gearing up for next semester

I was telling Poke tonight that come a bit-over-a-fortnight from now, I'll be teaching a class themed in American popular culture. After I uttered that, we both had the same thought: I'll get to learn plenty about what American popular culture is. Sure, I can tell my students about things like blogs and Twitter and Flicker (the latter two services I have yet to join and use because I know that I'd never update anything on them and then I'd feel guilty about it). If anyone other than me is interested, I could tell them plenty about 'mommyblogs' (in quotes because I know some people loathe the label, but there it is for lack of something better). However, beyond that, I'm pretty clueless. I listen to classic rock and NPR. The only magazines I currently even open are Self and Cooking Light. The only tv I watch anymore is fuzzy PBS Kids.* I buy clothes at Goodwill and Savers. I own the cheapest cell phone available (it doesn't flip, it doesn't take pictures, it's not a fancy color). I kind of abhor text messaging. I still hyphenate 'e-mail' (I actually had an internal debate about this and We decided that We would continue with the hyphen). I don't know that many books, if any at all, will fall into the realm of popular culture. I'm just a bit out of touch. Regardless, I think that next semester should be fun and a good learning experience for me.

Some questions I'm thinking to ask my students at the beginning of the semester:

* How do you/we define 'popular culture'?
* What are some examples of things/people/places/ideas that fall into this realm?

The first essay in our text is 'The More Factor' (from The Hunger for More: Searching for Values in an Age of Greed, 1989) by Laurence Shames. In it, Shames discusses our notions of 'frontier' and how that term now describes the economy and the possibilities for personal wealth, rather than 'frontier' indicating the great and wild west. Shames discusses how we measure success in the quantity of things we buy, even if the quality of those things is not great. I plan to also ask my students the following:

* How do you/we define success?

This question, one I contemplate often, always makes me think of high school Senior Superlatives from the yearbook. 'Most likely to succeed.' First of all, I always feel that that phrase is somewhat filled with hopelessness. 'As a group, you probably won't succeed, but of you, these two are most likely to do so.' Anyhow, my weird, inane thoughts aside, I always wondered what 'success' the choosers had in mind. At our school, the guy and gal with the highest GPAs were chosen, and I think that this is probably how it usually works. But, what did the voters have in mind? These two would, of course because of their successes as shown by grades in high school classes, go on to lead full and rich lives? Lives full of expensive cars and vacation homes? What?

So, anyhow, I'm interested in finding out what my students have to say.

I could go into an entire discussion about my own thoughts about my own level of 'success' and how I hate that I too often base it on my (meagre) paycheck, but I'll spare you...for now.

Okay, so I'll leave you with one more quote from the essay. This comes after Shames has discussed how we (Americans), from our inception, have always been wanting, well, more.

If the supply of more went on forever, perhaps that wouldn't matter very much. Expansion could remain a goal unto itself, and would continue to generate a value system based on bulk rather than on nuance, on quantities of money rather than on quality of life, on 'progress' itself rather than on a sense of what the progress was for. But what if, over time, there was less more to be had?

That is the essential situation of America today.

Let's keep things in proportion: The country is not running out of wealth, drive, savvy, or opportunities. We are not facing imminent ruin, and neither panic nor gloom is called for. But there have been ample indications over the past two decades that we are running out of more.

Again, please keep in mind that the book from which this is taken was published in 1989. But, wow. We could almost get by with removing all of the negatives from that last paragraph of the quote, no?

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* This is a very recent development. I used to watch perfectly unfuzzy PBS Kids, Monk, sometimes Psych, House, M.D., Grey's Anatomy and What Not To Wear on a regular basis.