Duplicate Trope: School Study Media

School Study Media looks redundant with From Entertainment to Education, since they have more-or-less the same definition (a work created for entertainment is used in the classroom). While the description and title of School Study Media don't entirely imply this, the trope is used this way regardless. School Study Media Wick Check confirms this.

This should probably be merged into From Entertainment to Education for this reason, either that or reworked into a trope for works that are explicitly intended for school studying.

Both tropes are also marked as Trivia, but should be YMMV instead because the decision to use them in school is usually done by audiences and not the original author.

Opening

Macron's notes

• From Entertainment to Education: Works often referenced for scientific research.
• School Study Media: Works that are a part of the mandatory school literature program. (If this is not entirely correct, we could define it as this)

Because your wick check is not organized into categories, it's difficult to say with confidence if I agree with your point, but I do lean towards School Study Media being merged (and cleaned) into From Entertainment to Education as a "School Study" folder and sorted to other folders.

I think the concepts are kinda different enough, but School Study Media page is so ZCE-rotten and wicks are so short it's practically worthless on its own. Also, I see there are a lot of In-Universe examples of "Didn't you learn this in school?", so that could be yardable.

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 16th 2022 at 2:56:53 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

You're not kidding about the ZCEs, I'm not sure there are many examples with context.

Anyway I'm in favor of a merge for 's reasons.

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I think the problem here is that this is a classification of works, not really something that works are an example of.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Personally, I'd merge From Entertainment to Education into School Study Media, because that trope is newer and has fewer wicks.

That sounds good on paper, but I'm in favor of merging School Study Media into From Entertainment to Education because of how many ZCEs School Study Media has, meaning its wick count is inflated by bad wicks.

Plus, while it is true that School Study Media has a higher wick count, it's not ridiculously high, so it wouldn't take long to dewick.

Anyway, I think I'll tag both pages since merging the two could go in either direction.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 16th 2022 at 7:36:57 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Fair enough.

As for whether these tropes should be Trivia or YMMV, I lean towards them being trivia because you can objectively qualify whether a work is being used in school as an education tool. It's similar to Colbert Bump and Tourist Bump. Both have to deal with audience reactions, but have an objective criteria (something gains new popularity after being referenced by another work).

I feel like this should actually be more YMMV than trivia...what the "Canon" is varies, and in the US at least, every school district has its own curriculum and it often changes at least slightly year to year. No one studies everything in school. I was assigned The Great Gatsby but not The Catcher in the Rye, for example, but does that mean one or the other has to go?

But this trope is "fictional work is taught in schools". It shouldn't matter that not every school assigns that particular work, just that some do. And as I said in my other post, this is something objective. It isn't subjective that some schools assign that particular book to be read by their students.

But that would be a meaninglessly long list for the same reasons: teachers get bored, there's classes on everything, and most media can be used to teach something. In one of my creative writing classes, we watched The Princess Bride, but I don't think that would typically be on a list like that.

Edited by Eiryu on Mar 16th 2022 at 11:11:31 AM

I actually think Colbert Bump, Newbie Boom, and Tourist Bump should be YMMV because they're still about Audience Reactions (since they involve something having an influx of fans, which is one way people can react to a work), but I think we should evaluate School Study Media and From Entertainment to Education separately, because they're about schools adopting works as an official part of their curriculum, while Colbert Bump, Newbie Boom, and Tourist Bump are about people flocking to works on their own (as opposed to it being because it was part of their schoolwork).

Edit: Maybe I need to think this through a bit more later, so feel free to interpret this post as spitballing instead of a vote. My head isn't exactly clear at the moment because, as I mentioned in a couple of other threads, I currently have a cold.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 16th 2022 at 8:58:38 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I understand that School Study Media is an index, but since it's not a genre, maybe it shouldn't be an index and better with context. After all, these happen only in specific selection of schools. Could be YMMV, since we also use the namespace for other "not true for everyone" items. Not dwelling into other tropes for now.

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What you said about the YMMV index containing other "not true for everyone" concepts means making this YMMV could be doable.

Whenever it's time to make a crowner, I was thinking we could decide whether to merge first (including which name is the target of the merge), followed by deciding whether this stays Trivia or is moved to YMMV. (I'd rather not put the YMMV vote on the merge crowner in case people vote to keep them separate, since that would complicate things.)

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 16th 2022 at 10:02:41 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I'm side-eyeing this specific example on From Entertainment to Education because it illustrates something that's bugging me about this whole debate:

Keeping aside the general example nature of the entire page (and the indentation failure here),

1. What is "most"?
2. Which "communication classes"? Where?
3. Doesn't this illustrate that most anything can be used to teach something, not just the bits of the 'Western canon' that happen to be kid-digestible eg. To Kill a Mockingbird?

So I think we ought to answer if "bunch of teachers/school boards somewhere thought this should be taught in schools" is an audience reaction worth documenting and if we can/should apply objective criteria to it at all. How common is common enough? (To add to the Princess Bride point — my mother is a professor and sometimes gets study media ideas from me, her pop-culture-brainrotted millennial daughter, to teach niche classes with.) What about culture differences — I was not raised in the US and I am sure American teachers deciding between Gatsby and Catcher have never heard of the media we were taught with.

At the minimum, I think the concept (merged or not) should be YMMV, and examples should have (a) location (b) rough grade level (c) some context about what makes it school-friendly and what the takeaway should be, not just "teachers somewhere teach this", like so:

• To Kill a Mockingbird is often taught in American middle schools to demonstrate [something about racism] [something about kids reckoning with uncomfortable truths] [etc]

Edited by Synchronicity on Mar 16th 2022 at 11:07:24 AM

I've actually seen some books with "study guides" in the back for recommended discussion questions for classes, or additional guides provided by the authors or publishers—for books likely to get taught in classes like this. The existence of one of those might be trivia. "Lots of teachers thought this would be useful to use in a classroom setting" seems very YMMV.

And even in the publishing sphere, most people acknowledge that everyone has their own "literary canon."

(Also, I definitely didn't have to watch a movie in any of my communications classes, nor did I expect to. What in the heck)

Nah. School Study Media as an index is full of zero-context examples and seems to concern media shown/taught in American schools. I don't wish to bother answering the questions of What counts for School Study Media, and how do you quantify them? Whose curricula are we following? Do we require citations pointing to school district/government statistics? And why does this concern TV Tropes?

I had a teacher who had his class read and analyze The Princess Bride, qualifying The Princess Bride for School Study Media. OK, but it's a fun book. Lots of people read it for fun. Therefore, it's out. No, but my class read it. For school. Who's to say other classes didn't get assigned this book as well? No, it's not in this Top 50 List of Classic Books Everybody Read in High School, and I personally didn't have to read it, so leave it out.

That’s a good point actually. I think this trope may be too Americentric to keep (at least as is). “Works I saw in school” might be too myopic to have as a concept IMO.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Mar 16th 2022 at 1:45:24 PM

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That's true...

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I agree that there's going to be miyopia, but unlike many pegged reaction tropes, there's at least a way to use some objective statistics. Tbh I don't have a good clue about education in US, but mine had like a ministry-approved "recommended list" of what to analyze in high schools, which includes stuff like The Odyssey, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Robinson Crusoe, The Three Musketeers.

But to counter myself, it's not realistic or informative to keep track of these, a plain list of at least over a hundred items for each country isn't a tropeworthy idea. This is why I suggest to feed examples that have good context to From Entertainment to Education for their value for language and culture studies and redirect. If there's a way to make it YMMV, it's going be a lot different from how School Study Media is currently.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

My only thought is some sort of informal JFF or Sugar Wiki page for people to list works they in particular studied in schools, without it needing to be a widespread thing.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

That will solve the issue, and letting tropers to gush about works in specific way has merit, though I worry about Sugar/Darth slowly turning into a trope dumpster bin.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

2k inbounds is too high to just cut it, huh...I guess JFF might be an okay place for it.

Or Sugar Wiki if it's not "fun" enough.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

My idea was that School Study Media be merged into From Entertainment to Education, rather than the other way around, because the latter's title makes it more clear that it's an active decision by the teachers, and leads to more elaboration on how that happens instead of just affixing the "school study media" label.

Edited by nw09 on Mar 16th 2022 at 1:11:43 AM