War and Popular Culture

I found the sites offered for this assignment to be very interesting, particularly The Authentic History Center site. This site contained a wealth of visual information related to popular culture and its intersection with history, people, politics, and social realities that educators (both formal and non formal) have at their fingertips to compliment our educational and enrichment curricula, ultimately offering a more engaged learning experience. Today’s learners are accustomed to images via the computer, television, and video games. The more we utilize these familiar mediums we increase the probability that young people will connect to topics and find them relevant.

Historically, war and popular culture have been intricately connected as highlighted in the article “The Gulf War TV Super Bowl”. My immediate response to this article was “where in the heck was I”. I am certainly not a super bowl fan, not to mention I was a senior in high school, so went to YouTube: Bill Giants Super bowl XXV Halftime Show to view the clip. To me this offered a great example of how popular culture can offer a politicized view of America’s agreement with and perception of the war. This was accomplished in many ways, foremost through meshing messages and images of war and sports. Another glaring observation was the inclusion of young people (a diverse group I might add) in the half time show--- a strategy to pull at the heart strings of Americans. My question is how aware was the average American of this ploy, supporting the need to foster awareness and critical thinking in young people.

Upon visiting websites on war and music I was pleasantly surprised that some of the songs listed were familiar. Songs like “We Shall Overcome” is a hymn I am very familiar with and grew up singing in church. While there are some contradictions to its origin (which I was taught dates back to American chattel slavery), an example of our often unconscious participation in popular culture. Music continues to be a form of popular culture that carries messages of war, political strife, and the human condition.

War is a complex topic I personally struggle to teach—simply thinking about it puzzles me particularly the perspective from which the topic of war should be taught and what content should be included. In formal school settings much of this is dictated and predetermined, not to imply at all, that our social studies teachers are not infusing new approaches. In thinking back to my experience in learning about war, I do not have many memorial experiences.

The key, I think, to teaching this topic is to start with the contemporary first like the Gulf War clip, then bring it back to the historical accounts. In the following paragraph I provide some general thoughts related to constructing teaching units for non formal learning environments with middle school youth in mind.

My approach to teaching popular culture and war would be fairly open-ended to allow young people to explore the topic in a way that is of interest to them. There are many approaches, using popular culture, to teach this unit. One approach may be to explore war recruitment strategies through researching war recruitment images. On the Authentic History Center website there are a number of posters related to soldier recruitment as well as a host of information related to this. To fulfill my need to make transparent the role of people of color in the war which is often absent, youth could explore specific state laws and participation in the war. Movies like “Glory” highlight the participation of African American’s in the Civil War, youth can view and discuss. Additionally, a wealth of information exists about the participation of Native American’s in the war. As I have said throughout this course popular culture has the ability to convey (and prove) reality.

Below are links to assist in developing a lesson on popular culture and war I plan to delve into deeper in developing the above lessons:
• http://www.authentichistory.com/1950s.html
• http://www.nps.gov/history/logcabin/html/vf4.html
• http://www.nativeamericans.com/CivilWar.htm
• http://members.aol.com/MrDonnHistory/American.html
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ1Qcru_YDc