Toward a Philosophy of Hip-Hop Education

Abstract

Hip-hop and the classroom can seem uneasy, not to say unnatural, bedfellows. Firmly embedded notions of canonicity and classroom-appropriate language left un-critiqued leave little room for hip-hop in either its popular form or its more intellectually savvy underground manifestations. Educators with boots on the ground in the inner city however, are confronted with an anything-but-ideal reality: America’s education system, especially in the inner city, is, no matter how you judge it, failing to produce high percentages of passably competent students. ¹ Results-based education, an unfortunate byproduct of the No Child Left Behind policy that rewards high-performing schools while punishing poor performing ones. ² The edifice of new educational systems—when it is constructed at all—must be constructed upon the ruins of the last one. Such an interpretation often serves as justification for the total and systematic dismantling of public education (which I am not a proponent of) but it does buttress the fact that resources, or the lack thereof, render these failing ³ schools as vulnerable. Students have been guided to the place we meet them now by educators equipped with few tools to engage urban youth in a language that resonates with them, and the failures of such a longstanding disconnect are present in the classroom.