personal way. And not simply content of a personal matter but of content in which one connects in a personal manner (hopefully this distinction doesn’t read as subtly as I fear it might).

And while there is no Mr. Henshaw to which my students today connect with, we’re regularly practicing our letter writing skills.

I’ve been feeling reinvigorated and reminded of the value in letters (both those joint-connecting phonemes and the actual literary medium). Hopefully, like paralyzed joints, this inane fear will remain just that.

[Reflecting on this, I reread the rather fun series of exchanges conducted with Daye (mentioned above). Perhaps the days of the versus project will return with a cargo cult following…]

“New Ways of Living”

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Look, I get it. Most of you aren’t comic book readers. It’s a genre still too stigmatized to be really acknowledged or embraced by most. Though I think we’ll all talk about the medium’s merits when it comes to youth literacy, I think any discussion of comics will end there. And as much as you may not be interested in them, there’s one we need to spend some time looking at. It’s a collection of manga (gasp). It’s called New Engineering.

Yuichi Yokoyama doesn’t draft narratives or tell stories in any traditional sense. Each story is a basic exploration of a specific theme or motif. Take the collection’s first story, “Book,” for instance [image above]: over the course of 18 pages, Yokoyama provides a near wordless fight that takes place in a library. No explanation of the source of conflict. No descriptions of protagonists or antagonists. Nothing but the essence of a fight. However, as the pages go by, it becomes clear that Yokoyma is establishing a clear grammar for how action is expressed. The text is difficult. Sure, there are only sound effects as far as actual words (these being translated at the bottom of the page beautifully: “BIRA BIRA BIRA sound of paper falling” or “DOSU DOSU sound of swords going into tatami mat”), but the reading of the story took me far longer than other comic books, graphic novels, etc. Seriously, this book of almost no text has a huge importance on my understanding of literacy. A great analysis of the fighting sequences in the collection can be found here.

More thrilling are the four Engineering stories included in the collection. Again a simple premise: people building stuff. However each page shows an entire world or ecology being constructed. First a machine rolling down extreme rock shards, or flooding an area, or building a huge pile of blocks. Next, individuals insert trees or roll out a huge tarmac of earth, or paint the details of a river, or who knows what. Being involved understanding the logic within each Engineering endeavor is thrilling. Where are these being built? What is the purpose? I am reminded of Zoom for no particular reason.

At the end of this collection, Yokoyama provides a sparse commentary for each story. These too only add to the allure of the minimalist yet dense collection:

BOOK
I wanted to explore the appeal of the formal qualities of the book, as an obect made of layers of paper. By throwing books, the protagonist is able to make his escape from assailants, who have their swords drawn. The book overcomes the sword.

Or

ENGINEERING 4
In a barren area in the middle of noweher, spring water begins flowing, and eventually becomes a river. Only the sound of construction and water are audible in this uninhabited land.

Or

WHEEL
People riding spinning wheels are falling form a building. There is a flower garden on the roof of the building. The buildings in this area seem to be built either on moats or on water.

Notice in this last one the emphasis on “seem.” I’m thrilled by this uncertainty. Often times I’m not entirely sure what is happening in a given panel or even whole series of pages. There’s a dream-like quality that nestles in these pages.

When I wrote more about music, in the past, I was usually drawn to the kinds of artists that created genres and lyrics and compositions that inhabited their own spaces. Tom Waits never ventures far out of a world of tin cans and calliopes that is truly his own. Likewise, Robyn Hitchcock is constantly identifying the taxonomy and politics of a world of fungus and vegetables and idyllic perversion. Deerhoof dabble in a form of pop music that is all too much their own. And can someone please explain Cliff Edwards to me? Amazing. In any case, Yokoyama illustrates the everyday actions and lifestyles of a world that’s not our own. It’s an intense process that continues to reveal the intricacies of our own lives. As a comic artist, there is no specific commentary or ideology being prescribed beyond the SHURURURURU or MOKU MOKU MOKU of constructed landscapes. But then again, I can’t imagine any other comics that so mordantly succeed at making the “invisible visible.”

Excellent! Looks like there is another Yokoyama book coming out next month.

[note: the images here are cribbed from places on the unreliable world of the ‘nets. Sorry in advance for when they slowly become big red x’s.]

I’ll be showing this to my students tomorrow

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An older commercial that was just replayed during an Olympic break. In light of my recent thoughts on lowbrow literacy, class discussions about cultural reproduction, and student feelings about marketing, I think there are a lot of possibilities to take this commercial towards a place of possibilities.

Thanks Coca Cola!

Who else is thirsty?

Participating in MTV Land

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I spent part of Friday night watching MTV. Seriously. This post is not an admission of guilt (or another celebration of guilty pleasures). Actually, I wanted to take a moment of your internet-browsing time to talk about how MTV is changing the world of youth culture.

Brief Personal Background Information
There are two things about me that will relate to my connection to MTV’s culture today:
1. I watched MTV as a teenager and have occasionally perused select current shows as I have written about before. America’s Best Dance Crew is rather entertaining. I warmly recall the days of actual music videos regularly played for most of the time on the channel.
2. When it comes to social networking, I’ve only begrudgingly taken obligatory steps toward participation. Out of pedagogical duty, I created a MySpace account. Out of pedagogical experimentation, I created a twitter account. Out of a necessity to not lose anything else, I created a del.icio.us account. Out of the interest of offering occasional pictures to a rather text heavy blog (ahem), I created a flickr account. YouTube, ditto. Of these accounts, the amount of actual social networking I do is practically nil. I only respond to MySpace comments from my students and everything else is pretty much used as informational depositories.

Okay, Now That That’s Out Of The Way
Friday night, I was privy to see the latest MTV debut: FNMTV. From my non-scientific investigation, the show’s title is short for Friday Night MTV. And, unlike other shows, this one is about music. There are music videos, musical performances, and even a musician as host.

The show is another ho-hum live audience production. A bunch of bands play, a few celebrities introduce new videos and other celebrities show snippets of classic videos from yesteryear. The format’s not all that exciting.

What is exciting is the way the show engages its audience. Taking the standard format of a music show, MTV has integrated youth participation at every step of the way. A trio of commentators looks at various live polls and comments on the FNMTV site and reports trends and noteworthy suggestions being made. Do you have something important to say about that new Snoop video? Your comment just might be scrolling across the screen while the video is playing. And what about that new Ting Tings video? If you liked that dance, go ahead and record your own version and in all likelihood MTV will play that too. You like the lyrics to another song? Sing along and you can karaoke for the world.

If you aren’t prepared (or if you’re under the age of 18), you’ll probably be overwhelmed by the show. The screen is filled with the kinds of information that only a hyperactive multitasker hopped up on Red Bull could follow: live audience shots, a music video, scrolling text, and webcam shots all fill the screen simultaneously. Every faucet of the show demands not only for audience members to watch but to plug in and participate. Currently, the site for FNMTV offers four different ways for visitors to participate. I expect this number to, at the least, remain consistent, and in all likelihood increase.

And Why Should I Care?
This is a huge, huge shift in how our culture interacts with media. Unlike the lazy bums of my generation, these aren’t your average couch potatoes today. Today’s kids are looking for ways to be a part of the media they are interested in. And no, I’m not at all the only person talking about this. In particular, I point you to a rather excellent lecture by Lawrence Lessig, if you have the time to watch it. He points out the Soulja Boy phenomenon (short story being that rapper Soulja Boy created a YouTube video explaining the steps to a dance he created, millions of people watched the video and, subsequently, millions of people created their own versions of the Soulja Boy dance).

I don’t bring up this FNMTV phenomenon to nod along with a bunch of scholars that flood my RSS reader. Instead, I do this because this isn’t a trend being discussed within the educational community that I am a part of. My students are a part of this FNMTV audience. They are engaging in these practices. As educators, we are not talking about them. And what about that whole participation gap thing I’ve been terrified of? Yeah, that’s only widening.

With an insurmountably growing schedule, I don’t feasibly see myself expanding my social networking practices. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t study my students’ usages of these skills. And it doesn’t mean that you can’t either.

Lowbrow Literacy

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I’ve been struggling for some time, trying to come up with a more elegant way of presenting this argument. I don’t think I’ll be finding one anytime soon. In any case the revelations here are neither of the shocking nor groundbreaking variety so I’ll be taking a steadfast out-out-damned-spot, full-steam-ahead, approach:

Since really focusing on my professional practice, I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of my time thinking about literacy (access to, and change in, etc, etc). This post serves as a critical inspection of some of the literacy skills I’ve cultivated of late.

Specifically, I wanted to talk about (flaunt?) the lowbrow literacy skills I’ve been mastering.

A Disclaimer
Before really launching into a real description of what I mean, I need to address the concerns with the naming problem here. I am again at a loss as to the original text I encountered that explained the history between “lowbrow” and “highbrow.” However, a quick google confirms my understanding of the terms coming out of phrenology. As such, the history of “lowbrow” and those individuals with said lower brows is one of racial undertones. As the word is part of our common vernacular today emphasizes the miscegenated journey of the lowbrow/highbrow binary.

What is Lowbrow Literacy?
As much as I enjoy pretentious literature, art gallery soirees, and excursions to the the-a-tre (to be spoken in a thick, British accent – three syllables oh-so-necessary), I pride myself on the breadth of bottom-of-the-barrel cultural knowledge. Forget The Simpsons and forget secretly smart commentary from the likes of the Daily Show – that stuff’s for the birds. I’m referring to My Super Sweet 16, Justin Timblake, and American Idol. You know, rubbish. As much as I enjoy top-tier art, I frequently revel in the kinds drivel that make grandparents call the TV the “idiot box.” Comic Books. Entertainment Weekly. The Soup. Bad ‘80s Sex Comedies. Florida. VH1’s Top 50 Insufferably Unnecessary Lists of All Time. Like I said, not only do I subject myself to this stuff, but I love it. I study it, I read about it online, I stay awake thinking about it.

There was a time when I was a qualified music snob: I could identify what borough of New York an indie band hailed from, even though I had yet to actually visit the city. Similarly, I would casually ask about someone’s musical taste at a college party. After hearing a few artists, I could/would immediately judge and (more importantly) hold disdain for this person based solely on their taste. I am not proud of this cheap parlor trick (I kind of think of it now like tarot reading – but that’s another story for another day) – but it shows the kind of interwoven connections I’m partially trying to illustrate. On the other hand it also shows a major shortcoming of mine: I wasn’t willing to embrace the lowbrow at the time – I was afraid to publicize my adoration for Prince, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, radio friendly pop-punk, and the commercially besmirched failures of Robin Williams’ ‘90s catalog (see Toys & Jack as prime examples). To the shock of many close friends, I’ve come to publicly embrace and celebrate the aforementioned artists.

As such, the same way I’m able to traverse a conversation about Frankfurt School philosophical implications in classroom pedagogy, I’m similarly able to question Chef Gordon Ramsey’s attitude and Paula Abdul’s commenting faux pas and the general ripples such behaviors will cast on the web of network television. This too is a literacy; it’s just not one that’s especially appreciated or valued by the people that bother to write about or place value on things like literacy (and yes, I’m fully aware that I’m included in the elitist population).

Reality Television: A Case Study in L.L.
Maybe it’s best to briefly look at one case study of lowbrow literacy in action, a personal favorite of mine: reality television. I’m a sucker for it. From the Bravo channel’s ([only] slightly) more sophisticated stew of the now to the pure crockery of current iterations of the Real World to the rather bizarre incarnations in the outer regions of cable television (really, did anyone else see the elimination show for motivational speakers??), I’ve waded through it all. Not only am I wading through it, but I am confident that other reality TV junkies like myself are able to enjoy these shows even more because we are more acclimated to the reality TV grammar that has been prescribed for these shows. It’s worth looking at the first season of the Real World (and yes, I was hooked from day one – confused that Beavis and Butthead had been ousted from its 4 p.m. time slot) – the show didn’t know what it was doing. The drama was missing. A single heated argument about race is the only real highlight most viewers can recall. Similarly, look at the casts of these early seasons – many “characters” are simply not in a bunch of episodes – it was too real. Take the doctor in the San Francisco season – she was busy being a doctor and didn’t have time for this MTV crap. On the same season we also get our quintessential reality TV rabble-rouser: Puck – the kind of house villain that nearly every show has attempted to replicate (on an interesting side note, I think the Shakespearean connection in Puck’s name was both an intentional inclusion for the show and something that was lost on most viewers).

You’ll see similar growth in shows like Survivor and Big Brother (thought he fact that the house in Big Brother was constantly being monitored online detracted from the general storyline’s pacing). Ultimately, through understanding this television grammer, we’ve gotten some elegant by products. A personal favorite, for example, would be the Joe Schmo show. A meta-reality show in which everything is staged by professional actors except for one of the game’s contestants. A brilliant and underappreciated work, the Joe Schmo Show reads (yes, “reads”) like a Reality Television 101 course and is required viewing (reading) for anyone looking to appreciate the genre/medium.

What’s the Point?
And while I realize much of this description comes as jest and lighthearted endorsement of musical rubbish and televised pap, I do believe there are real implications in analyzing this kind of literacy. For one, this is precisely the kind of literacy skill that is typically mined in the culturally relevant curriculum wars being waged in LAUSD in the name of “equity.” I’ve stated before that I don’t think our school system’s been getting this right and that the approach is all wrong. However, if we’re not able to read and participate in the literacy practices that our students are fluent in, it seems unlikely that they’ll be willing to compromise in valuing an esoteric literacy practice like engaging with a 5 paragraph essay. Similarly, there’s real value in recognizing the conventions of lowbrow sub-genres: looking back on the middle portion of this rant reminds me about how I’ll be able to play with reality TV grammatical pacing in structuring the tension and dynamics of the Black Cloud game.

At the same time, folks like Henry Jenkins place a tremendous amount of value on things like “mash ups” and “participatory media.” Daye and I had a brief conversation about her distaste for all things mash-up. I think I’ll tip that iceberg at a later date.