The Folk are Changing the Ways We Learn

Folklore is the cultural way in which a group maintains and passes on a shared way of life. Our culture is passed on through arts, belief, traditions, stories, adornments, jokes, celebrations... in more ways than one can count. Folklore is not processed work though; it is raw and unworked. It does not include published writings or fine art. It's less rigid than that. It doesn't follow institutional rules. Traditionally, the academic definition of folklore has allowed only those items of folklore that are passed on face-to-face.

But this definition is being challenged. Go figure, right?

Instead of face-to-face, the folk are spending more and more of their time face-to-Facebook. And so, though many scholars resist this change, grasping wildly and desperately at what is familiar and stubbornly refusing to adapt and evolve with their changing environment, the way folklore is passed on has moved online.

I had this brilliant realization when I was assigned to collect folklore for a class a few semesters back. My professor wanted us to go to our friends' homes and start random conversations with them in the hopes of collecting folklore from our discussions. But as a student, I just didn't really spend a lot of time in other people's homes having conversations with them. A significant portion of my interactions with friends and family were online.

At the time, I was three or four months pregnant and apprehensive about the prospects of bringing a child into this world. It was not the parenting aspects I was particularly concerned about (at least not yet)... to be frank, it was labor. There is so much conflicting information out there about the process of giving birth and I was anxious, not only about knowing what to do, but more so about where to even begin.. what questions to ask! So, as is natural to me, I reached out to my network of woman friends and since I live so far from many I am close to, I reached out online.

I asked my friends what to ask my doctor. The response I received was overwhelming. It also had nothing to do with what to ask my doctor. What I got was pregnancy folklore. The conversation is pasted below.

I was delighted (and terribly amused) by this response. Two of my friends (that don't know each other) got into an all-out battle about whether or not epidurals contain cocaine.

What is my point in telling you all of this? I better figure it out quickly because my baby is stirring from his nap.

We have to be willing to challenge traditional means of scholarship. Our culture has changed drastically in the last decade. Our means of sharing information (passing on folklore) has changed. The way we seek out information has changed -- we don't just ask mom anymore, we Google it. In fact, when you do go to mom, she says, "I don't know. Google it." All this means the way we educate ourselves (the accumulation and incorporation of knowledge into our minds) has changed.

Bloggers are not just a collection of Mormon housewives scrapbooking their lives for all to see. They are one of the new primary ways of distributing information and opinion. And blogging isn't the end-all. The traditional write-and-read to learn is being challenged. People learn from podcasts, video clips, audio books, movies streaming online, comics, animations, etc.



Our culture still places so much authority on the book; on becoming an author. You gain so much prestige from "Author of __________" following your name. Don't get me wrong, I love to read - I am an English major (so I had better).  But does this invalidate emerging forms of communication? There are as many books containing false and ridiculous information as there are YouTube videos doing the same.

I wonder how many professors would be brave enough to change their curriculum to match these emerging forms of learning, instead of leaning on tradition and cultural prestige. After all, we're not all in college to learn how to write research papers, so we can distribute knowledge to the public via this outdated form. Wouldn't it make sense to help students experience and learn these new ways of communicating so they can give the information they've learned a real audience?