Cultural Studies and Education

Cultural Studies and Education

Cultural studies have been classified as a sister discipline of media studies. It manifested in the school system through the want for radical changes, i.e., cultural studies represent radicality. It is evident through the several changes it has brought to the area of media studies. Today, several students take media studies because it contains proper media knowledge. According to the article, cultural studies have changed how media studies used to be by shaping them to fit a progressive art and student-centered curriculum (Kellner & Share, 2005). Its manifestation was to bring the art of group work and do away with a docile community. Previously, media studies concentrated on child activism instead of culture, history, and objects. The introduction of this discipline has been productive in yielding power relationships. It is also essential in creating healthy multiculturalism of diversity and an intense democracy.

 Cultural Studies as a Form of Resistance for Youths 

Cultural studies have played a big role in embodying forms of resistance in youths. Individuals should note that youths fall under the minority groups and require systems that protect them from discrimination. Cultural studies have introduced several programs in the non-formal education sector, which grant the excluded and disadvantaged youths to participate in activities that express culture, motivating and re-engaging them in education. The cultural offer has a way of reaching disadvantaged youths in ways that formal education cannot. An example is given in the article by mentioning that the London-based organization called Community Music has engaged the ethnically excluded minority communities by engaging them in making culturally specific music rather than an abstract curriculum (Sefton-Green, 2011). Cultural studies have helped youths from minority groups develop resistance by introducing them to concepts such as cultural music and a clear understanding of media, hence helping them re-engage in productive activities. The resistance has helped reduce the crime rates and other unhealthy practices such as sexual abuse among minority youths. 

Cultural studies have challenged the ideology of hegemonic representation in education. It traverses both informal and formal education and therefore has disputed the dominance of formal education in society. Cultural studies represent both the minority and majority groups in a society because it disputes the notion that only the dominant groups do the representation. In classrooms, the concept has introduced a student-centered approach where students are allowed to question their teachers on readings that violate their culture, knowledge, and experiences. The ideology of hegemonic representation in education never allowed students to question anything violating their culture or knowledge level due to a lack of media literacy representation. The students lacked exposure to media literacy and therefore did not know whether the systems were oppressing the minority. However, cultural studies have challenged it by introducing critical media literacy constructed using creative languages that enable students to explore different ideas such as representation of race, gender, and class. It helps in coining these aspects in ways that learners understand better than the hegemonic representation in education. 

Media literacy is a very important concept in cultural studies. Individuals need proper knowledge of how the media helps them construct and understand the world. Therefore, as stated by Stuart in his lectures on representation and media, media literacy and cultural literacy offer a proper meaning to reality and discourse (ChallengingMedia, 2006). In this case, the reality is cultural studies, while discourse is media literacy, indicating that individuals cannot learn cultural studies without involving media literacy. Media literacy helps individuals understand the social inequities that exist within a society, hence helping reduce the rates of inequalities by producing a healthy multicultural and democratic society. The quote ‘minority’ has been repetitively used in the article written by Kellner and Share (2005) to represent a group of people that people in authority dominates. In this case, the ‘minority’ has been used to describe the youth from low socio-economic statuses that cultural studies tend to help through informal education. It is one of the quotes that directly relates to the advantages of cultural studies in terms of social inclusion. 

References

ChallengingMedia. (2006, October 4). Representation & the media: featuring Stuart Hall [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTzMsPqssOY 

Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2005). Toward critical media literacy: Core concepts, debates, organizations, and policy. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26(3), 369-386. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596300500200169 

Sefton-Green, J. (2011). Cultural studies and education. Cultural Studies, 25(1), 55-70. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2011.534581