Awake & Curious

I don’t really watch T.V. very often. Last night I saw two pieces that made me reflect on the state of censorship in the U.S., controlling content that is fed to kids. I conclude perhaps I should watch T.V. more often.
“The people who are reacting to that word are not reading the book as a whole,” she said. That’s what censors do — they pick out words and don’t look at the total merit of the book.”

That is a quote from a NY Times articles about a book “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal. The book uses the word “scrotum” on the first page. Seems many Librarians across the country have decided that maybe another word, maybe lets say the word “pee pee” would have been more appropriate for 8 or 9 year olds so they are banning the book across the country. This piece was on the news.

OK so I flip the channel to a wonderful show Independent Lens and they are discussing the politics/sexism/homophobia of hip-hop music. The filmmaker Byron Hurt did a riveting piece on the state of the most popular music in the land, you know the music all the white and yes even some “black” kids love. (Hip-Hop).

Hurt starts the documentary by saying he loves Hip Hop and then deconstructs Hip Hop’s deconstruction devolving over the years to a violent, misogynist, homophobic cultural phenomenon.“The more I grew and the more I learned about sexism and violence and homophobia, the more those lyrics became unacceptable to me,” he says. “And I began to become more conflicted about the music that I loved.”  This young man created a wonderful hop-ummentary (for those of us old enough remember the use of the made up word rockumentary) HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes ,that effectively takes on the issues of hyper-masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today’s hip-hop culture.

The film examines some of Hip-Hop’s biggest sellers, saying and acting out some pretty wild stuff.
• Nelly using the crevice of a woman’s backside during a video to swipe his credit card
• 50 cent in all his slicked armed glory seeming to declare himself a target and an assassin, a force to be reckoned with, and not for the emancipation of a black man, but for cash-money and lots of it.
• The depiction of women as less than objects, kind of like the bling the rappers wear with casual disregard on their necks, larger than life, plentiful, glitzy, naked and extreme, but never really objects of beauty.
• women are repeatedly referred defined as whores, (I refuse to spell it hoe) and bitches. In one particularly memorable segment one of the artists sings about “getting his rape on”.

While I can’t recall the last time I used the word scrotum or for that matter pee pee in class with my 9, 10, 11, or even 12 year olds (I also don’t use the word Bitches or whore) I know that “all” my kids have seen these videos and by the way, they love this stuff. Admittedly I teach poor inner city kids, but as the film stated their audience is largely white and under 16. So that includes lots of kids out of the “inner-city” and probably many kids who will not thanks to some diligent librarians be reading the word Scrotum on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky”.

I am not a fan of censorship. Like the republicans, I usually am opposed to intrusive measures of government that dictate or control culture (that was sarcasm for those who don’t pick up on it), but it seems to me we are censoring the wrong things as a teachers. While it would be accurate to say I don’t want my 9 year olds listening to some oiled, muscular fool rapping about getting his “rape on “, it would be equally accurate to say that as a citizen of this country I don’t want anyone to have the power to stop him.
You see it is more complex  and Hurt’s film makes the point clearly as he speaks to many rappers including the legendary Chuck D who plainly states “if you want to get signed to any recording deal, there is a prescriptive narrow element to what is salable and it does not include, socially thoughtful or reflective rap, like Fight the Power.”
My point is we are trying to control things we cannot, at least not through censorship.

Now why did I bother writing this post? I mean I mainly talk, and sometimes (whine) about edtech stuff in the classroom. This is a little off the mark from that.Well, censorship, plain and simple. It is not that it is always wrong, (though I am pretty opposed to it having read and understood the first amendment), it is just that when it comes to profit, it is never effective or applied. You can’t censor Nelly or Snoop Dog because they are too profitable. So maybe you can keep your kids from reading the word scrotum, but if they flip on BET or MTV well they will hear and see things more potent than the innocuous word scrotum.
Now for the tie in if thiere is one, to how this relates to the attempted ban on social-software in the classroom. Maybe you can ban blogs/social-software in schools but kids live outside the classroom most of the time. They will be exposed. They will be in chat rooms and on myspace/youtube/googglevideo/MTV whether you like it or not. Better to start thoughtful discussions (with kids) about how culture defines us, about just what is some rapper is saying, while he cradles his glock, or refers to some scantily clad women as a bitch, we better start talking about potential predators on the web, and a whole host of things that are dangerous and uncomfortable.

Perhaps it is time we talk to our kids rather than to pretend these things do not exist. Our approach to so many things in the classroom that are unplesant and controversial has been to block them out. This is certainly true of  violent rap music and it is still a pretty potent cultural influence on young kids whether we discuss it in class or not. Lets stop blocking and start talking with and to our kids, or we could just let them figure it out for themselves, either way they will be exposed.