Word up! Hip Hop Education
Check out Paul's story about two Carson sisters and educators who want to open a charter school in the fall that would offer hip hop classes:
Hoping to make school more attractive to low-performing teens, a new charter school in Carson plans to lure them with bait they won't be able to resist: hip-hop.
Millennium High School, which would open in the fall in the shadow of the Harbor Freeway on Hamilton Avenue, would use textbooks such as "Hip Hop History," "Back in the Days" and "Yes Yes Y'All," a compendium of oral histories of the urban art form.
Upperclassmen would use professional editing and production technology and software to create audio tracks and music videos.
The school also would offer the usual battery of high school equivalency courses in English, algebra, U.S. history and other core subjects, co-founder Lisa Edwards said.
"Hip-hop is the biggest music that students in the area listen to," Edwards said. "No matter how much we try to use standardized English, we cannot ignore or deny the language they bring into the classroom."