Parenting Through Pop Culture

With the ever-increasing amount of media children are consuming, it has become important for parents to learn how to help them navigate this consumption productively. All too often, the only approach to screen time by parents is a question of limiting how much and what kind. Instead, if parents and educators can adopt a more nuanced relationship to media and education, adults and children can come together in order to engage with and deconstruct the messages that are embedded in popular culture. This enables children to become more informed citizens while also enabling parents to understand the issues that their kids are going through in new ways.This collection seeks to do just that by providing a series of essays on different strategies to engage children with varying topics and programming to ensure that media consumption is an active process that promotes social and political awareness instead of apathetic entertainment. Specific examples touched on in this book include environmental destruction, animal rights, colonialism, race, gender, scientific or political neutrality, teamwork and inclusion, imagination, self-worth, and activism. Figuring out ways to navigate these issues with children is essential for creating a better world and altering the media landscape of tomorrow.

JL Schatz is the director of debate at Binghamton University, where he is a lecturer and teaches courses on media and politics out of the English department. He has published book chapters and journal articles on representations of apocalypse, environment and disability, as well as subjectivity in relation to teaching pedagogy in debate. He lives in Vestal, New York.