This highly accessible and lively book examines the significant but often overlooked relationship between popular culture, youth and education. Popular culture is often seen as something outside of, or antithetical to, schooling. Yet Richards provides a convincing account of its significance as a tool to engage young people and understand the complexity and diversity of their lives and identities.
Part one introduces the discipline of cultural studies and its relationship with education studies. Richards argues that cultural studies has raised important critical voices about how we understand the concept of culture and how seriously we take it. He suggests that its concern with young people's everyday and ordinary activities has much value for those studying and working in education. To exemplify this, part two moves us into the classroom and into different areas of young people's cultural lives - from fiction to television and popular music.
This book would appeal to academics as well as students of education studies and practitioners, helping them engage with issues of culture in their work with young people.
Dr Kim Allen, research fellow, London Metropolitan University and co-investigator for the ESRC seminar series New Perspectives on Education and Culture.
