- Our 21st century students are great consumers. They are saturated with information, media, and layers of subtext. If we don’t ask them to critique different kinds of media, to “read” the world through a critical lens, we aren’t teaching literacy at all. They must become producers of new knowledge and new understandings, new texts and new meanings.
If I pedagogically ignored Kendrick’s album release at a time when my students were reading Toni Morrison alongside articles about Mike Brown, Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter – and considering the disposability of black bodies in an America that constructs a standard of beauty based solely on whiteness – I would have missed an opportunity to engage them in a pivotal conversation about race, hope, and justice. I would have missed an opportunity to speak to their hip-hop sensibilities – their hip-hop ways of being and knowing. I would have missed a chance to develop a set of profound connections to a popular culture text that is part of their lives.
The politics of hip hop education are complex. Students are assigned Vonnegut for summer reading, complete with multiple uses of the word “fuck” and a voyeuristic sexual scene that makes many adults uncomfortable, but we allow this, and in fact require it, because Vonnegut is white. He’s been accepted into the literary canon, and thus, his writing is considered “high art.” Hip hop is still the subject of intense, misdirected hatred and discrimination in schools. We aren’t protecting students from vulgarity when we forbid hip hop in the classroom. We are protecting ourselves from our fears about race – while simultaneously robbing our students of authentic opportunities to think critically about the media they consume. Literacy in the 21st century means bringing all different kinds of “text” into the classroom – especially hip hop.
That's pretty disrespectful to Vonnegut. I had to learn Toni Morrisson when I was in college. It was a white teacher teaching white students (maybe other races, it was 10 years ago) and we all learned Beloved. Did we read it because Toni Morrisson is black? Honestly, I didn't know if she was really black or not just now and didn't want to embarrass myself and so I had to look it up. We read it because it was a good book. I just read Slaughterhouse V for the first time coincidentally today. It's an ambitious book too, taking on war and writing in a way that was pretty avant garde for the time (won the Hugo and Nebula I believe). That's why I read it. Not because he was white.
That's not what the quote says at all. It's saying we accept Vonnegut's vulgarity because his work is considered "high art," not that we only read him because he's white. The claim is that studying certain hip-hop is valuable in spite of its vulgarity, and that the reason we find it hard to overlook the vulgarity is that its considered somehow baser than the writing of (a notably white) Vonnegut. We study art because it's beautiful, profound, or otherwise "good." We should not overlook art just because it's vulgar, whether you're talking about Vonnegut or Kendrick. Did you read the whole post?
I did read the whole post. You don't have to be disrespectful to make your point. The lady outright says that we accept Vonnegut despite his use of the word fuck because he is white. I'm saying that we accept him because he is a good writer and that we should study high art like you said. And besides, even if he is white and is accepted as part of the literary canon, his book is commonly banned from schools specifically because of the use of the word fuck and its sexual situations.
Didn't intend disrespect; I was genuinely curious. If I wanted to be snarky, it'd be much clearer than that. I would need to get almost meaninglessly technical to refute the rest of your argument, so whatever. The long and short is that the two sentences in your second paragraph aren't contradictory. PS Not a ladyI did read the whole post. You don't have to be disrespectful to make your point.
The follow up is also very good, and linked at the bottom of the blog post. The teacher also brings in "Roots", which if you've never seen is a great documentary. This is how you get kids to learn - Find a way to engage them, and give them the ability to relate themselves to the subjects of study, and to real life. My music history teacher always started talking about a new composer by going through their "life story" if you will. I learned about Vivaldi being a dirty ginger; Lully stamping his own foot with his conducting staff, getting gangrene and dying I learned about Bach going to jail, quitting jobs, taking way too much time off and having 20 kids; I learned about Brahms and Clara Schumann's star-crossed love, which never came to fruition. The very first lecture we ever had she played a bunch of music of varying genres, and related them all - from This to This (which have more musically in common than you would think). My teacher made those people come alive for me. They weren't just names on compositions, they were busts made flesh, with human emotions, wants, needs and desires, reaching out from 100 years and more to connect with me, the listener. Hopefully this teacher can inspire their students the way my teacher inspired me.
It's off topic, but can you elaborate a bit on what Passacaille in g-minor has in common with Crabbuckit?
A few things!! (Music nerdery ahead - fair warning to everyone else) The biggest one is that both of them are using "ground bass" lines i.e. bass lines that repeat over and over and over again, but they also both (originally) contain "blue" notes, or notes that don't fit into standard western harmony as we know it, usually 7ths that are flatter than they should be. In Crabbuckit, there's these sort of "cluster chord"-y piano shots that are pretty dissonant. It's a technique popularized by Thelonious Monk to try to imitate notes that can't be played on a piano. These same notes also appear on Harpsichords, or did. When harpsichords were in fashion, the tuning system we use today wasn't around. In our tuning system, 5ths are "squeezed", so that we can play all 12 keys on one keyboard. the fifths were more "pure" in their tuning system - but that also meant that when you started to go into keys with more sharps or more flats in the key signature, the notes start to get more and more squirrelly. Here's an example of a few different old school tunings. I know, I know, it's Pachabel's Canon, but the video illustrates what I'm talking about really well. Hear some of the "weird", "out of tune" notes? especially as it starts to add more accidentals? This stuff happens especially in minor keys, and often composers would use those notes on purpose, just to twist the knife a little bit. So both pieces are using different techniques to attain those "blue" notes, just as blues guitarists do when they bend notes. Here's more on Bach's tuning stuff. I could read this shit all day.