Cultural Studies and Educational Practice

Abstract

It seems to me that there are two ways of introducing a discussion of cultural studies and educational practice.¹ One can either proceed by review or by argument. The method of review implies some attempt to describe the field of cultural studies or those parts of it most relevant to ‘popular culture’. We might start by considering, for example, the different uses of the terms ‘popular’ and ‘culture’. We might consider some parallel couplets: mass culture, working-class culture, subculture, even dominant culture. We might note the presence of other opposed or complementary terms: older ones like values, myth or consciousness, newer or refurbished ones like ideology, the symbolic, representation, signification or, the favourite of the day, discourse. Reviews like this may produce useful maps, indispensable to explorers — especially over such bumpy ground as this is! By concentrating on the variety of definitions, they perform a useful relativising function. They remind us that educational practices are inextricably connected to language and to the choice of categories. ‘Theory’, in this sense, need not be abstruse, but is, rather, a part of making us critically self-conscious of what is implied by the use of certain words and concepts. The danger is that such cartography foregrounds a tiny bit of social process, especially the activities of specialist intellectuals.

Screen Education, no. 34, Spring 1980.