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Society, Popular Culture, Education and Democracy: Influence on People Introduction To what extent does our society tend to make us into spectators instead of participants? Does education prepare us to be real citizens that can participate in democracy and culture production (like Dewey argues it should) or (like Aronowitz in The Knowledge Factory) increasingly into pre-programmed automator's? Has the rise of popular culture facilitated participation or inhibited it? The aim of our essay is to answer these questions. So, lets get started. Democracy, education, media and popular culture have great impact on our life.
Various mass communication inputs are able to influence the society and public leaders to a greater extent than governmental institutions and political parties can influence the work of media. No wonder that politicians and sociologists often call it the fifth government. The art of creation of fixed ideas, images and manipulation by social conscience reached the technological level that allows forming virtual reality within the limits of certain societies. In such a way, the truth turns out to be not the facts that occur in reality, but the way the facts are presented by media. Actually, this inconsistency between the reality and presentation of information has become the issue of the day.
Does the society make us automator's? According to Stanley Aronowitz, the author of a The Knowledge Factory, an interpretive genealogy of cultural studies (p. 1), the current cultural wars in America try to dictate its will on American people. According to him, the modern society and democracy shows the tendency towards transgression that is anti-disciplinary. Lets see it by example of media and political polls. There has been recently much of discussion about influence of political polls in the modern society. Some people argue that current potential of impact of political polls on mass political and social conscience is not as high as the majority of people can suppose.
Is this opinion correct? Ill try to examine the issue in this research, and, in particular to examine the affirmation that our society, media and public and private opinion polls are often said to shape and even distort the political process by influencing voters, (bandwagon and underdog effects) priming political leaders, (setting agenda and strategic positioning) and affecting political activists (motivating and demotivating effects) and dwell on question how much influence on the outcomes of elections do polls in fact exert. Lets dwell on the influence of communication and, particularly, the influence of polls and mass media on our lives. First of all quite inactive position of people in relation to political life is concerned with peculiarities of our social life.
People do not consume as much information as they consumed during the previous years. The qualitative and quantitative indexes of information consumed reduce drastically. Besides, the interest of citizens to social-political information reduces during the periods of relatively calm social life that doesnt require active participation in political debates, election campaigns, etc. On the other hand, so-called loosing trust in government in general and in social institutions in particular also influences the attitude to political polls and mass media. Some people loose trust in them and do not participate in social and political life, limiting themselves to sphere of everyday needs, such as family, work, etc. There is a position that our world view is a cumulative product of the messages we are internalizing.
So, whose world we are seeing? Media and popular culture, probably, do not have much success when they try to show people how they need to think about, but they are extremely successful in obtrusion of what the people should think about. Besides, many research workers often examine American popular culture as ideological weapon, which determines and influences conscience of people. The increasing impact of political polls on potential voters during the elections is also closely related to importance of political blind imitation based on information presented by polls. The gap between presented and real information is also very big.
So-called polls directions for need-to-be result often come into collision between the real and obtrusive information. Do people in this case act as automator's? Obviously, they do. Society and popular culture act as effective manipulators. They show the desirable picture that is often erroneous by nature and reprograms the population. The influence of polls during the elections often has more consequences than the election campaign or the platform of political party / candidate itself.
Political polls as part of media sources participate in social construction of reality. We need to remember that society is a human product. Society is an objective reality. Man is a social product. Yet, the modern mass media sources are often spoken in a context of weapon of mass distraction. Popular culture is spoken in context of danger to democracy the giants that dominate the world manufacturing content media control methods of social manipulation - these words are widely used in our everyday life.
Do mass media products always erroneous and misleading? First of all, we need to analyze basic concepts regarding the mass media products in order to find out how we can distinguish a misleading and an informative one. The modern researchers often claim that media and popular culture products are often commissioned by rest groups and media organizations and they can enlighten but they can also distort or even mislead, sometimes intentionally. Questions to Ask First of all, people need to consume information presented by society and popular culture in a conscious manner. Although they dont have to be experts in relation to data, questionarries or other details, they need to draw their attention to the main details. - Who is the sponsor / conductor ? No mass culture product is conducted with no reason.
It means that somebody have already thought which topics are interesting enough to spend money on them. In majority of cases, mass media products are conducted for a reason, either to gain information or to advance a particular cause. Analyzing the motives of it, we can find out what were the reasons to conduct such a program. - What is the group being targeted by mass media and / or popular culture products? The programs, advancing a particular cases, often show non-representative samples. In order to be a representative, the program should take into account the opinions of different groups of population based on their age / belonging and other characteristics. Do Mass Culture Products Influence the Society?
It seems you are unable to turn on the TV without seeing any program not thrusting its opinion on people. You cannot avoid finding out what other co-citizens are thinking. The programs actively shape society's opinions and affecting our social life. Many people change their mind after they hear the results of society's thinking. In such a way, the society does make us functionnaires, not actors.
Personally I do not think it is possible to get a representative sample of the American people to get the appropriate objective results. Some of mass culture products simply do not divide attention to capturing the representative sample of American opinions. What about popular culture in particular? Marcus in his Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock-n-Roll speaks about the musicians and argues that they contribute to American imagination. The musical culture does matter.
What about democracy and education? According to Dewey, democracy and education supports each other. He discusses education for democracy and argues that it means 'sharing in a common life'. Lets start from the very beginning and dwell on term education. Its quite difficult to explain the meaning of education. Education is an integral process, which includes formation and development of an individual.
It also embraces the variety of moral principles, information, to mention a few. Dewey calls education a social continuity of life (Dewey, ch. 1). It seems that education includes more than development of personality and is often associated with upbringing of an individual as well as the totality of methods that allow an individual to become a full-fledged member of society. When we speak about education, we have in mind the totality of methods that influence on formation and development of personality resulting in comprehension of behavioral system and social standards valid for a certain society. When these standards and rules are learned and adopted well, we can speak about education as good breeding and education as the result of education process. Education embraces accustoming to the social culture and, speaking about democracy as an integral part of social culture, we can suppose that democracy and education supports each other.
Lets examine Dewey's position more thoroughly. The key concept of Dewey's philosophical standpoint, which united the individual and world into one whole, is the experience. Thats why Dewey's philosophy is often called the philosophy of experimentalism. Experimentalism is strongly allied with experience. Experimentalism claims that an individual can understand the world only during the process of independent active cooperation. Science is not able to answer all the questions related to our everyday life.
The science emerged in result of human experience and human curiosity. The mental world of an individual, thinking and personal sense appear as cause and effect of communication process between people. Dewey defines communication as a process of sharing experience till it becomes a common possession (Dewey, ch. 1). A man often has to adopt somebody's point of view while the process of formation of his own behavior. In such a way both consciousness and self consciousness appear. An individual has to listen to opinions of other people and, as he develops, he starts to realize and assimilate positions of other different people as position of a one whole group (society).
In such a way the individual learns to accept the demands of community. The person acts as unique individual in the totality of his individualism, and shows the creative measurement of his personality. On the other hand, he needs to adopt and obey the rules of community: this ability shows the passive measurement of his personality. The nature of democratic community requires every man to have an open standpoint. In the process of communication people share their standpoints and opinions, and, in such a way, they contribute to development of community, its cultural and social standards. Democratic community helps people to come to better understanding of the most important position or opinion.
Democratic community doesnt force a man to adhere to some obligatory position, but makes all efforts to enhance understanding. An individual understands the nature of things not as a result of somebody's theory in relation to his own personal experience. It rather comes as a result of his own understanding of world and community. The values and opinions are the result of efforts and intellectual achievements in the process of an endless vital experiment. According to Dewey, education is the achievement of some peculiar experience or knowledge (or truth or belief Dewey doesnt focus great attention on definition of what we gain with the help of experience he often calls it as something we can assert soundly). The philosophy can be called a general theory of education, because, according to Dewey, it shows the reasonable and emotional attitude to nature and people.
The very essence of human existence is the embodiment of experimental method: human experience consists of an endless chain of experiments the man carries out on nature. Every personality combines the ability to follow traditions and the desire to renew them, to bring in the results of his unique creative work. The tension between creative and conservative beginnings consists in the very essence of an individual. This point of view is peculiar not only to John Dewey but to the philosophy of pragmatism (it is brightly examined in the works of J. G. Mid).
Freedom of an individual is not destroyed by limitations, applied social standards and power. The freedom is the result of cooperation between poles: passivity and creative activity. John Dewey also claims that both concepts: creative activity and restrictions of community concordance are interrelated and interdependent poles in the dynamic process of development of an individual. Every community (and society in general) can be perceived as a certain expanded personality consisting of interrelation of those poles.
However, studying both low and high aspects of our popular culture, Stanley Aronowitz considers that our society is linked to the closure of the academic landscape and the continued devaluation of intellectuals (ch. 3, 4). At the same time, an individual concurrently expresses general position and, at the same time, reacts in his peculiar way. The human originality comes into collision with existing tradition, but when an individual achieves his own point of view, it occurs as a result of development process. On the other hand, the current situation in our society is understood as an intellectual decline (Aronowitz 16) Dewey claims that democratic community demands not only general education, but educational process directed to the development of an individual in general. It is very important to associate education with development of skills of experimental life research. Education shouldnt be understood as an ordinary transition of knowledge from one member of community to the other.
Education should assure the formation of skills necessary to perfect and develop personality, values, social institutions and various forms of social practice. Experimental interpretation mean by education the way to freedom. We are free to the extent we participate in the life of community. We think individually. Social factors do have influence on us; however, we do not react passively.
We determine the nature of our reactions to the external social factors. We are free when our activity is directed by results of our own experience, when we are able to meet something new, when we are able to examine this new by methods of free research and use the results of experiments to direct our activity. Moral freedom consists in ability to reconstruct and change the behavior by means of creative development and perfection of adopted standards and traditions. When the methods of organizational behavior dont work in the conditions of conflicts between the values, new moral determinants appear and attach new quality to our experience.
What does the new educational system mean? It means that an individual (whether he is old or young) elicits from his previous experience as much as he can. If the preparation becomes the final goal, it means that potential present abilities are offered in sacrifice to presumable future. When such situation takes place, it means that preparation to the future fails. There are contradictions between the present as an element of preparation to the future. It omits the conditions that are able to help an individual to prepare himself for his future.
We live in the present and only if we are able to extract from our previous experiences as much as we can, we prepare to make the same in future. This is the only preparation that is worthy of it. Experimentalists in their practical educational activity strive to establish the atmosphere of constant thinking, in which the students are not occupied with useless memorization of information, but think over the important problems. The French documentary To Be and to Have can be a good evidence of a talented educational approach.
During their reflections the students can get help, using the knowledge obtained by the mankind in the past. In brief, this is an experimental approach in relation to the concept of culture transmission. The continuity of democratic atmosphere is also very important. It means that young people constantly learn how to treat the democracy and each other with full responsibility; they learn to understand and to respect rights, freedom and equity of each other.
This approach is extremely helpful and is one of few educational approaches that is able to help the young people constantly improve quality of their life. According to Dewey, quantity of mutual actions will never create the community. Young people need to develop clear perception of being a member of community by means of communication. They need to realize and respect their rights, freedom and equity through the prism of individualism and community.
They need to respect the rights of other people as well as their beliefs and convictions. They need make constant contribution into further formation of human recourses and values to become a full-pledged member of community. When an individual achieves different habits and experience in the process of learning, most likely he will form a habit to learning. The formation of habits is influenced by plasticity or the power to learn from experience (Dewey, ch. 4). When he falls into the habit of learning, perfection will become a conscious principle of his life.
Conclusion Regarding the influence that society trends exert on our world views, I would say that they are both conscious and unconscious. On the one hand, they consciously inspire us with exemplary models helping us to shape our views and providing us with information about various events. On the other hand, we cannot forget that both American mass culture and mass media products are a product of culture that has strong political and commercial interest. In such a way our society both consciously and unconsciously substitutes our aims and goals with their need-to-be models. Bibliography: Aronowitz, S. (1993). Roll Over Beethoven: The Return of Cultural Strife Aronowitz, S. (2000).
The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning. Beacon Press Dewey, J. (1997). Democracy and Education. Free Press; Reprint edition Marcus, G. (1997). Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock N Roll Music
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Research essay sample on Rock N Roll Development Of An Individual
