From Books to Bars
“To many people, the outside person would look into my classroom and think, there is no learning going on there, it is loud and it is not academic. But I see it as organized noise. I see it as students putting everything they’ve got into learning.”
These are the words of award-winning author and Associate Professor of Educational Theory & Practice at the University of Georgia,Bettina Love, during her 2014 TedTalk. Throughout her presentation, she passionately advocates for students using Hip Hop to embody characteristics of grit along with social and emotional intelligence, all proven precursors for academic success. Having a deep history in the world of academia, Bettina Love argues that “ignoring students’ culture in the classroom is all but an oversight; it’s discrimination and injustice that plays out in our culture in very dangerous ways.” The traditional American education system quite often enforces one narrow method of retaining information. Very rarely do you see a teacher truly embrace the auditory realm of higher learning through music, specifically Hip Hop. Instead, our society has a propensity to recycle the exhausted stereotypical tropes regarding Hip Hop Culture as proxy for deep-seated prejudice.
But we’ve all seen just how Hip Hop can revolutionize one’s learning experience when applied to the world of education and storytelling. Take the Broadway hit Hamilton, for instance. A musical that insidiously combines the provocative world of Hip Hop with the retelling of the birth of our nation’s most fundamental values and documentations. The entire world, including many high school AP Government students, latched onto this ingenious alternative to consuming a history lecture. Or take the thriving program entitled Science Genius, created by Columbia professor Christopher Emdin in which ten New York City high school classes have been writing raps as a way to learn about science.
There are so many more innovative initiatives and programs that are working to peel away the negative connotations of Hip Hop and formulate a new narrative. One that enriches and incites an invigorating learning experience that all students—not just ones of color—can enjoy. It is up to us to realize that our education system is the number one driving force of national productivity. It is the fuel that drives our country forward. It is the motor that powers our overall higher living standard, and therefore, it should be everything but esoteric and one-dimensional. It should seek to reach every corner of the world and entrench the minds of every student regardless of their race, color, or creed. The only way to do this is to revolutionize our confined scope of what education should look like by painting a new canvas. A canvas that uses out of the box rhymes and melodious cadences to create, as Dr. Love would put it, “organized noise” within the classroom.
