Dumbed Down and Dumber Still

The American Prowler ^ | Wednesday, January 15, 2003 | By George Neumayr

[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.

[Adder]

Sadly, you are right. By North American Union, I take it you are referring to our new status as a mere region under the leadership of the UN, those all knowing all seeing all wise leaders who have done so much in all they have touched....like in Africa.
No one seems to care that our children are dumber than posts...officially, anyway. The pliant masses fed on soy mix and video circuses can't even murmur in protest as the last vestiges are usurped by the UN and the liberty bell is housed in some museum in China.

[asformeandformyhouse]

Californians are rapidly approaching that glorious day when students can pursue doctoral studies in hip hop.

They can stand in the unemployment line with all of the 'Women's Studies' grads.

[Fraulein]

These students cannot analyze hip-hop lyrics, for example, unless they are first properly given the tools with which to analyze.

Oops, I forgot. Anything the student says, goes; and it is correct. A's for all!

[Peacerose]

This is truly horrifying! No wonder so many Californians are moving to Nevada!

[Fraulein]

...that glorious day when students can pursue doctoral studies in hip hop.

They already could write a dissertation on hip-hop culture in, say, the Sociology department. However, they will end up in the unemployment lines since they will not be able to even write an article well enough for Rolling Stone...

[Fraulein]

...that glorious day when students can pursue doctoral studies in hip hop.

They already could write a dissertation on hip-hop culture in, say, the Sociology department. However, they will end up in the unemployment lines since they will not be able to even write an article well enough for Rolling Stone...

[Kozak]

They can stand in the unemployment line with all of the 'Women's Studies' grads

Thats "Womyn's Studies" you sexist racist elitist fascist oppresive pig. They wouldn't allow a "men" in them even in the spelling.....

[sneakypete]

By North American Union, I take it you are referring to our new status as a mere region under the leadership of the UN

Yup,the new "uber-nation" that result from the joining of the US with Canada and Mexico. Maybe they will call it the "United States of North America" instead of the "North American Union", but it amounts to the same thing.

[Stand Watch Listen]

Thanks for the heads-up...appreciate it.

Here are links to various education threads (also containing numerous helpful links)

FReegards

Washington's education establishment
Source: TownHall.com; Published: January 8, 2003; Author:Walter Williams

NEA Hastens Death of American Education
Source: INSIGHT magazine; Published: January 6, 2003; Author: Ralph de Toledano

Fiddling whilst Rome burns
Source: TownHall.com; Published: December 26, 2002; Author: Walter Williams

Government School Monopolies Leave Children Behind
Source: Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty; Published: December 4, 2002; Author: Clint Green

The silence of the lambs: McMillan blasts bureaucrats for destroying public education
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: August 15, 2002; Author: Craige McMillan

Taking Charge: Let's Stop Aiding and Abetting Academicians' Folly
Source: HOME EDUCATION magazine; Published: July-August 2002; Author: Larry and Susan Kaseman

’Open Directory’ --Society/Issues/Education/Education_Reform

Deconstructing Public Education
Source: www.newsmax.com; Published: July 26, 2002; Author: Diane Alden

Specious Science In Our Schools
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: July 9, 2002; Author: Alan Caruba

SYMPOSIUM Q: Is the National Education Association Being Fair to Its Religious Objectors?
Source: INSIGHT magazine; Published: June 10, 2002; Authors NO: Stefan Gleason ////\\\\ YES: Bob Chase

Public Sector Subverting Productive Industry
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: May 16, 2002; Author: Henry Pelifian

History of America's Education Part 2: Noah Webster and Early America
Source: Sierra Times; Published: March 27, 2002; Author: April Shenandoah

How Communist is Public Education?
Source: sierratimes.com; Published:March 22, 2002; Author: Chuck Morse

History of America's Education Part 1: Johnny is in trouble
Source: Sierra Times; Published: March 20, 2002; Author: April Shenandoah

Audit rips Georgia schools' curriculum
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Published: March 11, 2002; Author:JAMES SALZER

Why schools fail: Samuel Blumenfeld warns Bush's education legislation is ineffective
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: March 2, 2002; Author: Samuel Blumenfeld

Public School Isn't Like I Remember It
Source: Too Good Reports; Published: February 28, 2002; Author: Phyllis Schlafly

What Is Lacking In Our Educational System
Source: Too Good Reports; Published: February 28, 2002; Author: Ben Cerruti

The charade of education reform
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: February 2, 2002; Author: Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld

American public schools: Working just as designed
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: January 21, 2002; Author: Vox Day

High Schools Fail Thanks To Grade Inflation And Social Promotion
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: December 5, 2001; Author: Vin Suprynowicz

WHY AMERICANS CAN’T READ
Source: Accuracy in Media; Published: December 4, 2001; Author: Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid

The Failing Teacher and the Teachers' Code of Silence
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: December 3, 2001; Author: Glenn Sacks

Time for outrage! Linda Bowles reports latest results in America's public schools
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: November 27, 2001; Author: Linda Bowles

Illiterate in Boston: Samuel Blumenfeld explains U.S.'s ongoing reading problem
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: July 20, 2001; Author: Samuel Blumenfeld

NEA - Let our children go!
Source: WorldNet Daily; Published: June 23. 2001; Author: Linda Harvey

COOKING THE BOOKS AT EDUCATION
Source: Accuracy In Media; Published: June 5, 2001; Author: Cliff Kincaid

Why Do Schools Play Games With Students' Minds ?
Source: The Detroit News; Published: April 1, 2001; Author: Thomas Sowell

The Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
Source: http://home.talkcity.com/LibraryDr/patt/homeschl.htm; Author: John Taylor Gatto

Dumbing down teachers
Source: USNews.com; Published: February 21, 2001; Author: John Leo

Free Republic links to education related articles (thread#8)
Source: Free Republic; Published: 3-20-2001; Author: Various

Are children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school? {YES!!!}
Source: World Net Daily; Published: May 13, 2001; Author: Geoff Metcalf {Interview}

Could they really have done it on purpose?
Source: THE LIBERTARIAN; Published: 07/28/2000; Author: Vin Suprynowicz

New Book Explores America's Education Catastrophe
Source: Christian Citizen USA; Published: April 2000; Author: William H. Wild

Deliberately dumbing us down (Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: December 2,1999; Author: Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Deconstructing the Western Mind: Gramscian-Marxist Subversion of Faith and Education
Source: www.petersnet; Published: Winter 1997; Author: Frank Morriss

Littleton Crisis to Government Control

The UN Plan for Your Mental Health

Lexington Institute

NonPartisan Action For a Better Redding

Quality of Education Commentary, Opinion, and Book Reviews