Seeking Higher Ground

I must admit that the Friese’s article entitled Pop Culture in the School Library: Enhancing Literacies Traditional and New rings true for me in that engagement with print has multiple entry points. I have reluctant readers, both boys and girls, who gravitate toward popular, media saturated texts in the library, such a Lego, Bob The Builder, Tintin, Smurfs, Babar and Graphic Novels (Bone, Superman, Baby Mouse).

The author provides six reasons to include such literature in library collections. The main argument is “We are providing students tools not just for reading words and images, but for negotiating the complex world of multimodal information and texts” (Friese, p.79). Drawing upon such entry points leads to pop culture venues that include character analysis, gender influence, the cult of heroes and the complexities within the ‘culture’ itself that lend well to peer communication and exploration, especially when strategically orchestrated by a teacher-librarian where links to similar texts / themes can be revealed.

The author believes that the motivation of the learner, a sense of belonging and voice and the library’s responsiveness to personal interests will go a long way. “When we include popular culture texts in collections, they become materials for teaching critical media literacy and information literacy skills” (Friese, p.80). Stephen Krashen’s term ‘light reading’ does fuel the notion of motivating and hooking the student through comics, magazines and graphic novels (Friese, p. 71). The author of this article seeks ‘cohesion between traditional and digital age skills’ and as I understand it; by linking to what students already know, we are in fact bridging ‘funds of knowledge’ noted by (Gonzalez et al, 2005) for students of disadvantaged families to parallel ‘cultural capital’ termed by Bourdieu (2007) for ‘high culture’ families (Friese, p.85). Depending on the school population, a teacher-librarian could plan out varied approaches to engaging learners.

Briefly, the six reasons to include pop culture in library collections, according to Friese:
- student identity
- making connections
- building background knowledge
- using multimodal approach embedded in commercial products
- enhancing critical media literacy by uncrating universal themes & roles
- a microcosm to building meaning

Comparing times past, present and into the future, there remains one constant, that is, whatever literacy tool collection we possess in our tool kit, the more varied the collection, the better chance we have of choosing the right tool or combination of strategies for understanding the situation before us. In this case, I do support the author’s position of including multimodal pop culture literature in library collections to motivate learners in making meaning through personal and negotiated connections. Fuel for the 21st century.


Bibliography:

Friese, E. (2008). Pop Culture in the School Library: Enhancing Literacies Traditional and New, School Libraries Worldwide, Volume 14, Number 2, July, 2008 (pp. 68-82), IASL
http://schoollibrariesworldwide-vol14no2.blogspot.com/