Using Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy in the Classroom

I read in Akoms article, called Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy as a Form of Liberatory Praxis, that Hip Hop Pedagogy and Critical Race Theory has intertwining methods of teaching. Sure enough there are methods that compare with each other. Both pedagogies have an important main focus of actively changing the classroom atmosphere and curriculum by uncovering how and why students of colour are marginalized. CHHP brings awareness of stereotypes, poverty, discrimination and patriarchy by teaching about institutions and incorporating black cultural teachings into the classroom. Like read in the article, "Transformative education for poor and disempowered students beings with the creation of pedagogic spaces where marginalized youth become aware of how their own experiences have been shaped by larger social institutions" (Akoms 55). By teaching strictly with only eurocentric traditional curriculums then people of colour become silenced and confined. Students of colour are not able to thrive in their self when only white children are spotlighted. Actively incorporating CHHP into lessons promotes ideas in children's minds to think consciously about stereotypes and common sense that plays a role into reproducing racism and the status quo. This is how CHHP is a tool to produce youth activism and social justice. We need to start incorporating knowledge that challenges eurocentric standpoints, I think especially in younger grades, so that children start to question why some students benefit and others struggle. Instead of, me for example, starting to be aware and question these things at the University level. That is how certain power/privileges will start to change. Straying away from "subconsciously" teaching that school is neutral when it is not. We are not all equal and we are not all the same. Teaches about who is advantaged and who is disadvantaged.

In this article Akom also touch based on counter cultural hegemony. Where cultural hegemony is where dominant groups in society have produce world views that makes their power in society feel natural and inevitable. Meanwhile us as a society, a whole, voluntarily reproduce the status quo. We know the wrong things that are happening but we just choose to ignore it, to not question. That is how common sense is constructed and reproduced. So, counter hegemony challenges this by realizing and bringing awareness that certain people are socially ranked and ordered differently separating us. That is where Akom says that having a basis of counter hegemony rooted in our pedagogy is a way we can start to change how, essentially, a racist society is being reproduced.

Works Cited:

Akom, A. A. “Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy as a Form of Liberatory Praxis.” Equity & Excellence in Education, vol. 42, no. 1, 2009, pp. 52–66., https://doi.org/10.1080/10665680802612519.