Assumptions About the Course

1. Youth is a culturally constructed category.

Ideas about youth are dynamic, permeable and elastic. They change over time, across geographies, and between communities. Though we have constructed a "cumulative cultural text" of youth that is historically and socio-culturally familiar to us, race, class, ability, gender, sexuality, and size intersect and interrupt the category of youth. Youth and youth cultures will forever be resisting and/or responding to the codes, texts and discourses of the dominant culture. We must know this in order to respond to it.

In the late 1800's Sigmund Freud developed an idea called the subconscious mind, and like many great minds his ideas were used for selfish means and in ways he never intended them to be used. I plan on doing more research on this particular subject of study in the future, but I do know that at one point or another advertising agencies and departments got a hold of his work and abused it to take over the american people, in particular the youth and the elderly, as their minds are in more vulnerable states than others. Using sex to sell cars and cigarettes, is one of the few ways in which Freud's findings were exploited for profit at the expense of the health and wallets of everyday people. Ironically enough it was Freud's ideas that got us into this mess and it will be Freud's ideas that will get us out. Freud wrote that in order to free one's self from the subconscious mind you have to bring it out into the conscious by discussion. This is why we are having this discussion now; This is why we must continue to have it.

2. Teenagers are not some alien life form.

We are/were all teenagers at some point in our lives. The person you are now is the same person you were then, albeit with new and different life experiences that shift and change your understandings and actions of the world. We do not "outgrow" our teenage identities. So, when we examine "youth" from the vantage point of adults, we need to resist the impulse to discuss it as though it is something outside of us, something exotic and "Other". We will not talk about "those crazy kids" or refer to "teenagers" as some alien life form.

I agree with this assumption in full. It is important not to take a perspective of elitism in any discussion, especially in regards to this particular topic because who we were shapes who we are. It is untrue to claim that past experiences do not affect present situations or states of being or thoughts. Despite the fact that we are always learning new things it is impossible to really expand intellectual perspectives without accepting that we too are being affected by the culture around us; by the water that we're swimming in.

3. Media matters.

Popular culture is not just a form of entertainment. The media plays a critical role in teaching us about the world. Film, television, music, advertising, fashion and other forms of popular culture shape the daily lives of all Americans whether we celebrate or resist their influence. We must learn to see the things that we most take for granted, to analyze and interpret the media around us in order to understand how these things contribute to how we think about what is "normal," "natural," and "good." In this class, we will take the media seriously as an educating force.

I think that in conjunction with gender equality, media consciousness is probably one of the most important things I think about, write about, and talk about. The people with money and power use the media with the help of Freud's Psychology to control people in every degree. Who we vote for, what we buy, who we buy it from are especially important powers of the people that have been for the most part taken away from us as a whole by the media, in conjunction with other tools of control such as religion. The world of human beings has a long history of people who distort the purpose of discoveries and ideas. Martin Luther wrote the 95 theses in protest of the western church. After his death people took advantage of these thoughts to break off a part of the church for their own control, Jesus of Nazareth was written about many years after his death in the New Testament of the Bible, which was used by Carl Rove as a political brainwashing mechanism to elect George W. Bush for 2 terms as president of the united states; sending the US into 2 wars(at least) and economic recession, Albert Einstein's pioneering of the study of Physics lead to the first Atomic Bomb , Sigmund Freud's Psychology is being used every day in every media outlet available to manipulate the masses... the list goes on. The important thing to remember is that education of the common person prevents things like this from happening. If every person in america was conscious to the methods by which those in power are attempting to manipulate them, then we would as whole disallow that manipulation and enable a more effective democratic system.

"The rich get richer till the poor get educated" - Sage Francis