FOR decades now, there has long been a clash between popular culture and academics. Even to this day, popular culture movie critic Roger Ebert’s views are being underestimated by film professors as too shallow. I beg to disagree because even though professors have the technical know-how, they don’t have the means to connect their findings to the people so that the people can be warned and would know how to maximize progress in the world in their own little ways.

Consider this – there’s a new finding by a Johns Hopkins research team about the causes of liver cancer and they published the results of their research at the New England Journal of Medicine. Although this publication is available nationwide and can easily be accessed through the web, many people do not usually read it because they are turned off by the highly technical terms the doctors use. But since the topic is very important because it concerns the health of the people, this is now the job of popular culture to disseminate the information and educate the masses in a more readable way.

The most common popular culture media include paintings, movies, music and novels. I can name two movies which are being used as instructional materials at West Point. One is Clear and Present Danger which has an accurate portrayal on how a squad of Special Forces is inserted into another country to conduct an operation there. In this case here, the country portrayed is Colombia. The other movie is Tears of the Sun. Ably directed by French-American visionary Antoine Fuqua, Tears of the Sun is hailed by both the Defense Department and CIA for a very accurate portrayal of how a search and rescue military mission is being carried out.

A medium can also be an educational means to another end. There is one Australian painter I know who sells his paintings in Brazil and Europe to raise funds for football training of children in Perth. We already have discussed about scientific publications, movies and paintings. Let’s now focus towards music. In music, there are two things which make a track educational – the music itself and the lyric of the music. And then there are movies which merge music into their system. This is also one educational tool. One of the best releases this year is La Vie en Rose which is a biography of the great French singer Edith Piaf. Piaf herself is the star of the soundtrack. Through the movie and the soundtrack, we can learn about French music in the 1930s and 1940s.

In the recent 50th Grammy Awards, the biggest winner was Amy Winehouse. Even though the singer is British, Amy Winehouse’s hit Rehab was a runaway hit in the United States because a lot of young people can relate to it because they are hooked on drugs one way or the other. Whether it be movies, music or advertising, popular culture remains a vital educational tool in our society today.

IF you are a Spaniard and you want to study about politics at the Universidad de Madrid, perhaps you may not think of it not on a parochial level but as its universal stage. Politics in Spain is fairly stabilized although there’s the usual ethnic bragging among the Basques, the Catalans and the minorities living in Granada. So while studying and not yet eyeing that City Council seat in Salamanca, you may want to have a virtual tour around the world as far as politics is concerned.

In the United States, it’s Super Tuesday already but let us set that aside first. For one exciting development about politics occurred in the Philippines yesterday or the day before Super Tuesday. The Speaker of the House in the Philippines was ousted by a parliamentary coup for no logical reason at all other than that the Speaker, Jose de Venecia, has strained personal ties with his political ally, President Gloria M. Arroyo. Congressmen who pounced on him used this alibi to unseat him. That’s what’s good in democracy. House rules in the Philippines explicitly provide that you can unseat the Speaker if he has lost the confidence of his colleagues.

Another exciting development in the world of politics is the reelection of Boris Tadic. What does this mean? Because of his pro-Western stance, Tadic may pave the way for Serbia’s inclusion in the European Union. And that can surely propel the development of the country since the European Union is known to be working as a family. Now let’s talk about Super Tuesday but that what the world is waiting for immediately after the New York Giants’ win in Super Bowl XLII.

Super Tuesday brings Sen. Barack Obama to be pitted against Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination race. Polls distributed in Missouri and California a day before already show Obama gaining a narrow lead. Of course, there’s no question on who the frontrunner in the GOP side as Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee who are just nuisances.

And then there’s California. You know what makes California exciting to even the most bewildered politics students in the world? The governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has been a Republican long before he married his current wife, Maria Shriver, who is an extremely loyal Democrat. They both knew that from the start but then again love prevails. For decades, Arnold Schwarzenegger has been campaigning for Republicans and for decades his wife has been campaigning for Democrats.

Now if you’re planning to take a degree in political science, you may as well take a degree in economics. After all, politics and business go hand in hand for a country to survive. If you are in good in business but you don’t have the political or diplomatic suave to push for what you believe can be good for the nation, the country will surely be in tatters. So if you are salivating to be in the world of politics, then go ahead. Indulge in studying economics.