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Hip-Hop Reaches 'Em, Teachers Teach 'Em


Dr. Elizabeth Johnson

The lifespan of any educational reform should never be longer than a single generation because whenever a new generation discovers itself educators must truly reinvent the wheel and adapt to the new lifestyle and all of its trappings.While most educators instinctively agree that change is always fluid too many of us have to be dragged kicking and screaming instead of embracing the next reform as being just as necessary as all previous adjustments, revisions, and revolutions. And that's exactly what's happening in the current hesitation among educational leaders to warmly embrace the use of hip-hop music as a learning tool for today's students.Conservative reaction to change is a healthy brake to prevent us from chasing willy-nilly after every new idea that bubbles up to the surface. But, when it comes to employing rap music in our curriculums we are long past braking and should be accelerating. Those who have experimented with the rap beat and hip-hop lyrics in the classroom have experienced such success that we now have sufficient anecdotal evidence to embrace this change. And there is also sufficient quantitative and qualitative supportive data that we can move into the rap arena with comfort.One of the early entries into this field was Dr. Nichole Pinkard of the University of Michigan, author of "Learning to Read in Culturally Responsive Computer Environments," who developed the Rappin' Reader computer-based learning environment in 1996. Rappin' Reader has experienced success by having students write their own lyrics to familiar rap music. In more general terms, the Harvard Graduate School of Education with its Project Zero research is examining the role of the arts in learning with the goal of creating learning experiences that are engaging and exciting for children. Researchers have closely examined the effectiveness of dance as a learning medium and so they can't be that far from discovering rap as an exciting, engaging learning model. Right?Of more recent vintage a Hip-Hop Studies Working Group at the University of California, Berkley, are turning toward the hip-hop culture in academic disciplines ranging from sociology to law, ethnomusicology to history, and education to African-American studies. In the forefront of this new generation of hip-hop scholars is Kofe-Charu Nat Turner who has taught and studied in Ghana and Japan. "Hip-hop is the primary language students bring with them to school," says Turner. "To ignore the language and the existence of hip-hop culture altogether is a failure to provide equal education under the law." Another member of this group, Erinn Ransom, comments: "Using hip-hop in the curriculum will help bridge the divide between the 'academic' and the 'real world.' It can ground theories that may seem to pertain only to dead European thinkers with what is happening here today."Frankly, my own findings from working with Native American reservation schools is more akin to Turner, Ransom and their group than to the more traditional and classical ilk like James B. Conant and Howard Gardner that represents Harvard so well. Children in our reservation communities are so swamped by failure and illiteracy that they are committing suicide in record numbers. On the reservations we don't worry about No Child Left Behind because they are killing themselves; 43 in 2005. But like America's other children in the urban centers and white suburbia, Native American children are deeply enmeshed in hip-hop. I introduced them to hip-hop music with educational lyrics and they responded immediately. It is amazing.There is a teacher in Southgate Public Schools in the downriver area of Metro Detroit who has also had great success in engaging students using educational hip-hop. Mr. Duey (www.mrduey.com ), also a rap musician, has cut a CD of educational hip-hop for his students and shared it with other teachers with amazing results.As an associate professor of teacher education at Eastern Michigan University, I have introduced many, many children to educational hip-hop and have watched with amazement as they learn mathematical, grammatical and science concepts previously far beyond their grasp. I can cite several instances where standardized test scores have increased 10 percent or more for students introduced to educational rap. I believe!Since 1986, because of the No Child Left Behind initiative, I have traveled all over the United States as a consultant at Indian reservations, exclusive prep schools, and more recently to the North Central Accreditation Association. America has been battling to win the hearts and minds of students and we are losing the battle. In recent years I have been working with Kathy Walsh in using pop culture items such as hoola hoops and silly string spray and other things kids are into when not in school. We set up two control groups, one in which rap music was played and the other where it was not and there was a significant achievement gain in the rap music group.At educational conferences I present on educational hip-hop and regularly have 200 or more educators attending my "You've Gotta Reach 'Em to Teach 'Em" sessions while other sessions down the hall draw 20-30 attendees. This shows that teachers are hungry for the truth and are hungry to understand human frailty and how to offer hope and success to our children. During my childhood the educational reform of the moment did not come from Harvard or Yale but from Public Television. Millions of children sat spellbound every day with eyes and ears glued to Sesame Street. Repetition was the tool used and music was the means employed to deliver repetition. Remember, "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things is just not the same?" The success of Sesame Street in teaching preschoolers and preparing them for school was obvious; far too obvious to the curriculum leaders of that time. The keys were repetition and incorporating learning material into tunes kids loved.And isn't this exactly the same powerful force, 50 years later, that rap music brings to the table? Without repetition, rap would not be rap. So all we have to do is lay out our learning objectives, write words that fuel those objectives, and match the words with the hip-hop beat and we are sliding into home plate! "Rap is an action word. Clap is an action word. An action word isa verb. So when I say I'm 'bout to rap, you say that's a verb, andwhen you make your hands clap, I'll say that's a verb." Mr. DueySome of my students know me as The Grandma of Bad Rap. I write my own rap and sing it in class and students LOL which is great because we just connected and while they are laughing I am taking giant steps over a bridge so I am close enough to touch them. For more than 35 years now I have been a classroom teacher, administrator, counselor, coach, professor of teacher education, and consultant. But today I take more pride in being a Bad Rapper.As we measure the success of No Child Left Behind we must not only concern ourselves with how many are left behind but who are left behind and why. But is it really the children who are left behind? For today's generation those who do not embrace educational hip-hop are truly the ones left behind; not the kids. We should have adapted hip-hop into our curriculum yesterday but there is still time and still opportunity. And to end on a silly note, when you add 'e' for education to "hop" we are left with hope!


Source: Articles Universe: http://articlesuniverse.com


Dr. Elizabeth Johnson, Ed D, is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education, Eastern Michigan University, with an expertise in instruction and urban education. She is President of Extreme Teaching for Extreme Times! LLC. Dr. Johnson has been a contributing author on many projects, including Barbara Bush's test "Education and the Family" and "Teaching to the Heart of the Child." Awards received include People Magazine's "Above & Beyond International Service Award", the Martin Luther King Humanita

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