Family Guy and Grand Theft Auto in argumentative rhetoric

New media plays a transformative role in the development and communication of ideas. Just as school children learn to honor the cultural and political significance of the Gutenberg printing press, educators must also learn to respect the cultural, political, and social dimensions of the Internet and other popular culture media. The Internet is the Gutenberg press of the post-modern era. With new media, information is democratized and disseminated without regards to geography or time. Multiple forms of media convey cultural memes. The Internet permits the expression of diverse ideas, wrapped up in a multifaceted array of creative forms. No longer restricted to the written word, great thinkers can avail themselves of sound, video, and still images. The Internet can foster and promote intellectual development in ways hiding behind traditional modes of literature cannot. Traditional modes of information dissemination are culturally and socially biased: there is an emphasis on male perspectives as well as European ones. The tendency towards academic elitism that underwrites a preference for Tolstoy over John Stewart is distasteful, and only serves to exacerbate divisions based on class and ethnicity. Educators must become aware of the pedagogical power of new media and popular culture in stimulating intellectual development.

The problem is that educators are teaching by rote and according to pre-established patterns and not connecting with students. Educators are brainwashed into believing that it is still acceptable to ram European high culture down the throats of students. Current curricula and pedagogical systems ignore the changing demographics of the student body as well as the changes in social norms, economic realities, and political implications of globalization. Johnson does not even focus on the Internet and finds merit in traditional television as a means of stimulating critical thought and cognitive development; the author detects a "notable change in form" in television plot structures and production (1).

The solution is to reconnect with students by incorporating new media and alternative forms of expression into the classroom. Traditional forms of media including television are not outmoded entirely, and still do have value. However, that value is limited within the general scope of what genuine intellectual development means. Although instructors are incorporating more multiculturalism into discussions of "high culture," the emphasis remains on Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Hemingway. Teaching Shakespeare and other European literary greats to high school kids is like giving a bottle of Rothschild to a man who drinks Colt 45. High school kids cannot relate to Shakespeare for many reasons, not least of which that they do not yet have the life experiences with which to appreciate the universal themes embedded in the plays' plots. Goldwasser points out the inherent value of new media in encouraging students to write, communicate, and think about the global issues impacting their lives. "Teenagers today read and write for fun; it's part of their social lives. We need to start celebrating this unprecedented surge, incorporating it as an educational tool instead of meeting it with punishing pop quizzes and suspicion," (Goldwasser). Even television has a potential, if limited, role in education. For Stevens, "the medium seems neither like a brain-liquefying poison nor a salutary tonic." Television should be taught as a method of increasing media literacy, which in this day and age is more important than English literature. Students who can memorize Hamlet's soliloquy but who cannot discern gender or racial implications in advertising are not becoming valuable world citizens.

To rebut this idea, traditionalists will say that it is too risky to incorporate new media into the classroom. Actually the opposite is true. As Goldwasser points out, "if we worked with, rather than against, the way this generation voluntarily takes in information -- we might not be able to pick up the phone and expose tragic pockets of ignorance." There are more reasons to re-think the over-emphasis on traditional literature in the classroom. For example, Shakespeare is an emblem of European hegemony. Incorporating a few passages from the Bhagavad-Gita into the classroom is not going to undo the impact that Western hegemony has on the minds and worldviews of students. Over-emphasizing written forms of cultural expression, and teaching literature as the benchmark of intellectualism demeans the unwritten realities that have shaped social and political realities: the nearly universal oppression of women, for example. As Graff points out, "students' intellectual abilities that go overlooked by schools because they come in unlikely packages. There must be many buried or hidden forms of intellectualism that do not get channeled into academic work but might if schools were more alert about tapping into them." The way to tap into those buried and hidden forms of intellectualism is by teaching students how to think instead of what to think.