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Posted on 01/15/2003 2:12:18 AM PST by JohnHuang2
| What qualifies as a "teaching tool" in California's public schools? Everything from condoms to hip hop to anti-war polemics. Students no longer have to wait until after school to wallow in youth culture. They can immerse themselves in it all day long -- and their teachers will cheer them on. Do youth really need education in youth culture? Yes, because that's "relevant" to them, say California teachers. Gone from their minds is the crazy notion that teachers should help their students transcend youth culture. In the educational enlightenment of South Los Angeles, Crenshaw High School students don't have to turn off Tupac Shakur's "Shorty Wanna Be a Thug." They can listen to it in English class. Tupac is a teacher too, says Crenshaw English teacher Patrick Camangian. "In order for students to understand anyone else's poetic language, they have to first understand their own," he explained to the Los Angeles Times. Such Shakur lines as "Blaze up, gettin' with hos through my pager" are rich with poetic meaning, says Camangian. And apparently more and more education schools agree. The Times reports that some are "training future educators to weave rap into high school lessons." Californians are rapidly approaching that glorious day when students can pursue doctoral studies in hip hop. Stanford offers a course in it, reports the Times, and U.C. Berkeley "has a poetry course devoted to Shakur's work." Hip hop is literature, a "worthy subject of study in its own right," say Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell, who teach an English course at an Oakland high school. Student Lisa Moore nods in agreement. "As far as Shakespeare goes, we can't relate to that. We can relate to what's going on now," she said to the Times. Students, according to one teacher, may even travel from Tupac to Twelfth Night and other older works. "When students see Tupac is writing about the same things that William Black wrote about, it suddenly makes the poetry of these old, dead white guys much more accessible," he says. This is ludicrous, but then teachers have to fake up some rationale for puzzled parents. Pretty much anything counts as poetry in California. Quincy T. Troupe became California's poet laureate after writing "Take It to the Hoop, Magic Johnson." He also penned a French rhyme about Michael Jordan. He got bounced from his position after Gray Davis aides discovered that he hadn't graduated from Grambling University, but his educational theories posed no problem. California teachers marveled at his bracing insights. One was that he didn't think California students needed to learn proper English. He wanted them to learn "American," reasoning that "We are speaking the American language. I know white people in the United States, especially the English people, are connected to the navel. A lot of people are not connected. The ones who came over from England are connected to the navel of England, the Queen and all that. I'm not connected to that." "I'm into what is going on over here," he said. "The cross-fertilization of Asians and Latin-Americans and people from the Middle East and everybody coming to this country, and the Native Americans, cross-fertilizing this language with different words and sound and cadences, ways of saying things, does not make it the English language anymore. It makes it the American language. Maybe in another twenty or fifty years, we're going to need translators when we go to England. And I don't see anything wrong with that." Building a Tower of Babel excites educators but not parents. Yet how can they tell their children not to listen to rap when their teachers are ladling it down their throats? California parents find themselves in the strange position of having to tell teachers not to listen to rap. Parents recently rebuked teachers in the Bay Area after they proposed an anti-war rally as a teaching tool. The teachers invoked "relevance" again as a justification for adolescent agitating. "The major problem about U.S. schools is that they're too removed from engaging students in the world around them," said a Bay Area teacher. "This is just one instance in how teachers should be engaging their students to see how history is not just something of the past but it's something they create." Besides, said another teacher, "urban students are the ones most at risk with any kind of military buildup. Funding cuts are felt there first." The children of the sixties are many of the California teachers of today. And they are not much more mature than their students. The teachers say that their students only "relate" to youth culture. But the real reason they use it as a "teaching tool" is that they never left it. George Neumayr, a writer in southern California, is a frequent contributor to The American Prowler. |
Way to go, Magic, you caught the world's first politically-correct venereal disesase.
Of course, everybody knows that his nickname 'Magic' is an abbreviation for "My a$$ got infected, coach".
Yes, and Satanism is simply misunderstood, Vampires really just "need a hug", and basically everything you ever understood is right is actually wrong and so forth.
And so we march gleefully into the inferno...
uh,...that wouldn't be William Blake would it? (The illuminated 'Hey, ho, suck my oppressed d*ck')
And anyway, where's the Huge Projectile Vomiting alert this piece demands?
And anyway, I believe what most of us speak and write here in the States is known as English in 'standard American usage'.
And anyway, just in case there was anyone who needed more reason to pull their kids from public classrooms, here are the profoundly retarded Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks. The children of the sixties are many of the California teachers of today. And they are not much more mature than their students. The teachers say that their students only "relate" to youth culture. But the real reason they use it as a "teaching tool" is that they never left it.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms." Hip hop is literature, a "worthy subject of study in its own right," say Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell, who teach an English course at an Oakland high school. Student Lisa Moore nods in agreement. "As far as Shakespeare goes, we can't relate to that. We can relate to what's going on now," she said to the Times.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV. "Blaze up, gettin' with hos through my pager"
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over. "This is just one instance in how teachers should be engaging their students to see how history is not just something of the past but it's something they create."
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents. California parents find themselves in the strange position of having to tell teachers not to listen to rap.
No, William Black, the guy who wrote:
Tyger, tyger, burning bright
Grabbed my Glock, shot out his lights...
What immortal hand or eye
Capped yo' ass in that drive-by?
I think he was from England or something... ;-)
From the gooberment's point of view,it may be dangerous for these kids to actually learn how to think. They are already being educated at the level the gooberment needs them to be educated at in order for them to become employees of the "North American Union".
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