"Pop, Pop, Pop Muzik:" Berlin and Pop-Culture in the Writing Classroom

In my Basic Writing class at the community college, I began teaching with Youtube and Stephen King; then, after a couple of weeks - and much discussion about structure and word choice - I snuck in some Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and even a little Walt Whitman. I was blown away by the student response to these poets. They not only got it, but were inspired toward one of the best class discussions we'd had to that point.

In his presentation on James A. Berlin, Klayton quoted Berlin: "Our consciousness is in large part a product of our material consciousness. But our material conditions are also in part the products of our consciousness"

As a teacher of Basic Writing, this means we must start where our students are - at the place where their "material consciousness" has brought them to. It is always easier to give someone directions when we know the departure point, and so many of our students are starting in the world of pop-culture: MTV, Youtube, MySpace, Facebook, blogs, I-Phones: all creators of consciousness.

As believers in communication and the twin fields of rhetoric and composition - instead of fighting it we should embrace these things that seem to have the whole world writing.