ABSTRACT
The first part of this book has been centrally concerned with the ways in which students ‘read’ and ‘write’ popular cultural forms. Although we have discussed the role of teaching-and indeed much of the material that we have considered has come from projects carried out in lessons-we have not so far paid much attention to our aims and our role in the teaching process. Indeed, to some extent, the position that we have adopted might be seen to question the whole necessity of teaching about popular culture in the first place. If young people are already as active and sophisticated as we are suggesting, why should we bother to teach them?
