Teachers nationwide are using rap -- the street-savvy, pop-locking, rhyming creations of Shakur, Geto Boys, Run-DMC and others -- to teach history and English. Some colleges are even training future educators to weave rap into high school lessons.
"In order for students to understand anyone else's poetic language, they have to first understand their own," Camangian said.
To some parents and teachers, the idea of mentioning Grandmaster Flash in the same breath as T.S. Eliot is wack. They reject the notion that rap, with its raw language and vivid depictions of violence, has anything in common with literature.
RAP CAN SHED LIGHT
But those who use it to teach say rap can be intellectually provocative, shedding light on the grand themes of love, war and oppression in much the same way as classic fiction. As a teaching tool, they liken rap to the songs of Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel, used by an earlier generation of teachers.
In Camangian's south Los Angeles classroom on a recent afternoon, students read the lyrics from a Shakur song, "Shorty Wanna Be a Thug." The verse describes a man's internal struggle to remain virtuous while a devil-like figure tempts him toward immorality and loose women:
I tell you it's a cold world, stay in school.
You tell me it's a man's world, play the rules
and fade fools, 'n break rules until we major.
Blaze up, gettin' with hos through my pager.
Camangian, 28, asked the class to compare the song to a speech said to have been delivered in Virginia in 1712 by a British slave owner. In the speech, whose authenticity has been questioned, Willie Lynch offers advice on preventing slave rebellions and urges that slaves be pitted against one another -- men versus women, light-skinned versus dark, young versus old.
Toure Eagans, 16, said Shakur's lyrics showed how the "slave mentality" persists in disrespectful language.
Shakur "is reinforcing what Willie Lynch said. He's putting the man against the woman. It's dehumanizing them," he said.
"So it's the same thing they did to the slaves? Take a powerful man and turn him into a slave?" Camangian asked.
WORDS CAN CAUSE PAIN
Another student pointed out that some African American students address one another with racial epithets, without thinking about the pain such words can cause.
"Yes, Willie Lynch said slavery will carry on for hundreds of years, and we still (perpetuate) it everyday in our language," she said.
After class, Elyse Bryant, 16, said studying hip-hop helps students define a role for themselves in their neighborhoods and the wider world.
"We'll sit in class and really think about what (rappers) are saying," she said. "They talk about what's going on in the country, from the government to the streets."
Lisa Moore, 16, said hip-hop speaks directly to young people in a way that classic texts cannot.
"We need to learn about Shakespeare, but hip-hop is history too," she said. "As far as Shakespeare goes, we can't relate to that. We can relate to what's going on now."
FOULMOUTHED RAP LYRICS
Hip-hop has become an object of serious study on college campuses. But in high school and lower grades, hip-hop is a more delicate subject. Crenshaw Principal Isaac Hammond said some parents complained last year that their children had been exposed to foulmouthed rap lyrics in class. Hammond now requires Camangian to edit out the strongest language.
Shelby Steele, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, said: "I would be outraged to find out my child is being subjected to Tupac Shakur in an academic classroom."
Steele, a political essayist who taught college English for nearly 25 years,
said students learn rap lyrics on their own. In school, he said, "they need to be taught great literature."
Two education professors -- Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade of UCLA and Ernest Morrell of Michigan State University -- say students need both.
The two designed and taught an English course at Oakland High School in which students studied rap lyrics in tandem with classic works. Duncan-Andrade and Morrell reported the results in July in the English Journal, published by the National Council of Teachers of English.
HIP-HOP AS A BRIDGE
"Hip-hop can be used as a bridge linking the seemingly vast span between the streets and the world of academics," they wrote. At the same time, they said, rap is literature, "a worthy subject of study in its own right."
Duncan-Andrade and Morrell say rap lyrics can be used "to teach irony, tone,
diction and point of view" and can be "analyzed for theme, motif, plot and character development."
A sample lesson plan they offer to high school teachers calls for comparing "Kubla Khan," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with "If I Ruled the World," by rapper Nas; Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" with "The Message," by Grandmaster Flash; and "Immigrants in Our Own Land," by modern poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, with "The World Is a Ghetto," by Geto Boys.
Their students have noticed parallels between Eliot and Grandmaster Flash, the researchers wrote. Students found that both artists speak of a "wasteland" of physical and moral decay in their societies.
James Dickson, 23, a high school English teacher in Madison, Miss., uses "The Rose That Grew From Concrete," a book of poems that Shakur wrote before he became a rap star. The collection, which is devoid of obscenities, features verses about love, loneliness, his mother, death and the Black Panthers.
Dickson said he often compares Shakur's poem "In the Depths of Solitude" to works by William Blake, the 18th century English poet, because both address how people struggle with internal conflicts.
