The culture of the 21st century seems to be in a continuous change
and its impact on youth education can no longer be ignored. Should
education nowadays be a mixture of both formal and informal means' Does
Renaissance painting and art, for example, have any meaning in today's
educational curriculum' Should education be more close to youth culture by
providing 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 find
answers to these questions by closely analyzing a new program developed in
El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, a public high school in Brooklyn
where writing graffiti is just one of the classes taught in an attempt
towards 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 of
urban culture is closer to students. Indeed, they see it everywhere in
their neighborhood: at school, at home, at parties, on the street, etc. It
is omnipresent. For an encounter with Renaissance art or with Baroque
architecture or with any other form of culture for that matter, you have to
take a trip to the Guggenheim or spent a few hours in the library. While
with urban and popular culture, it is part of everyday life.
Second of all, the culture of graffiti and rap is seen as a suitable
form of manifestation that would take students away from anti social
behavior and canalize their energy towards different interests. And, as
the sustainers of this program argument, why not rap and why not graffiti
and 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 form
desired. What would be the scope...