Hip+Hop+in+the+Classroom

The title of the article that I am exploring is //The tale of the Talent Night Rap: Hip-Hop Culture in Schools and the Challenge of Interpretation// written by Bronwen E. Low. The purpose and topic that Low is discussing is the correlation between culture and the classroom and the affect that they may or may not have on each other. The question that he purposes to us is how teacher and students are affected between the growing connection between Hip Hop and schooling. This article is broken into categories such as hip-hop histories, and hip hop pedagogues giving the reader background information on the topic and the hip hop culture. The variables that are measured in this piece include how enthusiastic urban teens are for hip hop, and the reaction that older faculty have towards the hip hop culture. In order to operationalize how enthusiastic the students were towards hip hop, the writer held a spoken word experiment where he taught a 7 week spoken word curriculum. Spoken word can be associated with hop hop a lot of times. This in turn help to operationalize how older (typically white) administrators felt about this because of the tension that grew around this topic and this class. Because hip hop has primarily been a "black" art form, whites are less inclined to feel comfortable when brought into a classroom setting. They analyze the data that was found by comparing what they saw to a critical discourse analysis of CDA. The data proved that it is not the hip hop music that puts administrators on guard, it is the affect that it can have. Young teens tend to get excited and feel free when listening to hip hop. This excitement most often times is misinterpreted as chaos and loss of controls for the administrators. A question that Low would need to consider is does this same affect happen in both rural and urban schools. My own thinking was effected by this article because it reminded me that people are still instinctively afraid of what they don't understand.

Low, B. (2010). The Tale of the Talent Night Rap: Hip-Hop Culture in Schools and the Challenge of Interpretation. //Urban Education//, //45//(2), 194-220. doi:10.1177/0042085908322713.