The Hip-Hop Association Releases First-Ever Hip-Hop Education Guidebook

The Hip-Hop Association, a national organization dedicated to facilitating, fostering and preserving the hip-hop culture, has announced the release of the first-ever Hip-Hop Education Guidebook: Volume One for the 2007 school year. The textbook was conceived as a part of the Hip-Hop Association’s Education Initiative in order to bring about awareness and understanding that educators need to be more effective in their craft. “Teachers have no choice but to learn how to use hip-hop in the classroom,” says Talib Kweli. “It’s the language of the children. They have to respect the culture of hip-hop.” The National Assessment of Educational Progress recently revealed that Black and Latino students continue to fall behind in reading the math standardized test scores. The Hip-Hop Educational Guidebook looks to provide answers to solve such problems, as well as offer innovative lessons for teachers to use. “You can learn just as much about language and literature form reading Tupac as you can from Shakespeare,” says New York University professor David Kirkland. “The themes and conflicts present in Shakespeare are all present in hip-hop.” Danny Hoch, founder of the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival, also agrees the Hip-Hop Educational Guidebook is long overdue. “Finally, a book that deftly chronicles the history, development and practice of hip-hop in education, and more importantly, hip-hop as education,” Hoch says. “If education is not one of the first elements of hip-hop, then nobody in hip-hop is keepin’ it real except teachers.”