[Xmca-l] Re: Provocative song

[David Kellogg]

It’s really “The Tables Turned” again, isn’t it? Yet one of the most
practical things that a teenager can learn in school is the intimate way in
which knowledge that seems purely abstract is linked to everyday life. Like
“The Tables Turned”, the medium contradicts the message. The message is
really an appeal for the concrete, the particular, and the real against
knowledge which is abstract, general, and merely potential. And yet the
medium is—rap lyrics, Youtube and the internet.


Rap lyrics are full of abstractions. Just as an example,  the list of
“practical’ things we don’t learn in school that most purely abstract of
all concepts, human rights. Youtube is completely general—that is what
allows him to get tens of thousands of “likes” and reach millions of
people. And of course the programme he is pushing is mere potential, and
the internet is not real at all: there is no such place. In the end, what
he is really saying is just: "like this", "don't like that".


Meh. Feh.


David Kellogg

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 9:17 AM, Daniel Hyman <daniel.a.hyman.0@gmail.com>
wrote:

> For those with a fondness for text, and with all appropriate incantations
> to the gods of fair use:
>
> https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Boyinaband/Don-t-Stay-in-School
>
> As someone who loves being educated (no quotes) on virtually any topic, but
> found the how-to knowledge offered to novice teachers (at least in New
> York), falling short of what a practicing educator needs to know, I can
> relate to the song's sense of painful unpreparedness, in my field. Not to
> the sense that public schools must (or in some domains can) teach how to
> make all personal moral choices, or that all subjects must be practical,
> e.g. being a bank customer (and no "impractical" subjects, e.g. math,
> underpin them), or that home life need not inculcate an interest in current
> events, history, or politics.
>
> So to me, the song is easy to reject at first, but on reflection...
>
> On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 7:54 PM, Bill Kerr <billkerr@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Also,
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJIu7pE0lBA
> >
> > some of the core issues for discussion are identified there IMO
> >
> > Equal rights and democracy would have appeal to disempowered students but
> > how can abstract maths be made more interesting, a more difficult
> question.
> > It may not be possible to make some very important stuff more
> interesting.
> > Marx complained about having to study the "economic shit".
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 9:11 AM, Lara Beaty <larabeaty@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > And here’s an interesting follow-up:
> > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCM4GEBDjz4. Thanks for this link!
> > > Something to definitely use with my students to provoke a discussion.
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Lara
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > On Jul 19, 2015, at 6:28 PM, David Preiss <preiss.xmca@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Dear colleagues,
> > > >
> > > > Some may like this song, some others hate it. It sounds to me like a
> > > worth
> > > > expression of many things going wrong with contenporary schools
> > > everywhere.
> > > > I am glad to see this coming from the younger generation as adult
> talk
> > > > about education scarcely listen what kids and young have to say about
> > > what
> > > > is being done to them at school. (I don't support the final statement
> > of
> > > > the song, of course; still find the message in the bottle quite on
> > > target).
> > > >
> > > > https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=w3cyYMyj2QM
> > > >
> > > > A bit of a renewed version of Pink Floyd's The Wall in a new genre.
> > For
> > > > those of you exploring new expresions, may be worth of your time.
> > > >
> > > > David
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>