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Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and
Identity Formation
Hip Hop Pedagogy and its Ability to Influence
Positive Relationships with Academia in School
Age Children from Urban Communities
Jalessa Noel Bryant
AS 191: American Studies Senior Thesis
Advisor: Justin Gomer
University of California, Berkeley
Fall 2011

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DEDICATION
To God, life, and the ability to do for others.
Jeremiah 18
Mold us as according to Your will so that we may be the image of You here on earth.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank God for somehow placing me and keeping me in this school when I thought
I didn’t belong. Thank you for endurance, strength, and the ability to make things work for the
betterment of all. Thank you to my mother, who pushed her dreams aside to raise four children.
Mommy, no one knows selflessness like you. Thank you and I love you. I would also like to
acknowledge the rest of my family for supporting any and every decision that I make (although
they may not agree initially) and loving me for the person I am and not who others think I should
be. Thanks to my partner in crime, Darion Campbell for making me get off of Facebook or stop
watching TV while my thesis was sitting in a minimized box. I love you! Thank you to
Professor Na’ilah Suad Bakaari, Ph.D., Maxine McKinney de Royston, Ph.D., Kihana, and
Jarvis, aka The Research Team, for all the resources, support and laughs throughout the year.
Thank you to all of the professors whose classes and life work had an impact on this paper. I
aspire to be like you all someday. Thank you for leading the way. I’d like to thank Justin
Gomer for being an awesome GSI and thesis advisor, you rock! Lastly, but certainly not least, to
my friends: it has been an amazing 5 years and has finally come to an end. I’m so happy you all
were there to go on this journey with me. This is certainly not a closed book, but a new chapter,
and I’m excited to see what happens next. Peace.

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................5

FOUNDATIONS: SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS, THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION, &
CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGIES ..............................................................................9

THEORIES: CHILDHOOD, IDENTITY FORMATION, & MUTUAL RESPONSIVENESS ..12

IDENTITY FORMATION: CULTURAL & ACADEMIC ..........................................................15

CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGY AT WORK | MARSHALL LANGSTON ............18

POLICY: HOW NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND AFFECTS TEACHERS & RACE TO THE TOP
…………………………………………………………………………………………………....20

HIP HOP PEDAGOGY: CULTURE IN THE CLASSROOM.....................................................23

DISCUSSION....…………………………………………………………………………………25

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INTRODUCTION
The idea that students should be taught in a way that is relevant and thought provoking for them
may seem like an obvious statement. However, due to many of the constraints enforced by No
Child Left Behind, this idea has been placed on a back burner, while drill and kill methods have
claimed the forefront. In an increasingly diverse world, culturally relevant pedagogies will soon
become a necessity in the American Classroom, particularly in urban communities. Culturally
relevant pedagogy attempts to combat what Pierre Bourdieu claims are efforts to legitimize a
particular culture. Bourdieu further explains that one’s societal status is contingent upon their
proximity to that legitimized culture. Those who are furthest from that culture are “imbued with
a sense of their cultural unworthiness” (Olin Wright 2005, 19). In other words, culturally
relevant pedagogies “suggest that student ‘success’ is represented in achievement within the
current social structures extant in schools” (Ladson-Billings 1995, 467), or making a culture of
achievement more feasible for the students, as opposed to exploiting those who don’t fit within a
particular culture. In spaces where youth are raised to believe that they belong to the group that
is powerless among the powerful, it is important for them to recognize their potential as scholars,
community members, and independent thinkers. Recognizing their potential will enable them to
build strong identities and become confident academics.
In Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goods, Labaree
claims that public schools in America have three main purposes of education: social mobility,
social efficiency, and democratic equality (Labaree 1997, 41). Although these are important
ideologies to expose school-age children to, they are certainly not the only ideologies public
schools choose to utilize. The dominant purposes for education not only complicate a teacher
and student’s ability to work together on a student’s academic progress, but they also ignore the

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other overlooked skills that are necessary for academic success including building social
networks, realizing how a willingness to learn depends on the way material is taught,
understanding the possibilities that are open to them the further they go along in their education,
understanding that they are capable of going above and beyond their parents’ achievement.
When educators teach in a way that students can make connections between new material and
the skills they already possess, students develop identities that are positive and excel greatly in
their educational endeavors. The simultaneous emphasis can be overwhelming, especially if the
items discussed in the classrooms are not directly relevant to the population that the educators
are serving. James Coleman’s work on social organizations helped to develop the theory of
Organizations as Natural Systems (Gamoran, Secada and Marrett 2000, 44), which asserts that in
the case that the formal structure has too many, or very complicated goals, the organization
should look to the informal structure to reduce or uncomplicate those goals.
Based on theories of childhood, this age is full of ignorance and curiosity (Aries 1962, 228),
leaving enough room for educators to use the skills they are already equipped with to acquire
additional skills for higher level academic engagement, such as critical dialogue. Thus, the most
impressionable age of children is in the elementary (or school-age) category. John Locke’s An
Essay on Human Understanding was one of the earlier attempts at configuring the ways people
come to understand and function in the world. Locke’s theory was that everyone was essentially
“Tabula Rasa” or empty vessels that needed to be filled with life experience in order to gain
knowledge (Eng 1980, 133). Younger children are yet to be included in the conversations held
on critical dialogue because of the study of human development, child development in particular,
is new to the academy. Not until the early 1930s did John Bowlby theorize that humans have
innate characteristics necessary for survival (Bowlby 1960, 94), revolutionizing many educators

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and researchers previous asusmptions about what humans are capable of in their early stages of
development. People from low resourced areas are also left out of those conversations because
of inequalities throughout the public education system, particularly amongst students of color
and their counterparts (Hammond 2010, 52). Linda Darling- Hammond writes that in
multicultural communities where public schools are attempting to service a diverse community,
racial and economic segregation and integration make a difference in resources for students of
color to learn from. She states that “in integrated environments, differentials present teachers
with an even wider range of developed abilities” while “segregated environments lead to lowered
expectations of low income children and few models of success to be emulated” (Hammond
2010, 35) Therefore, amongst the most marginalized of these groups would be elementary school
aged children living in under-resourced areas.
Students from urban communities experience a lifestyle that students in other communities
would only see in the media. Na’ilah Suad- Nasir in Racialized Identities discusses how only a
limited amount of identity resources are available to students in an academic setting (Suad-Nasir
2011, 127). She also states that there are “multiple ways that society and learning settings often
offer conflicting messages simultaneously.” Deficits of identity resources and conflicting
messages that complicate the little resources urban students do have makes it difficult for them to
reap the benefits in a particular learning setting, which is contingent upon their success in
locating identity resources within it and vice versa (Suad-Nasir 2011, 127). Students from urban
communities, mostly students of color, have the task of trying to juggle multiple identities, most
of which are not found in learning settings. At the same time, public schools have historically
ignored the needs of students of color, mainly African American students, because it has so
many goals that aren’t considerate to the identities of students of color. Linda Darling Hammond

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states that “throughout the 19th
Century and the 20th
, African Americans faced de facto and de
jure exclusion from public schools throughout the nation, as did Native Americans and,
frequently, Mexican Americans” (Hammond 2010, 29). She continues to explain that there has
been an assumption that because additional anti-discriminatory laws have been added to the
Constitution, that those inequalities have been erased from American society and now the
students to be at fault for their failures. This is not the case. Darling-Hammond continues by
stating that there are five major reasons why inequalities in urban education still exist: poverty,
unequal distribution of resources, inadequate teachers, lack of high-quality curriculum, and
dysfunctional learning environments (Hammond 2010, 30). Ironically, the No Child Left Behind
law encouraged the continuity of those inequalities by drastically restricting federal funding to
the most needy schools. Because of these inequalities and the country’s inability to wash its
hands of them, it is clear urban students need a different pedagogical system that suits their
identities.
Hip Hop pedagogy is one solution. Jeffery Duncan-Andrade states that Hip Hop Pedagogy is a
technique for teaching that falls under the category of culturally relevant pedagogy where “the
students [are] not only engaged and able to use this expertise and personality as subjects of the
post-industrial world to make powerful connections to canonical texts, but are able to have fun
learning about a culture and a genre of music with which they have great familiarity” (Duncan-
Andrade and Morrell 2002, 91).
In this paper, I argue that urban culture is a largely overlooked resource of marginalized
communities that serves as an important identifier from which students mold their academic
identities to. In addition, I hope to show how students would benefit from engaging in culturally

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relevant pedagogy at a young age as opposed to the middle and high school years. I hope to
analyze a type of culturally relevant pedagogy, hip hop pedagogy, and its influence on identity
formation within the informal structure of the urban school, i.e. the culture and community in
which the students are immersed in everyday, using the aforementioned theory. With the threat
of the return of traditional education upon us due to the stress that No Child Left Behind has
implored upon public schools of America, there are many reasons to create culturally connected
foundations earlier than later in modern education.
FOUNDATIONS: SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS, THE PURPOSES OF
EDUCATION, & CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGIES
Adam Gamoran et al discuss organizational models they believe schools operate under. He
states that the efficacy of the school’s organizational strategy is dependent on how well
“background influences are taken into account” within those organizational models (Gamoran,
Secada and Marrett 2000, 39). What complicates these efforts is the question: how does one
institution accommodate the three overarching goals of education: social mobility, social
efficiency, and democratic equality and make it so that they are fitting for its constituents and
follow district, state, and national objectives? Social mobility is an essential part of the
American Dream. From primary school to higher education, individual students with a
competitive advantage join in the struggle for desirable social positions to better their socio-
economic status later in life. Social efficiency, ensuring that there are people to fulfill all the
necessary roles in the future, is another task of the public schooling system. Youth need to be
able to carry out useful, economic roles with competence. Lastly, democratic equality, meaning
that students need to be politically competent so by the time they’re of age, they are educated and

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informed voters. The public schooling system encounters quite the task trying to address all of
these goals for students, especially with the strict standards states have to set. While democratic
equality prepares students for a range of roles in the community, social efficiency promotes a
structure that limits these possibilities in the name of economic necessity. Social mobility gives
students the educational credentials they need to get ahead in the structure or maintain their
current position, but inequitable distribution of resources to the most needy communities & lack
of support from the state to those communities via federal education acts, social mobility has
actually become quite stagnant. By no means do these goals fall in place with each other. Under
the definition of Organization of Natural Systems, when a school has complex and/or multiple
goals, there is a certain degree of conflict, in which the most important goal is not quite visible.
Gamoran et al states that the organizational leadership must consider the informal structure of the
organization to solve or uncomplicated those goals. In the case of American public schools, the
formal structure is set via mandated curriculum and the presumed goals of the institution. The
informal structure, however, is largely dictated by its constituents and the communities from
which they come. The informal structure for urban communities specifically is exceptionally
diverse in its representation of cultures, races/ethnicities, and classes. Gloria Ladson- Billings
writes on how traditional and neoconservative traditional theories on education, “theories of
reproduction,” (regurgitation of information) are assumed to be default theories that do not need
to be made explicit because they tend to be more concretely settled within practical theory than
others. On the other hand, more inclusive theories, such as culturally relevant theories of
education are viewed as overly theoretical, which Ladson-Billings believes to be a consequence
of the positions of power and privilege lodged in the realm of public education (Ladson-Billings
1995, 469). Despite the conservative backlash, Ladson-Billings has discovered some teachers

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who are in fact, very successful. She discusses how microsolutions (ESL, Spanish immersion)
and macrosolutions (cultural ecology) are either too simple or too grand to address the issues of
cultural mismatch in schools. She explains her idea behind culturally relevant pedagogy as
“getting students to ‘choose’ academic excellence” by following the beliefs that “students must
achieve academic success, develop and/or maintain cultural competence, and develop a critical
consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order” (Ladson-
Billings 1995, 160). In Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Ladson-Billings
documents teachers who have successful culturally relevant methods for teaching, success
defined by students who statistically don’t fare well with more traditional methods being able to
not only do well but maintain cultural competence and gain grade appropriate academic skill
sets. She states that “each [teacher] suggests that student ‘success’ is represented in achievement
within the current social structures extant in schools. Thus the goal of education becomes how to
‘fit’ students constructed as ‘other’ by virtue of their race/ethnicity, language, or social class into
a hierarchal structure that is defined as a meritocracy” (Ladson-Billings 1995, 466). Since the
goals of education are reflective of how American society is socially constructed, it is inevitable
that using this meritocratic hierarchy, all the “others” will be on the bottom rung. In But That’s
Just Good Teaching! Ladson-Billings goes into a discussion on how the education reform needs
to transform itself from programmatic reform to “educational theorizing about teaching itself and
propose a theory of culturally focused pedagogy” (Ladson-Billings 1995, 466). In addition to
new educational theories, it is also necessary to direct these reforms to age groups that haven’t
been exposed to culturally cognizant curriculum. A huge critique of changing the way lower
levels of education function is that it will intercede with the elementary agenda and teachers will

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breeze over new foundations. Deborah Stipek writes an opinion on federal education standards
being applied to preschool students. She states that
“If the test does not assess communication skills, comprehension, metacognitive skills, problem-solving ability,
reasoning, self-regulation, or the ability to collaborate and get along with peers, these are not likely to be
emphasized in the instructional program and if assessment of programs does not include observations or other
strategies for evaluating the social-emotional climate and efforts to teach children good physical habits or social
skills, then these important qualities of preschool education are likely to receive less attention” (Stipek).
Culturally relevant pedagogy aims to not only prevent the total standardization of education, but
to maintain in a way that will respect the relationship between academic excellence, human
development, and cultural competence.
THEORIES: CHILDHOOD, MUTUAL RESPONSIVENESS, & ATTACHMENT
Sixteenth century conceptions of childhood believed children in their infancy & toddler years to
be virtually useless, as their physical and mental abilities disabled them from contributing to
productive work (Aries 1962, 39). Prior to the stage when children can walk and talk, they’re
viewed as burdensome to the agricultural families. Anytime afterward, they’re assets (Heywood
2001, 158). The European Scientific Revolution had a profound influence on American
technology, which inevitably affected home life. When American society was sustained by
smaller family style communities, work was distributed evenly throughout to all of those who
were capable of contributing to their progress (Heywood 2001, 154). As the resources for
families to sustain themselves were increasingly being created outside of the home, the need for
children to participate in apprenticeships, at least for private, familial reasons, was on the
decline. Ideologies around childhood evolved from work to pleasure. Philippe Aries writes on
how the attitudes women during the sixteenth century and how they changed as they began to
spend more time with their children in an intimate and affectionate way. Early institutions of
education were religion-based, as it was seen as a family responsibility to teach other subjects

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such as agricultural work. As women took up the responsibilities of caring for the child’s needs
for longer periods of time, coddling and interaction with adults came to be considered spoils to a
child (Heywood 2001, 155). This posed a particularly frustrating predicament for religious
instructors, as childhood innocence and ignorance were new ideas to pedagogues as well.
Following the construction of the school house in the seventeenth century, instructors began to
notice the relationships between the ages of their students and their abilities to learn particular
material. Aries writes the Masters of the school class reasoned that the youth of pupil’s means
that their faculties cannot be sufficiently developed. Thus, it would be recognized that there was
a close connection between age, capacity, and school class” (Aries 1962, 228) and the concept of
childhood was marked by class performance and comprehension ability and/or disability. John
Locke’s Tabula Rasa theory on early childhood cognitive abilities pioneered conversations on
how children operate within the capacity that Aries speaks of, however, later developments in
children’s studies will prove Locke’s theory to be far too depriving of the innate capabilities of
human beings from the beginnings of life (Heywood 2001, 23). Not until the 1930’s did society
begin to investigate child development and the socialization of youth. Prout and James write that
“the concept of ‘development’ inextricably links the biological facts of immaturity to the social
aspects of childhood” (James and Prout 1997, 10), therefore consequent studies on childhood
viewed children as simpletons. The development of “Attachment Theory” by John Bowlby and
Mary Ainsworth & the “Theory Theory” by Noam Chomsky contributed new frameworks to the
discussion on childhood ability. Chomsky’s Theory Theory was a new addition to the field of
cognitive psychology, in that it is a theory simply stating that children have theories about the
world and are innately consumed with figuring out their place in it (Gopnik, Meltzoff and
Patricia 1999, 155). Adding to the innate activities of children, Mary Ainsworth built off of

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Bowlby’s evolutionary adaptiveness theory, which suggested that via evolution we’ve created
ways to stay alive and one of those ways is to stay in close proximity to an adult. This lead to
the creation of the Internal Working Model, the basis of an attachment relationship to a caregiver
that begins working in early childhood (Ainsworth and Wall 1978, 13). The growth of the
cognitive psychology field in recent years has enabled researchers to conduct further studies that
build on the innate ability of children in their early years, thus encouraging educators and other
academics to focus on more forward thinking strategies for child development. Allison Gopnik
says “we change our ideas about the world just by taking in more and more information about it.
Babies could end up linking particular inputs to each other and particular outputs in this sort of
piecemeal way” (Gopnik, Meltzoff and Patricia 1999, 149). Gopnik further discusses mutual
imitation and its connection to the attachments that children are supposed to create in infancy to
adults. Although attachment theory takes the stance that babies have an evolutionary
dependency on the elders in their immediate space, Gopnik states that adults have a
corresponding attraction to children that maintains that relationship. Thomacello et al.’s shared
intentionality theory reinforces this ideology. They state that infants understand mutual
responsiveness on a behavioral level, like imitation, because there is collaboration on a shared
goal (Tomasello, et al. 2005, 680). These are the beginnings of not only trustworthy, relationship
building, but the acquisition of skills and pro-social behaviors. Gopnik states that “imitation is
the motor for culture” (Gopnik, Meltzoff and Patricia 1999, 167), proving that when nature and
nurture work together instead of in opposition or competition with each other, culture is
constructed. Thomacello states that this is established easily in very young children because of
the “developmental preeminence of attachment relationships that children have with adults”
(Tomasello, et al. 2005, 693) . This is important to note because the success or failure of

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children to be able to carry these relationship building skills into society is not necessarily the
sole duty of their caregivers, but of adults in general because having successful attempts at
mutual responsiveness with other people will only encourage future healthy relationships.
IDENTITY FORMATION: CULTURAL & ACADEMIC
According to Lightfoot et al., children develop a sense of themselves in relation to society via
two pathways: socialization and personality formation. Socialization occurs in the spaces that
are culturally relevant to children and reinforced as such via their caregivers. It begins in the
home and radiates out to other spaces like daycare, preschool, etc. Lightfoot states that
socialization becomes apparent in “a variety of contexts in which [children] become conversant
with their culture’s funds of knowledge and rules of behavior” (Lightfoot, Cole and Cole 2009,
320). These funds of knowledge and rules of behavior help establish a child’s personality &
identity. The initial formation of personality is present in infancy as temperament, which
remains stable over time, and due to many of the socializing messages that they receive, children
are left to “interpret and select” what works for them in their cultural space, integrating their
developing cognitive understanding, emotional responses and habits with people and objects
within that space. The following will examine two of these “messages” that most affect children
from urban neighborhoods: ethnic and socio-cultural identifiers, the pro-social behaviors
constructed as a result of students interpreting them in a functional way, and the anti-social
behaviors that emerge if they are not.
Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s ethnic doll experiment is well known for its ability to display how
African American children define themselves entirely in terms of the majority, which disables
them from “seeing the importance of their own families and communities in shaping their

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identities (Lightfoot, Cole and Cole 2009, 309). Ann Beuf reported that the same experiment in
other minority communities “made evident [children’s] understanding of economic and social
circumstances that make their lives difficult in contrast to the lives of white people” (Lightfoot,
Cole and Cole 2009, 310). In both studies, the notion that white is normal and that the chances
for survival are optimum if one’s cultural repertoire is similar to that, is one that permeates the
mind at a very young age. Researchers were also able to record instances of children who are
able to identify difference and their placement in the social scheme as soon as language develops
(ages 2 - 3). Dr. Beverley Tatum, Ph.D. discusses that concept of constancy in identity and the
conflict that children below six have with the idea that certain features are “fixed and will not
change” (Tatum 1997, 36). In “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”
she reflects on a grocery store conversation with her son in which he has reported that his white
classmate told him that he is Black because “he drinks too much Chocolate milk” and she’s
noticed a change in his activity (no longer drinking chocolate milk). Her son is simply perplexed
to discover that his Blackness is not an interchangeable commodity. She attempts to identify the
sources of pride within Blackness that he is able to comprehend and build from that to generate
positive resources for him to resort back to in times of cultural confliction. Margaret Caughy
states that “differences in the form of ethnic socialization bear importantly on children’s
cognitive abilities and behavioral adjustments” (Lightfoot, Cole and Cole 2009, 311). Tatum
Jr.’s dilemma is proof that children have these challenges around 2 and 3 years of age. Tatum’s
attempt at reconciling her son’s negative response to a confrontation with his identity is a
genuine effort to maintain pro-social behavior as an adult, caregiver to a vulnerable child. In
order for children to maintain their ethnic identities and acknowledge them as something that is
beautiful and unique, there needs to be concerted effort towards pro-social behaviors by all

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adults, especially those who are most responsible for socializing them. Once the mutual
responsiveness is no longer established, rejection of identity, rebellion against institutionalized
authority and rejection of seemingly unrelated affairs will become the anti-social behaviors that
affect a child’s future. In Learning to Trust, Watson & Ecken write about how attachment theory
proves that children are biologically wired to “acquire the desire to be cooperative and prosocial
as a result of experiencing sensitive and responsive care” (Watson and Ecken 2003, 11). They
continue to discuss how those who have insecure attachments (mild and severe antisocial
behaviorisms) are likely to withdraw from social relationships and/or become focused on
satisfying their own needs through “Dependency, control, or aggression” (Watson and Ecken
2003, 11) because their needs are not responded to in an appropriate manner. As a secondary
caregiver, a teacher would not only have to have an insecurely attached child in the classroom,
but also take responsibility for nurturing that model that has been wired to think negatively of
social interactions, especially if the teacher’s goal is to have a peaceful class. Watson discusses
that keeping in mind children are works in progress and their internal working models can be
shaped and molded to produce prosocial outputs if they are receiving the correct inputs helps
teachers ensure the right inputs are being given to a student who’s having difficulty. Suad-Nasir
discusses in Racialized Identities, the idea of there being an identity trajectory. She states that
“the bulk of what students will take from learning environments is the accumulation of multiple
small scale interactions where students are given access to learning or not, where their identities
as learners are afforded or constrained” (Suad-Nasir 2011, 132). The fact that identity is so fluid
should not only encourage teachers but students as well. The resources of one learning setting
are not necessarily the same resources that another setting provides. DeVore and Gentilcore use
a restorative justice model for at-risk youth that allows them to “discipline young people without

18

violating their dignity,” that way “we hold them accountable without further damaging their self
esteem and we increase the likelihood that they will ultimately desire to become better citizens”
(DeVore and Gentilcore 1999, 100). This model gives students tools with which to create their
own sense of agency, a characteristic many insecurely attached children do not possess.
However, internal working models are not transformed easily. Jabari Mahiri says that “students
responses of either resistance or acceptance are at least in part predicted on the specific nature of
pedagogy and curriculum to which they are exposed” (Mahiri 1998, 2), therefore strategic and
efficient scaffolding is necessary to ensure successful transitioning of disruptive behaviors.
CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGY AT WORK | MARSHAL LANGSTON
Maxine McKinney de Royston, PhD completed a dissertation on “Marshall Langston,” an
Afrocentric oriented private school in the Bay Area. Marshall is a small school with less than
thirty students and eleven teachers handpicked by the founder and director of the school, Gwen
Marshall. Their ages range from kindergarten to middle school age and most are low income
students. ML was founded in the midst of the Afrocentricity and Black Power movements, thus
its heavy influence on African Centered Pedagogy. Statistically, eighty percent of the students
who’ve attended Marshall Langston graduate from college. De Royston’s research was on what
in particular about that school yields those types of results later in life. Using participant
observation, surveys, and interviews, de Royston shows that particular activities and ways of
teaching help students establish academic identities, help teachers scaffold strategically, and
provide parents with the culturally competent pedagogy they were looking for for their
child(ren). As Suad-Nasir discusses in Racialized Identities, “learning settings provide identities
resources” (Suad-Nasir 2011, 110). In these particular settings, three particular resources stood

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out as efficient forms of scaffolding: pedagogy matched the historical foundations of the school,
the immediate agency and access for the students, and reciprocity of students, parents, and staff.
Historical Foundations
Marshall Langston was founded during a vital turning point in history which is permeated
throughout its pedagogical creed. The teachers, the curriculum, and the style of teaching all have
cultural implications that can be easily located in history. Floyd Beachum writes in Cultural
Collision and collusion: Reflections on Hip Hop, Culture, Values, and Schools about the History
of educational attitudes and how education went from being liberating to confining (Beachum
2011, 23). Gwen Marshall has reversed this effect by maintaining what is largely left out of
public schools, cultural identifiers. Many of the alumni share with de Royston that they didn’t
feel as though any particular identities were being pressed upon them. In fact they felt as though
their identities were being reinforced and they felt more comfortable to speak and act freely
(McKinney de Royston 2011, 115).
Agency & Access
The set up of Marshall Langston delegates a lot of responsibility to the students. Alumni made
comments about feeling very “visible” and working harder because of a fear of slacking off. The
morning circle that took place every morning included students, staff, and parents to speak freely
about current events or issues within their school community (McKinney de Royston 2011, 116).
Mahiri would say this is a healthy practice. He states that “[teachers and parents need to become
sources of resistance themselves to the ideology and practices of cultural domination and

20

exploitation that permeate institutional structures in this society, including its schools” (Mahiri
1998, 11).
Reciprocity
The teaching style of Marshall Langston was very interactive. Even at a young age, student
interacted with their lessons and peers, feeling as though “this connection with the community
was also an interconnected one that related to one person’s well being with that of others”
(McKinney de Royston 2011, 118). This combats Ladson-Billings’ statement on public school
and how it “remains an alien and hostile place. The hostility is manifest in the ‘styling’ and
‘postering’ that the school rejects” (Ladson-Billings 1995, 161). The system of reciprocity,
where no one person is dominating another, helps aid the hostility that public schools tend to
foster to students of color.
McKinney de Royston displays how accommodating a culturally relevant pedagogy is to not
only the students but the teachers and parents of the children. It has long lasting effects that
carry outside of the classroom and very young children are guided by their not-so-much older
peers to guide each other through their academic identity trajectory. Fortunately, ML is small
enough that this type of pedagogy is functional for the student body. Public schools on the other
hand are facing quite a different situation and educators are facing some harsh realities while
attempting to strategize for better results.

21

POLICY: HOW NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND AFFECTS TEACHERS & RACE TO THE
TOP
Robert Beck defines traditional education as “classrooms in which the major portion of the time
is given over to hearing the recitation of individual students” (Beck 1956, 3). He continues by
describing that a majority of the teaching methods were oriented around keeping classroom order
and assigning passages to memorize. Prior to Horace Mann igniting the modern education
movement, school was largely focused around agricultural and religious learning. Children’s
identities were largely connected to the trade taught to them by their families as well as their
religious affiliation. Education prior to the mid-19th
century was predominantly rural and highly
localized. The school emerged as an important community institution, often serving multiple
roles at once. Most of what children were taught in one-room schoolhouses were basic recitation
of Bible verses and outdoor activities were centered around agricultural skill sets. Horace
Mann’s vision for public schools was a little broader. John Andrew Wimpey writes in the Phi
Delta Kappan that “Mann fought vigorously against sectarian catechisms as an offensive practice
in public schools” as well as abolishing any physical punishments invoked on students that
attended and the education of women (Wimpey 1959, 208). Perhaps Mann’s most well known
claim to fame is his theory of democratic education, in which he believed that education should
be “universal and free”. Since then, public education has attempted at keeping religious
celebrations separate from the school setting, outlawed physical punishments, and has been
largely dominated by women in education related positions. However, after the enactment of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, better known as No Child Left Behind, modern
education has taken a step backwards. The orientation of NCLB is a system of reprimands that

22

says if schools aren’t meeting the standards set by the act on a consistent basis, Title 1 funding,
funding only offered to the poorest schools, will be taken away. Simultaneously, the Race to the
Top initiative is active, in which grants are given to schools who craft creative ways to meet their
academic goals. In order to protect the low performing schools from closing down completely,
their curriculum has largely been converted to reflect efforts to get students to pass standardized
tests as opposed to actively engaging with material, understanding concepts, and fostering a love
for learning. Teachers are struggling to make classroom content as clear as they can in short
amounts of time. The connection of students with the material learned in classrooms has been
severed with this in legislative action. United State Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, stated
in an interview with Joan Richardson, that he promotes the use of sports culture to encourage
academic excellence. He says that “with the proper coaching in the right context with a laser-
like focus on academics first and sports as the carrot, the reward for good academic wok, I think
sports can have a huge and positive role.. and be a tremendous vehicle for teaching students
really important life lessons ” (Duncan 2009, 29). Race to the Top encourages this type of
creativity and gives financial incentive for those creative tasks, however with NCLB still
functional, the system ends up giving money to those who have enough while those who are
deprived continuously lose funding. In addition, NCLB has rendered teachers unable to craft
their ways of teaching to their style. The federal government would prefer what Bourdieu and
Passeron refer to as “culturally arbitrary curricula” where students are taught with canonical text
without developing skills in a way that is culturally relevant, otherwise known as symbolic
violence against those whose cultures are repeatedly ignored in those texts. In reference to
traditional education, Beck states that education was “based largely on untested assumptions
about children, about learning, about the aims of the schooling process. It was uniformed by

23

scientific research on any of these subjects because it antedated not only the existence but even
the idea of such research” (Beck 1956, 3). The new national agendas are creating larger gaps in
actual competency than prior to No Child Left Behind since states didn’t start off at the same
competency levels initially. Being that there are plentiful resources for researchers to pull from,
now that multiple studies have been done on how children learn and many theories have been
generated about how public schools are run, there is no justifiable reason as to why any school
should feel as though they have to resort to those traditional methodologies in order to because
states are finding band-aid solutions for inadequacies to keep their funding & meet state
standards, especially if they have already been proven to be ineffective.
HIP HOP PEDAGOGY: CULTURE IN THE CLASSROOM
Hip Hop is a large part of urban culture. It is not only represented through music, but art, dance,
clothing, and other merchandise. It is a lifestyle that many urban students are raised into and
interact with on a daily basis. Duncan-Andrade & Morrell state that hip hop pedagogy is a
technique for teaching that falls under the category of culturally relevant pedagogy where “the
students are not only engaged and able to use this expertise and personality as subjects of the
post industrial world to make powerful connections to canonical texts, but are able to have fun
learning about a culture and a genre of music with which they have great familiarity” (Duncan-
Andrade and Morrell 2002, 91). Because of the way hip hop has permeated throughout America
Hip Hop pedagogy has the potential to not only benefit urban communities but find common
ground amongst those who have cultural misunderstandings. Lamont Hill states that “popular
culture texts provide a powerful window through which to view young people’s understanding
and responses to this reality” (Hill 2006, 26). There are still some who are dissuaded by hip

24

hop’s influence or even if it has a positive enough message to send into schools. Priya Pramar
writes in 19 Urban Questions that what’s “more important than finding hip hop is recognizing
and learning its history and origin if we expect any level of education as credible or valuable
cultural texts” (Pramar 2010, 92), which reestablishes the cultural aspect of knowing concrete
historical foundations in the classroom before simply implementing a new style of teaching.
Beachum’s history of educational attitudes portrays education as being “synonymous with
liberation” and “being somebody” for people of color (Beachum 2011, 5-9). Establishing a
concrete foundation is something the current public education system is having trouble with
because it’s trying to straddle all of these different goals and create an extremely complex school
culture that isn’t fitting for urban students. According to Beachum, these foundations are what
save urban students from forgetting liberation education because the “philosophy has been
challenged by the harsh reality of urban life” (Beachum 2011, 14). The condition of urban
communities has been pushed to the side for many years. Similar to the education laws, the
property tax laws were seen as an equitable way to distribute funds to communities for support.
However, the migration of mostly White families and businesses to more suburban areas left the
urban communities with very little generated funding. Many of the frustrations members of
urban communities are facing have translated into a culture of resistance, which is greatly
represented in Hip Hop music. Students from urban communities were not around to see much
of the historical foundations of this resistance culture and therefore claim it because that is the
identity resource readily available to them. Hip Hop pedagogy hopes to end the disconnect
between actions, identities, and histories and build bridges with critical dialogue and literary skill
strengthening exercises. Jamal Cooks writes that “students need to know that the academic or
formal writing is what is required of them in certain areas and that they must master how to

25

switch back and forth between the different genres to be successful” (Cooks 2004, 76). Modern
education takes a backward stance on how students and educators should think about education.
Suad- Nasir says that of the practices she experienced in her research they offered young people
the opportunity to contribute personally to the practice, to have something of themselves take up
and valued” (Suad-Nasir 2011, 40), which is why Hip Hop pedagogy would be a great
suggestion for urban youth.
DISCUSSION
The younger one is, the more life one has to live. The age of childhood over time has been
glorified, reflected upon, seen as a time of innocence and spoils. Society still clings to the idea
that children need to enjoy childhood by engaging in activities that they will forget, eating sugar-
filled candies and falling down to learn better for next time. When this childhood is thought of,
society assumes a middle class childhood with ideal familial and environmental conditions, but
urban children are up against more odds because they don’t have academic or social identifiers
that work congruently with the modern education or social systems. The history of hip hop
encompasses many of their identifiers, but hip hop as Priya Parmar states has “appropriated and
commodified the culture to such an extent that the true spirit of Hip Hop has been ‘raped’ or
stripped of its art form all for capitalistic gains” (Pramar 2010, 94). If educators and students
commit to culturally relevant resources early in their childhood, like the students of Marshall
Langston, they will understand the history of these conditions and be able to “problematize their
own complicit reinforcement of those hegemonic dynamics through some of their naïve actions”
(Hayes 2010, 33). Educators cannot continue to ignore that identity formation starts when
children are infants. The earlier healthy relationships are built with people, institutions, or

26

objects, the stronger the bond so long as the child receives positive responses from the stimulus.
Elementary school children are old enough and curious enough to understand what goes on in
their communities. Continuing to ignore this fact is one of the reasons urban youth turn to
resistance and other forms of survival. Their relationship with their environment is neglectful.
The classroom is a space where that can be controlled for if allowed.
Using culturally relevant pedagogies will not hurt students because educators are using materials
that are already in proximity and well known to the students. The task of educators is to add
academic value to those proximal identifiers. If these identifies were not in proximity to student
knowledge, they would not be culturally relevant. Current methods like standardized tests
promote an “arbitrary culture” (Hayes 2010, 31) which symbolically violates urban children’s
rights to be educated in a way that help them strengthen their relationship with academic subjects
and skills. Regardless, children will create their identities off of what is, indeed, present.
Therefore, if what is present doesn’t fit their reality, they’ll exhibit anti-social behaviors because
the current system doesn’t provide inputs that register with them, hence, bad outcomes.
Policy controls a majority of these outcomes. The No Child Left Behind Act places ‘punishment’
on the educational agenda, which is not one of the supported goals of education. Yet it dictates
so much of how our public education system functions. If Race to the Top were given the
opportunity to operate alone, perhaps with a more funding friendly testing intiative, teachers may
have a chance to not only enjoy their jobs, but also the students will enjoy education, create
bonds with it, and stay connected to it because they feel as though they can survive in it. Darwin
theorizes that the world is about “survival of the fittest.” It is a human instinct to perish in a zone
where you are not meant to survive. Urban children are quickly falling to a system that is easily

27

controllable. Using Hip Hop to motivate and encourage critical dialogue and thinking could
revolutionize their communities.

28

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