David Stovall

We Can Relate: Hip-Hop Culture, Critical Pedagogy, and the Secondary Classroom.

This article seeks to locate hip-hop in the realm of popular culture in education. Through the use of song lyrics, the author suggests the use of rap music to provide context for the humanities and social sciences in secondary curriculum. Using a theoretical and practical lens, the article argues for the use of hip-hop and other elements of popular culture to be utilized to develop relevant curriculum. Although the article highlights one aspect of hip-hop culture, it seeks to advocate for other creative techniques seeking to provide relevance for high school youth.

Actions Following Words: Critical race theory connects to critical pedagogy

(2004). Actions Following Words: Critical race theory connects to critical pedagogy. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 167-182.

‘Coming home’ to new homes and new schools: critical race theory and the new politics of containment

Older cities in the United States have long been trying to ‘bring back’ the middle class in order to increase tax base. The poor quality of schools and the presence of public housing often were cited as deterrents for attracting higher income families. When the 2000 Census data revealed improvements in many cities, some elected officials and scholars attributed the turnaround to policies such as those aimed at transforming public housing and urban schools. In this article the authors examine these strategies as they have played out in a Chicago community to illustrate how these policies also facilitate the displacement and containment of poor people of color. Utilizing critical race theory, they argue that race continues to guide both education and public housing policy in historically segregated places like Chicago, and that racism is masked by class claims that allow the interests of middle class to trump educational opportunities for poor.

A challenge to traditional theory: Critical race theory, African-American community organizers, and education

The following article, through the tenets of critical race theory, seeks to investigate the relationship between theory and practice in school–community relationships. By investigating the views, values, and perceptions of three African-American community organizers in Chicago, Illinois, the following account offers a “challenge” to traditional theoretical constructs in addressing the needs of students of color in urban schools. The work of community organizers in schools highlights the necessity of viable relationships between schools and communities in the execution of viable approaches to critically analyze the world of young people while developing practical approaches to address their realities. In an attempt to challenge hegemony in public education the author offers critical race theory as a feasible construct in praxis development.

Against the politics of desperation: educational justice, critical race theory, and Chicago school reform

As a center for education ‘reform’ in the United States, Chicago sheds light on state apparatuses seeking to end public education and replace it with market-driven ventures, largely by way of public–private partnerships. Critical to this process is the idea of ‘choice’ which has come to operate as a political device providing the illusion that students, parents, and families have options leading to educational improvement. In this article, Stovall pays specific attention to what he calls the politics of desperation, suggesting that entities such as central school offices and educational management organizations are using popular rhetoric coupled with marketing tools to solicit buy-in on their specific brand of educational improvement. He argues that this strategy targets groups facing uncertainty in education and housing, and who therefore attempt to navigate choices they have little say in defining. Instead of said improvements, Stovall contends we are witnessing a ‘more-of-the-same’ game, including dispossession and continued disenfranchisement of working-class communities of color. At the same time, he highlights the absolute necessity of resistance. Borrowing from Duncan-Andrades notion of critical hope, he suggests we must be painfully honest about current educational conditions, while also building grassroots networks that challenge these realities. Stovall identifies strategies and resources mobilized by Chicago residents through direct-action organizing, coalition building, and school–community partnerships to challenge neoliberal reform.

Knowing the ledge: participatory action research as legal studies for urban high school youth.

Zero-tolerance discipline policies, harsh sentencing laws, and the gentrification of communities of color have devastating effects for the lives of young people. Coupled with the fact that urban schools can devalue their views, values, and understandings of the world, this article examines an effort to challenge deficit theories that permeate discussions on urban youth. Through the setting of a street law class at a high school with a social justice focus, two facilitators (an African American male and a Latina of Puerto Rican descent, one a qualitative sociologist and the other a lawyer, both trained as qualitative researchers) and a group of high school freshmen analyze the processes of the judicial system to analyze their lives through the tenets of participatory action research.

Trayvon Martin and the curriculum of tragedy: critical race lessons for education

In what ways do the tragedies centered on the lives of black youth, particularly black male youth, inform teachers, education policymakers, and teacher educators about what knowledge is most worth knowing? In this counter/story, we will examine the details of the life and death of Trayvon Martin. From these details, we will extract and interpret a curriculum of tragedy that draws from Derrick Bell’s particular contributions to critical race theory (CRT) applies its central tenets. This article will conclude with lesson for black education for teachers, education policymakers and teacher educators.

Critical Literacy for Xenophobia: A Wake-Up Call

Critical literacy has been on the map of literacy pedagogy internationally since the time of Freire, and more commonplace in the United States in the last few decades. However, in this column the authors argue that the common practices of critical literacy are insufficient for critical engagement with texts. The tools of critical literacy are employed to explore ways in which recent legislation about immigration and ethnicity in Arizona is connected to racialized laws of exclusion and inclusion in the United States.

Hip Hop and Social Justice Education: A Brief Introduction

While rap music has been castigated in the popular media for its controversial lyrics, we seek to locate hip hop as a transformative element in the development of critical teaching and thinking. Although not considered a mainstream element of popular culture at its inception during the late 1970s, hip hop music and culture have developed into an international phenomenon critically centered in youth—and arguably adult—popular culture. As teachers concerned with developing critical learning search for innovative ways to introduce educational relevance, hip hop should be located in the range of approaches. The purpose of this special issue of Equity & Excellence in Education is to provide educational administrators, faculty, students, and practitioners with a series of articles intended to facilitate conversations and raise awareness of how hip hop can serve as a useful tool to bring student voices into the classroom, and to inform and influence curriculum, pedagogical practices, and the construction of knowledge. Since its inception, hip hop has been and continues to be a constructive and contested space for the historically oppressed and marginalized to both resist and challenge social ideologies, practices, and structures that have caused and maintained their subordinate position. These silenced voices have creatively and strategically utilized hip hop as a vehicle to showcase their views and experiences to the world regarding the social, political, and economic barriers that limit and often prohibit access to resources for social advancement. From the early days of rhyming on the street corners of the South Bronx in the middle to late 1970s (and arguably going back even further to artists, such as Gil Scott-Heron) to the multi-billion dollar industry of today, hip hop has always told the story of the “other America.” Hip hop was born of dilapidated conditions and a culture of poverty, which sparked creative modes of sharing with the rest of the world what was transpiring not only in the Bronx but also in other urban spaces across the country (Light, 1999; Rose, 1994). These modes of sharing have come to be known as the four elements of hip hop (b-boying/breaking/dancing, dj-ing, graffiti art, and mc-ing/rapping) (Forman & Neal, 2004). As hip hop evolved and has been taken up by various regions of the country, it has further cemented its multi-lingual and multicultural status as a result of the various dialects, terms,

Towards a Politics of Interruption: High School Design as Politically Relevant Pedagogy.

The following essay seeks to highlight the use of engaged qualitative community‐based research in education to respond to conditions of structural inequality. As “the politics of interruption”, the process of creating neighborhood public high schools is centred in community accountability. Responsibility in this mode “interrupts” the resurgence of theories of social disorganization, social isolation, social detachment, and culture of poverty used to stereotype working‐class/low income African American and Latino/a communities.