A parent questioned me on my choice of teaching material on Friday.

On 11/2/07 8:52 PM, “D D” <d***@yahoo.com> wrote:

Dear Ms. Gibbs,

Would you be willing to let me know the title of the rap song that you felt compelled to teach from in class on Friday, Nov. 2 ? I would like to look at the lyrics for myself in an effort to understand what my son was saying about it. The class was English 3, second period. As I don’t have the whole story, I would appreciate your assistance.

Thanks.
D D

Dear Mrs. D,

Thank you for asking me about this as I am quite happy to explain my reasoning for including this song in my curriculum. The song is Dancing with the Devil by Immortal Technique and I think this link will not give you any pop-ups: http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Immortal-Technique/Dance-With-The-Devil.html The song is explicit in language and subject matter.

My reasons for teaching this are many and layered. One of my students brought me this song after school a couple of weeks ago as part of her ongoing crusade to get me to reexamine my prejudices against rap music. I was profoundly effected by the song because this is one of the rare rap songs that explains the horror and misery of life on the streets without glorifying it or glamorizing the violence. One of the things that I work hard to do in my class on an ongoing basis is to bring about more awareness of poverty and what it does to those trapped in it. I am a child of poverty and I managed to escape due to a combination of very lucky interventions at specific times in my life and the fact that I made very specific choices that gave me more options. I do attribute a lot of my success to luck though and I have a hard time being truly judgmental of many of the people who do not get out. I try to make my firmly middle class students aware of the life experiences other people are having because it makes them more compassionate. Normally I try to do this in more subtle ways spread throughout the year but unfortunately I am going on maternity leave as soon as a suitable teacher is located within the next week or two so I pushed a bit harder this year than I normally would to bring home these points. Looking at this song brought up issues about assumptions made about rap, poverty, and racism while giving the class a perfect medium to look at individual choices and how they affect ones life. Based on the journal entries and the conversation in class the children did get this point.

Another reason I chose to discuss this song in class was because so many of my students have heard this song without really thinking about the lyrics so they ended up missing the point of the message and instead focused on one more song about street violence. Those students were some of the most vocal in realizing exactly where their assumptions existed and were the first to realize how they need to challenge themselves in understanding the lyrics to the music they listen to. I was quite proud of them.

Our class is studying tragedy as a genre this unit and for the past few years I have had a little bit of trouble completely convincing my students that tragedy is still fully relevant. They believe it was still ok through about the 1950’s but somehow they manage to justify for themselves that somewhere in the 60’s or 70’s it just stopped being significant. I don’t really understand how they do this, but I have to address it nonetheless. This song is an absolutely ideal medium for going through all of the traditional tragic circumstances: the fall of someone on the rise to power (though Aristotle is probably turning in his grave at the idea of a street thug being used in that position :), the hubris (excessive pride) that motivates the fall, the hamartia (great mistake) that can be specifically pointed to as the reason for the fall from power, the anagnorisis (realization of mistake) that dictates the catastrophic ending, the tragic victim who must also suffer with the protagonist, the death/isolation of the protagonist following the denoument… All of the traditional elements of tragedy are explicit and impossible to ignore in a way that even stubborn teenagers cannot deny. It is perfect. We will also be discussing Freud as we move through psychological criticism and this updates the Oedipal complex in ways that the kids will see clearly.

I hope this explains what C was saying about class.

Kristine Gibbs