Week 3: Hip-Hop Language & Pop Culture in the Classroom

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Key/Critical Issues in the Readings:

One of the major issues that the readings for Week 3 focused on was the complexity of modes of popular culture, especially hip-hop, and the need to recognize these modes of popular culture in the classroom.  In part, this is an argument to include and validate various forms of popular expression, however, it is also an argument to shift our thinking about what constitutes “school knowledge.” As Pennycook explains, “Rather than viewing hip-hop as a hook to motivate students or as a cultural archive to be included in the curriculum, they [those who participate in hip-hop pedagogies] look outward into the larger world of which classrooms are a part.  As they do so, they shift a sense of what school knowledge is and of how it relates to the larger context” (148). 

Expanding the definition of “school knowledge” is particularly important for these authors in the realm of language education.  Specifically, they argue against teaching/promoting only the standard dialect in the language classroom because of the ways in which language use is involved in identity formation.  As Pennycook explains, “a performative understanding of language suggests that identities are formed in the linguistic performance rather than pregiven, and that language use is an act of identity which calls that language into being” (157).  Further, “to exclude the popular from educational contexts is to reject student culture and difference” (Pennycook 144).  Further, just as language use in and of itself has ideological underpinnings, so too does the teaching of language.  As H. Samy Alim points out, “language pedagogies are inherently ideological, enforcing certain norms at the expense of others” (166).  Therefore, as a group, these articles and book chapters seek to promote a broader understanding of language and culture and their uses in the classroom for positive student identity formation.

Questions/Concerns About the Readings:

In his article concerning (in part) the ways in which a group of continental African students were co-opted into Black American culture by others, Awad El Karim M. Ibrahim defines the term “social imaginary.”  He explains that the “social imaginary” is “a discursive space or a representation in which they [the students] are already constructed, imagined, and positioned and thus are treated by the hegemonic discourses and dominant groups, respectively as Blacks” (353).  The problem, of course, in this is that “this positionality…does not acknowledge the differences in the students’ ethnicities, languages, nationalities, and cultural identities” (353).  

One major question for me this week is this:  by assuming that our students all have access to elements/modes of popular culture, like hip-hop, aren’t we as instructors creating a “social imaginary” too?

For example, Alim declares that the current group of students is a “hip-hop generation” (167) and claims that although he does begin linguistic activities with his students by “raising students’ awareness to the variety of lexical innovations within hip-hop culture” that in any case “of course, most students are already aware of this, because they actively participate in these innovations” (170, my emphasis). Maybe most of his students are already aware, but my guess is that this changes classroom to classroom. My guess is that he has a preconceived notion of what the students will and won’t be aware of and acts accordingly. Of course, on some level this is inescapable, but it seems like something that we should try to pay particular attention to as instructors. I want to make sure to illustrate that I don’t mean to claim that raising awareness of BSE or hip-hop culture in traditionally non-BSE communities or classrooms is not a productive and useful activity of cultural awareness.  I think it is. It is just that we need to be careful of the expectations that we have of our students.  We have to remember, as Ibrahim notes of his students the “differences in the students’ ethnicities, languages, nationalities, and cultural identities” (353).     

Pennycook admits that utilizing hip-hop/pop culture might be problematic for some students: “students from non-mainstream backgrounds may not have easy access to the cultural resources of other students.  It may be important, therefore, both to assist those students with gaining such access and to be cautious about shared popular cultural references across a diverse student body” (145). I’m not sure exactly who he means by “non-mainstream backgrounds.” Students from religious backgrounds that prohibit immersion in pop culture? ESL students? Students that live in small, racially and culturally homogenous communities? Middle-class white kids from the suburbs? I dunno. In any case, his solution is “to assist those students with gaining access.”

So my other major question is this, how are we as instructors supposed to assist these students if we are not “in the know” ourselves? Does this mean that we all need to take classes on pop culture or watch MTV consistently to be good, thoughtful teachers?