To pimp a library card

Jonny Elswood

“If our students and the demographics of our country are becoming more and more diverse and our classrooms are becoming more diverse, we have to start thinking about the nature of the canon, and what we consider ‘text’, and what we consider worthy of study. Oftentimes in schools, the authors that they study are canonical European authors. In other words, old dead white men."  - Brian Mooney

Is there is a problem in Western arts education? To many it under-represents the participation of so-called unorthodox artists - lyricists, poets, novelists, film-makers, painters - and therefore under-represents the interests, needs and deeply important abilities of expression of young people in school right now. Arguably this must be felt most at the adolescent level, when students are in their mid to late teens and arriving at the time when emotional empathy through art, music and literature are most sought-after.

Kendrick Lamar’s visit to High Tech High School in New Jersey last Monday demonstrated in the excellently presented way seen above the needs of a much more diverse Arts curriculum. The other star of the short film, teacher Brian Mooney, is worthy of great praise for practicing what he preaches regarding diversification, however it's a shame that a growing rate of classroom multi-ethnicity had to be the instigation for that process in the first place. Even in a classroom of all white, male teenagers - not uncommon at all here in Scotland - how could the novels of Maya Angelou be justifiably struck from a course with the comfortable knowledge that, at least none of the kids will feel under-represented.
 

There seems to be no serious accusation that the teachings in our society are structurally racist. That may well be the case in many schools but is not the focus of the story of Lamar and High Tech High. What is being argued is in fact much simpler than that - the teachings are unrepresentative. In today’s Western cultures for example, hundreds of millions of people are intensely inspired, motivated, moved and informed by the sub-cultures of punk-rock and hip-hop, and yet these two movements are ignored to a bizarre degree by orthodox education in countries such as the UK, while an attempted ‘appreciation’ of much older (and yes, perhaps equally important) movements such as Baroque classical music abounds. It should be celebrated when an individual stumbles upon Bad Brains or The Specials or LL Cool J in their own time, but the fact that that invariably occurs outside, and even contra to or in spite of school education is telling.

And this perspective is far from trivial or naive. If we merely continue with the movements exemplified by the three artists just mentioned, it could well be said that an understanding of the cultural manifestations of the Vietnam-era New Left or the postwar spike of Afro-Caribbean migration to the United States and the British Isles is essential in forming not only a real and multi-focal approach to history, sociology and politics, but a genuinely interesting an engaging one too.

Why is John Steinbeck’s Of Mice & Men - undoubtedly, of course, a rich text in imagery and stylistic prose - a primary source of investigation into the issue of embedded racism in America? We presume through the indication of our English literature teachers, itself built upon decades of white-majority literary criticism, that Steinbeck’s representation and illustration of the character of Crooks is not only accurate, but laudable almost beyond comparison. In this vein, why was the vast majority of the Western cinema audience totally unaware of Solomon Northup’s astounding personal account of slavery 12 Years A Slave until Steve McQueen put it to the big screen? More relevant would be the questions of where are the Ska lyrics in a history lesson dealing with postwar Britain? How many rappers could a Modern Studies teacher quote upon request, and how many of them are girls?

It's sad enough to observe the lack of diversity in the visible everyday running of schools. But that becomes sadder when it translates into what is actually being set as homework, especially when the incendiary issue of immigration saturates the news coverage and electoral debates of the third millennium. In terms of the racial dimensions to all of this, a black film director will be infinitely more capable and qualified to explain than I am. Below is Mr McQueen talking about opportunity in a room of directors. Their awkwardness, silence and immediately clear discomfort in response to what he has to say are as telling as the insight itself.

So if opportunity is indeed the obstacle obstructing the proper representation of people in the Arts, then a rectified and re-balanced approach to Arts education must surely be a solution. Whether or not that solution is to be found at university level is a separate discussion, but tackling the myopia of Western Arts curriculums should, and is sometimes being done at every level, as Mr Mooney shows.

Mark Kermode, one of the UK's leading film critics, named some of his favourite recent film releases, all directed by women. "A Woman Walks Home Alone At Night... The Falling... The Babadook... Belle... If this is the kind of work that can be done in an environment as chauvanist as it clearly is now," he said, "imagine what we would have if you had a level playing field." This argument can be made in an identical fashion with regards to music. Teaching music in as diverse and proportionate a way as possible would enhance the subject's appreciation and interaction by pupils, and employing that music in all other Arts subjects would make the job a whole lot easier. Dismissing Dead Kennedys lyrics slamming American foreign policy as the drunken sputum of uneducated, degenerate thugs not only deprives students of the opportunity to hear for themselves the power music can possess in a political arena, it also simply makes it harder for them to hear the Dead Kennedys, and that's a real shame.