The changing face of American education
The culture of the 21st century seems to be in a continuous changeand its impact on youth education can no longer be ignored. Shouldeducation nowadays be a mixture of both formal and informal means' DoesRenaissance painting and art, for example, have any meaning in today'seducational curriculum' Should education be more close to youth culture byproviding subject closer to their life experience, such as the hip-hop The article An F for HIP HOP 101 by Heather Mac Donald tries to findanswers to these questions by closely analyzing a new program developed inEl Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, a public high school in Brooklynwhere writing graffiti is just one of the classes taught in an attempttowards a new, more progressive and youth approachable education scheme.The Hip-Hop 101 course teaches, besides graffiti writing, deejaying, break-dancing and any other forms of contemporaneous youth culture. The reasons for the course are several. First of all, this kind ofurban culture is closer to students. Indeed, they see it everywhere intheir neighborhood: at school, at home, at parties, on the street, etc. Itis omnipresent. For an encounter with Renais
Whilewith urban and popular culture, it is part of everyday life. But, as Miranda, teacher of the course explained, they saw the school astheir home and, of course, you do not paint on your own house. This is dangerous thinking: howcan one claim that it turns away students from committing crime, when initself it only encourages it, setting the children on violating privateproperty and minor terrorist acts as a form of protest' Thirdly, the tighter communication with students is bogus. sance art or with Baroquearchitecture or with any other form of culture for that matter, you have totake a trip to the Guggenheim or spent a few hours in the library. And, asthe sustainers of this program argument, why not rap and why not graffitiand why not break-dance' The young spirit can thus openly manifest itself,integrate with the culture it is part of and express itself in any formdesired. As for the canalization of students' energy towards forms of art andvisual expression such as graffiti, taking them away from more dangerous,anti-social behavior, this is clearly not the case. Progressivism education is aimed at addressing a set of students as beingpart of that set, in hope that this would be considered a more suitableapproach towards them. Thebrightness with which this was said points out to his character and logicof his assertions: it is of course wrong to paint on property, but only ifit is your own. As a high school teacher, how can you disconsider basic subjectsand decide that complementary courses such as the one described can alreadybe taught' We are not discussing here the interests of high schoolstudents, but the mission of the educators, that is to prepare students forlife. Being aware of it andgetting to know it better could be all for the best. After all, it is undeniable that urban culture is part of theculture of humanity and is a distinct current of it. The first reason of thisprogram would be that the urban culture is closer to students. We willattend to this issue later on. Does life in their case mean graffiti and hip-hop' Even if thisassumption could be true, the mission of any educator would be to give thestudent a chance to a higher education and to the possibility of achievingmore in life than the usual neighborhood life. No interest in the subject itself, no interest intaking assignments or discussing problems and no interest in the so highlyclaimed manifestation of spirit: almost nobody had done the graffitihomework they had.
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Acceptance Essays
