Designing generations: hybridising entertainment, advertising and education

The article considers some distinctive features of contemporary childhood, adulthood and inter-generational relations and explores their implications for student/teacher/parent relations in commodified education and schooling at the end of the 20th century. It focuses on the role of and relationships between consumer culture, media culture and education culture in the construction of generational differences, and what these mean for the nature and purposes of contemporary education. Generations and inter-generational relations articulate in very complex ways with consumer, media and contemporary school cultures. This poses dilemmas for teachers and students in current school settings, and these dilemmas should be understood and resolved, if schools are to connect properly to the young people of today and tomorrow.