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The Sociology of Education is a field of study that seeks to explain how forces of social reproduction help to maintain inequality in educational achievement. Sociologists of Education also explore ways to enable teachers, students, parents, and communities to alter or disrupt these forces. For example, the powerful elite, which are less in population, have power over the masses, which are overflowing in population.

Social Reproduction is the way that the powerful elite have control over the masses. It refers to the ways in which dominant institutions (like school) promote social inequality. This allows a small dominant group (oppressors) to maintain control over a much larger subordinated group (oppressed).

According to Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, who discuss ways to help people overcome this oppression and break cycles of social reproduction:

Reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world. Reading the word is not merely preceded by reading the world, but by a certain form of writing it or rewriting it, that is, of transforming it by means of conscious, practical work (35). Words should be laden with the meaning of the people's existential experience, and not of the teacher's experience. A critical reading of reality constitutes an act of what Gramsci calls counterhegemony (36).

Understanding the world you live in will help you become conscious of your oppression. When you are conscious of your oppression, your ideology will change and when your ideology changes, your actions will change. Then it becomes possible to change the world you live in. Having a problem such as oppression and being conscious of that problem will help you become critical of your actions and this can change your interpretation of the powerful elite and your struggles. When you change your interpretation of your struggles, transformation can begin . Hip-hop culture can help urban youth become conscious of their oppression because it relates to their own experiences and teaches them to be themselves, fight for what they believe in, and pursue their dreams.

To find a solution to our research problem, each member of our research team took pictures of things in our community that represented Hip-Hop culture. We also interviewed teachers that were participating in a summer institute at UCLA. Our group members also distributed surveys to 24 high school students involved in technology project. Other data collected included: interviewing students in the community and taking a video camera around UCLA's campus to ask students questions that relate to hip-hop. The difficulties we had were people being camera shy and not wanting to answer our questions. Although many teachers complain about how students of color are never doing anything positive, most refused to interview with us.

We found that students think hip-hop has both a positive and negative impact on the way students speak, dress, and act. For example the negative influence of hip-hop on the young generation is that it encourages violence in their world. The positive influence of hip-hop on the young generation is that it teaches young people to be themselves no matter what obstacle is in their way and it tells them that they can still accomplish their goals.

The students we interviewed and surveyed in the Los Angeles area believe hip-hop is so widely listened to for a myriad of reasons. The most popular reason was that they like it. The second most noted reason was that the students could relate with the music. It has to do with everyday things they have to go through. Students gave responses such as: "Hip-Hop is an expression of the soul that everyone can relate to because it combines so many art forms," and "they talk about whet teens are experiencing in life, so the teens feel a connection with the music."

Students on the survey also indicated that hip-hop culture had an influence on their attitudes toward authority and American society, but not as much as it influenced their dress and language.

Overall, the students we interviewed and surveyed think the impact of hip-hop culture is both positive and negative. They also think that it depends on the artist and the song's message. Some thought it had a negative impact because of the profanity and the use of the word "bitch" to demean woman. But on the opposite side, some responses were saying that their message was positive, saying stay in school and say no to drugs. For example, several students who were interviewed said that Lauryn Hill was their favorite hip-hop artist because she gives positive messages to kids and young girls. One other student pointed to such artists as Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg as negative influences because they constantly refer to women as "bitches" and "hoes". She also thought that the violence should be toned down because some young kids may choose to follow their example.

Some students indicated that they did not feel that hip-hop had a large impact on them, but their actions and language in interviews contradicted these statements. For example, one young man who claimed not to be affected used the language of hip-hop and knew who most of the artists were and gave many examples in his responses. In one quote he says:

Although he claims to be unaffected by hip-hop, he explains how you have to identify with the artists in order to understand their message.

Mr. Lynwood teaches at Lynnwood Elementary School in Los Angeles. He has been in the teaching profession for over thirty years. Lynnwood received his bachelor's degree in New Zealand and finished up his Master's in India studying English Literature. Lynnwood's students are mainly Latino and he feels that they are very intelligent, yet they lack self-esteem. Lynnwood reaches out to his students by familiarizing them with the subject matter and by "watering down" material to help them understand.

Lynnwood feels that hip-hop music is like a passing storm. According to him, "It has reached its peak and will soon be gone." Classical music, however, will live on forever. When Lynnwood was asked if hip-hop music encourages his students to curse, he responded by saying that many things are responsible for the profanity, but rap music also plays a part, "music is an international language and it has some negative effects on the young people today".

Lynnwood believes that there should be no censorship in the United States and hopes that all cultures are one day adopted equally into our school system. However he did not respond when asked the question about including hip-hop in the curriculum.

We interviewed an English teacher from Westchester that has been teaching English for 9 years. We asked him simple questions. For example we asked him where do you teach? How long have you been teaching? We also asked him what experience does he have with hip- hop? He answered some questions and other questions he didn't give us the answer we were looking for. We were expecting a specific answer that would inform our research, instead, all we received were "yes" or "no" responses. Some questions were completely avoided. For instance, when we asked him about his experience with hip-hop, he said that he didn't, although he admitted that his daughter was a big fan of hip-hop and she would always have her radio playing hip-hop. We also asked him how does hip- hop affects your students he said he had no opinion. We felt he didn't answer some of our question because he would think we would judge him or he didn't want to offend us. If he specifically said that hip-hop encourages violence or negatively affected youth, we would take that personally and judge him as a bad person. We definitely felt that Mr. Westchester associated us with hip-hop culture and that had an effect on his responses.

1. Teachers should listen to the students' opinions on how they want to learn and what they feel should be taught.
2. As much as possible, curriculum should reflect the experiences of the students.
3. Teachers should understand that school structure and curriculum choices help to promote inequality in achievement. It's not just the fault of "bad" kids who don't want to learn.
4. Teachers should talk with students about social inequality in school to help them become conscious of their oppression.
5. Teachers should make an effort to understand hip-hop culture because it reflects the experiences of their students and has such a tremendous impact on their students' lives.
6. There should be a forum at Santa Monica High School for us to share our research with teachers and to discuss more student-focused alternatives for the school curriculum.

Some ways that teachers might include hip-hop in their curriculum include:

• Examining the messages that artists are trying to send through their songs to promote discussions among students.
• Looking at the experiences of the artists and having the students relate to their own experiences.
• English teachers can examine the use of language in hip-hop and how it relates students' use of language.

For future research, we should have more time because when we interviewed the teacher from Westchester, if we had more time, we could have gotten more information than we did. We also needed time to interview more students. If we had more time we could have gotten a wider range of surveys and also we could have ordered transcripts from the interviews we conducted which would have helped in our analysis. We could have looked at more specific quotes from the interviews, and looking at the interviews on paper would have reduced the chance of us missing anything important.

In the upcoming year we could conduct more interviews with teachers and students and also possibly friends and family members. Getting other perspective of the subject would be more helpful than just interviewing a small number of teachers and students. Maybe we can conduct interviews with college professors like Dr. Solorzano, and Dr. Rogers because they might be able to help us out with information. Since they have more experience with schools, curriculum, and students, they may be able to offer guidance to our research. Maybe we could get them to fill out a survey so we could get more opinions from academics on the possibility of including hip-hop in the curriculum.

School Attended:

Year in School:

Age:

Ethnicity:

How many hip-hop CDs do you own? (Circle the best response)

Less than 5 5-10 10-15 15-20 more than 20

How many hours a week do you spend listening to hip-hop on the radio and watching videos on TV?

Less than 1 1-2 3-5 5-10 more than 10

What influence does hip-hop music and culture have on teens in the following areas (1=no influence; 5=extreme influence)

Teens choice of clothing

1 2 3 4 5

No influence extreme influence

Teens' Speech (choice of language):

1 2 3 4 5

No influence extreme influence

Teens' attitude toward authority figures:

1 2 3 4 5

No influence extreme influence

Teen's attitudes towards America:

1 2 3 4 5

No influence extreme influence

Overall, does hip-hop have a positive or negative impact on young people? Explain.

Why, in your opinion, is hip-hop music so widely listened to by young people?

How do your teachers feel about hip-hop music?

Would you like to see hip-hop included in what is taught in school? Explain.

• How many hip-hop CDs do you own?
• How many hours a week do you spend listening to hip-hop music on the radio and MTV?
• What impact, if any, does hip-hop music have on the way you dress? The language you use?
• Who is your favorite hip-hop artist? What is it that you admire about this artist?
• Why do you feel that hip-hop music is so popular with young people today?
• Do you feel that hip-hop music helps address the experiences of being young in a big city? If so, explain.
• What [impact], if any, does hip-hop music have on the way you view the world?

• What attention, if any, do the teachers at your school give to hip-hop music? How do you think your teachers feel about hip-hop music? Why?
• Do you feel that hip-hop music, or the issues discussed in hip-hop music, should be a part of the school curriculum? Why?
• Would you like to see hip-hop music, film or other elements of youth culture as part of the school curriculum? If so, how should it be included?
• If you had the power, how would you change the high school curriculum? Why?

• Where do you teach? How many years have you taught? What subject(s) do you teach?
• What is your opinion on utilizing the cultural perspectives of students in your curriculum?
• In your opinion, how well do the curricula at your school address the cultural perspectives of the students at your school? Do you have any examples?
• What experience have you had with hip-hop music?
• What influence do you believe that hip-hop music has on urban America? On the students you teach? Why?
• How do you define culture? According to your definition, does hip-hop constitute a culture? Why or why not?

• Freire, P& Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. Westport, CT : Bergin & Garvey.