Well this may be the only time I am on this site but I did have to express my views on this article. I honestly think she missed the entire point. When you read in school it isn't completely about the material. So sleeping with you mother, sleeping with animals and homosexuality is an okay thing to read about in school? In school I remember reading about kids having affairs with their mothers, homosexuality in mythology as well as in Shakespeare. People being stoned in a Lottery. When we read these pieces it was about the scenery, motifs, and how it was written and also why it was written. I honestly think that 2Pac can inspire young people to talk and actually read and comprehend what they are reading. Inspire a thought process instead of being spoon fed the same information.
The only problem with this is that kids "reading" this crap are not really reading. Somehow, somewhere teachers got some wild-eyed notion that kids should be taught about the real world in school. No, kids need to be taught how to read, write and count numbers in school. The real world will be there for them when they are done with the education.
The dumbing down of America is what this is all about. If kids get the idea that something like this is considered "good" then there is a lesser incentive to learn. I had this argument with my evil, blood-sucking liberal mother-in-law when she argued that I shouldn't punish the kids for ill behavior because, in her words, "Oh, you did the same thing when you were that age." The job of any parent and teacher requires a certain amount of hypocrisy. Otherwise known as "learning from one's mistakes. You learn from personal experience that you should or should not do something and you use that experience to educate your children. Even though we may trip and stumble through life, we know what is right and wrong. If we stop trying to teach what is right and wrong, both morally and institutionally, then there is no future.
Teach kids classic culture with a heavy dose of Latin and then let them go and write all the crap they want. Chances are that if they are taught the classics they would, in most cases, ignore 2PAC and all the other wino thugs hanging out on the corner with their brown bags complaining about "the man holdin' us back".
Of course, this is just my correct humble opinion.
Yeah, inspire them to talk like buffons. You just admitted to being an idiot.