I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to go into that last post a little more. There are obviously lots of ways to incorporate hip hop into education. You can rap multiplication tables, use song lyrics to teach poetry, etc.
There has been some pretty heated discussion in my class...a lot of it racially based - imagine that - a class that is pretty evenly mixed with African Americans and Caucasians (if we're going to use the fancy words...) about hip hop.
Either way, I thought I should just make the point that I definitely do not see drug abuse as being unique to hip hop, and that when I think of hip hop, drugs aren't the first thing to come to mind. I grew up in the backwoods of Florida - Bay County has often been called the "Meth Capital of Florida." There are lots of stories I can tell regarding the drug abuse among the poor white kids I went to school with, but I don't know that it's even necessary.
I have lots of stuff that I'll eventually add, but right now it's a bit of a mess in my head.
2 comments:
Dayna wrote: "Either way, I thought I should just make the point that I definitely do not see drug abuse as being unique to hip hop, and that when I think of hip hop, drugs aren't the first thing to come to mind."
Amen to that! A lot of the Christian hip hop I hear is more packed with Scripture than some Contemporary Christian (granted, you have to really LISTEN to understand the words...) Anyway, just because most of the secular hip hop out there is degrading, foul, and just plain unimaginative, that doesn't mean that hip hop itself is evil.
Okay, that was my first blog post! How about that!
I use rap and hip hop with my kindergarteners all the time! We rap the months of the year, and I used some basic (less than impressive, but good enough for 5 year olds) free-style techniques to teach them how to identify rhyming words. They didn't know their ABCs and couldn't seem to learn the traditional "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" tune, so we sing the alphabet to the tune of Kanye West's "Golddigger". (We also sing a number-writing song to the tune of Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina", but that's another story...) They already know the songs, so why not incorporate my students' experiences and culture in a way that is relevant and educational?
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