“The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.”- Audre Lorde
In this impassioned talk Dr. Bettina L. Love explains how students who identify with Hip Hop culture have been ignored or deemed deficient in schools because of mainstream misconceptions associated with Hip Hop culture. Through Hip Hop, these students embody the characteristics of grit, social and emotional intelligence, and the act improvisation- all of which are proven to be predictors for academic success. So where is the break down between formalized education and the potential for success for these students? Dr. Love argues that ignoring students' culture in the classroom is all but an oversight; it's discrimination and injustice that plays out in our culture in very dangerous ways.
Dr. Love is an award winning author and Associate Professor of Educational Theory and Practice at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on the ways in which urban youth negotiate Hip Hop music and culture to form social, cultural, and political identities to create new and sustaining ways of thinking about urban education and social justice. Her research is focused on transforming urban classrooms through the use of non-traditional educational curricula and classroom structures.
"When we deny students the opportunity to express their culture in classrooms we are spirit murdering them. When I am asking you every day to walk through that door and be something that you are not, I am murdering your spirit. When I am asking you to stop being who you are so I can do my job, I am taking away something from you and I am murdering your spirit piece by piece"
Extremely interesting talk. Something to think about.
-- Visit "Real Talk: Hip Hop Education for Social Justice"
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