Popular Culture and Teaching
One of the articles for our class, Teaching English in the World: Playing with Critical Theory in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series by David Wallace and Tison Pugh talks about teaching Harry Potter in the classroom. Wallace and Pugh argue that using popular culture literature, “can move students from reading as fans to reading as critics” (97) which would teach students to look at all texts critically. Using popular culture or familiar literature in the classroom makes the lessons more exiting for the students, because they are studying a subject they enjoy. Some scholars may argue that popular culture literature does not to the classroom just as classic novels do. The argument to that is that novels as Pride and Prejudice, To Kill a Mockingbird, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Jane Eyre were all a part of popular culture literature that we have shifted into the academic world. The Harry Potter series may be considered part of classic literature in twenty years. Changing required texts in classrooms for the benefit of the students is what Wallace and Pugh support in the article.
Wallace and Pugh continue that through the Harry Potter series Rowling discusses class, race, gender, and sexuality. Using Harry Potter to discuss these topics to students can, “help students move to deeper understanding of how wealth and class operate in the Potter books as well as in society” (98), as well as deepen their education. For Race, Wallace and Pugh challenge teachers by “helping students understand the overwhelming whiteness of these books by asking them why all of the main characters are white,” (99) asking the hard questions will only benefit students. If we benefit students by using popular culture then why is there such a taboo with using it in classrooms. Beyond the issues with religion, witchcraft, and fantasy that would a confit in teaching Harry Potter there is mutual agreement that Rowling writes positive traits that students can benefit from by reading Harry Potter.
Finally, Wallace and Pugh, encourage teachers to “embrace the Potter phenomenon as an opportunity to teach students techniques of close reading and concepts from critical theory” (97). From personal experience, when teachers used texts that I enjoyed or was familiar with, I was willing to learn from those texts more than texts I was no familiar with. As a student, I have embraced the idea of learning from new texts, but I also love it when I can become an expert in certain texts to strengthen my knowledge in that text. Classics that we teach today become texts that we teach, because of their influence and popularity. As scholars, we need to welcome new texts and change so our subjects are updated and interesting. It is important to teach classical texts, but we need to make sure our students are understanding the topics in the text as they are being taught for their education to positively benefit them.
As per usual, I’ll separate my comments by paragraph so it’s easier to go through. c:
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Paragraph One
I think you’ll want the article name in quotation marks – if you had it in italics before pasting the text in here the italics may have been changed to the standard font form, but italics are the right style for an article title regardless (info on writing titles in MLA format is here: https://www.ivcc.edu/stylebooks/stylebook4.aspx?id=14718). As a note, this sentence doesn’t quite make sense to me: ” Some scholars may argue that popular culture literature does not to the classroom just as classic novels do.” I /think/ you’re saying that literature related to popular culture does not translate well to the classroom; it just needs a verb in there between ‘not’ and ‘to.’ Again, this could be just from pasting your journal into iblog, but if the names of the books aren’t in italics, they should be.
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Paragraph Two
You don’t need to say “students” before the quote, as the quote has the word students right at the beginning; as it is now, the sentence is a bit redundant. You’ve got race capitalized the second time you use it, but it’s not necessary to be capitalized (it’s probably just a typo, because you have it written as “race” in the first sentence). Since you pose a question in the sentence, “If we benefit students by using popular culture then why is there such a taboo with using it in classrooms,” I think you should end it with a question mark; additionally, even if it’s a rhetorical question, I think your journal could benefit from you giving your own answer to the question. You’ve got the word “confit” in your sentence, and I think you meant to use fit, because Google’s telling me that the definition of confit is, “duck or other meat cooked slowly in its own fat,” and while this was an interesting word to learn I’m not sure what it has to do with Harry Potter in the classroom. (haha). I think you should end the paragraph with examples of some of the “positive traits” you allude to.
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Paragraph Three
I think this paragraph is a strong one because it shows your own experiences, but I think it should be worked into the journal more. The first two paragraphs just seem to be summaries of the article, and it would be useful to have more synthesis of the information throughout rather than just here at the end.
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That’s all I’ve got for now, let me know if I can help out any more!
One thing you could do for the journal is expanding on your ideas on why Harry Potter should be taught in classrooms. You do it at the very end of the article with your own experience, but I want more on why it could be taught. Another suggestion I have is to maybe discuss why Harry Potter isn’t considered an “educational text.” You give broad examples, such as the witchcraft and fantasy element. You may also want to discuss that the book starts off as a children’s book. Which may have some high school teachers leery on the whole idea of teaching this in the classroom.