Discussion Boards

The alternative you describe as a "real critical pedagogy" is intriguing, but how do you go about implementing it? Using your own hypothetical examples, how do you frame the mysoginist or heterosexist song effectively so that the students' understanding of the work -- as literature, or as an example of free speech in a democratic society -- is enlarged?

I think Jeff said something right on at the conference when he said that one of the key jobs teachers have is to help students critically approach the texts they encounter in their worlds, especially those in popular and electronic culture that have become so pervasive for young people.

Today I was saw two students, one male, one female, both Black, looking at a Ying Yang Twins website. The chorus to the Ying Yang Twins' new hit is "wait 'til you see my dick, bitch, wait 'til you see my dick." I asked them if they liked that song. The girl giggled and the guy said he used to, but doesn't anymore. It was like the elephant in the room between them, that they were admiring these rappers even though they put out demeaning, misogynist music. But at the same time, it was what the kids think you have to listen to if you want to be cool, or more specifically, if you want to be Black and keeping it real. So we had a brief conversation about what was good about their music and what we didn't like. That was all it took, but then again it was one of those "teachable moments" when teaching is easy.

What is more challenging, and more neccessary as well, is to create classrooms where these kinds of discussions happen regularly and are central to the curriculum. To do that we have to allow in the texts that students are encountering (which means challenging the head-in-the-sand censorship of most schools), and give students guidance and practice at being critical. I start my 9th graders with the chapter from Literacy With an Attitude on the classism of schools. My partner Patrick Camagian has his seniors reading Paulo Friere. Armed with this kind of theory (scaffolded as neccessary) students can then take on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, The Ying Yang Twins, television news, commercials, and their history teachers.

Which brings me to your point about free speech and to the very idea of democracy preservation. I'm inclined to tell my students that America has never had very much democracy to preserve and even less free speech. At least where I work in Watts, these are the kinds of truths we have to prepare students to understand. How you going to tell a bunch of students in a community full of felons and undocumented workers that we live in a democracy? How you going to tell a student whose only access to media is corporate television that we have free speech? How you going to tell a student who gets suspended for graffitti that they have free speech?

One of the powerful messages of Hip Hop is "don't believe the hype." And all this nonsense of America being a free and democratic society is obviously bullshit when you're dealing with a cop at the corner of Grape Street and 103rd who's asking you, "where you from?" so they can put you into the Cal/Gang database. We need to teach students that what is obvious to them is true, no matter how much others try to spin it into the opposite. If no one in your family can vote but you're told you live in a democracy, how do you reconcile that? We need to teach kids to see through the national rhetoric. A great book on this point is Literacies of Power by Donaldo Macedo. I think Chuck D and Donaldo Macedo would agree, we need to teach our students that we don't need a National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, we need a National Center for the Eradication of Plutocracy. That's the kind of "real" critical pedagogy we teachers can be practicing.