History 210: What would Lady Gaga do?

Recent post-grad Charlsie Niemiec suggests in USA Today that academic life incorporate pop culture to help students understand the humanities.

Whether or not a professor allows discussions of celebrity life or other things that students feel to be important to their lives (like Facebook), it doesn’t stop students from actively engaging in these topics – even during class. If you go into any lecture hall and spot students on their laptops, the majority of them aren’t taking notes. Instead, they are searching the web, reading websites like Perez Hilton and Radar Online, browsing through the latest celebrity fashion twins, and updating their status updates on Facebook. It’s hard to avoid, especially when the majority of students are also interested in these same topics, so teachers should keep this in mind when coming up with ways to apply course material to the real world

I shudder.

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