{"id":44487,"date":"2012-05-06T17:10:41","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T20:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=44487"},"modified":"2016-05-23T18:02:19","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T21:02:19","slug":"the-rhythm-of-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-rhythm-of-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"The rhythm of knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

l\u00e9o ramos<\/span>A group of youths attending the presentation of a dancer at Casa do Hip-Hop, in Diadema, last monthl\u00e9o ramos<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Including contemporary popular culture in the curriculum of public schools might be the key for some of the structural problems of the Brazilian educational system, as professor M\u00f4nica do Amaral tries to show in her research on public policies, Rappers, os novos mensageiros urbanos da di\u00e1spora afro-brasileira na periferia de S\u00e3o Paulo: a contesta\u00e7\u00e3o est\u00e9tico-musical que emancipa e educa <\/em>[Rappers, the new urban messengers of the Afro-Brazilian Diaspora on the outskirts of S\u00e3o Paulo city: the esthetic-musical protest that emancipates and educates], conducted at the School of Education of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP) with FAPESP support.<\/p>\n

Her theoretical argument is based on activities conducted, first, at the Jos\u00e9 Alc\u00e2ntara Machado Municipal School of Fundamental Education in south side S\u00e3o Paulo city, and then at the NGO Casa do Zezinho, where she still coordinates workshops. M\u00f4nica plans to take the results of her research to the bureaus connected to the educational network of S\u00e3o Paulo state and S\u00e3o Paulo city.<\/p>\n

The project involves a team of educators coordinated by her and aims to review the methodological basis of basic and fundamental education based on conducting art workshops, where the objective is to articulate music, dance, poetry and drawing with literacy. The hip-hop culture takes on a fundamental position in this process, although older popular cultures are also included. Initially, the activities conducted along with the teachers of the Jos\u00e9 Alc\u00e2ntara Machado School were based on an analysis of the cultural and social make-up of the community that they served.<\/p>\n

The region is part of the south side of the city, alongside the Morumbi district, between two shantytowns (Jardim Panorama and Real Parque). Its earliest inhabitants were migrants from Pernambuco state that came to S\u00e3o Paulo city in the 1950s. They came from an area where, in the colonial past, there had been a policy of forced establishment of villages with peasants, former slaves and native Indians. Many were fleeing from extreme poverty and ended up as building workers during the construction of the Morumbi stadium.<\/p>\n

\"\"

l\u00e9o ramos<\/span>The event\u2019s audience: gathered to discuss the Revolt of the Mal\u00eas and Afro-Brazilian subjects along with lots of dancing and graffitil\u00e9o ramos<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The research on the origins of the community turned into the basis for three master\u2019s degrees dissertations and one doctoral thesis, which is still under way, in addition to the post-doctorate (livre-doc\u00eancia<\/em>) thesis called A trama e a urdidura entre as culturas juvenis e a cultura escolar: a \u201cer\u00f3ptica\u201d como m\u00e9todo de pesquisa e de ruptura de campo<\/em>[The warp and weft of the youth culture and the school culture: \u201ceroptica\u201d as a method of research and of field rupture]. This work points out that the use of traditional European teaching methods did not work efficiently in the impoverished outskirts of S\u00e3o Paulo city. Furthermore, it could even help to make extreme poverty in the Northeast of Brazil worse.<\/p>\n

The \u201cdecline of the authority of the teacher,\u201d an expression employed by M\u00f4nica, in reference to the ideas of the German philosopher Hannah Arendt, is the central issue of the debate. \u201cThat traditional authority, whether stricter or more liberal, fell by the wayside a long time ago. However, if we listen to the life story of these children and of their families, if we value their culture, we have the conditions needed to reestablish the teacher\u2019s authority,\u201d she states.<\/p>\n

To build this bridge, the project proposes, in its second stage, which is under way at Casa do Zezinho, to articulate the educational process with an understanding of these roots and with the production of works of art that might unravel the reality experienced by the students, besides encouraging them to think about it. The languages connected with the hip-hop movement, such as rap and funk, thanks to their reach among young people, gain more strength.<\/p>\n

The basis of the project consists of workshops. The educators teach the participants how to make music, write lyrics for tunes and draw. During the exercises, they observe the students\u2019 behavior and afterwards, the results. They then produce reports in which they describe the events experienced both by the students and by themselves.<\/p>\n

According to Maria Cecilia Cortez, a professor of Education History and Philosophy at USP, M\u00f4nica \u201cinvolved the teachers and opened their eyes to cultural manifestations. Many were blind and lacked willingness or time. They had become hardened as a result of their habits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although articulating education and art is hardly a novel approach, Cortez states that the experiences of the last few years remained isolated at NGOs and did not take root in middle and fundamental schooling. \u201cThey are specific works, that might have been extended,\u201d the researcher advocates. \u201cWhen the school doesn\u2019t take these cultures into account, when it only offers the European educational tradition, it presents a partial view and doesn\u2019t perform what Brazilian culture did in the past and continues to do: integrate the different perceptions of indigenous or black origins with daily life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The management of the Brazilian schools remained \u201cdeaf\u201d\u00a0 to these roots, Cortez continues, and that is why they slipped into a state of inertia. \u201cYou see that both the students and the teachers have no interest in their bureaucratic activities. They don\u2019t see themselves as individuals who can participate and develop,\u201d he concludes.<\/p>\n

\"\"

l\u00e9o ramos<\/span>Dancer Drica and graffiti by Nino Brown, a precursor of hip-hop in Brazill\u00e9o ramos<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Likewise, the opportunities to understand the students in greater depth are also wasted. It is not unusual for art workshops to offer rich material about life in the city outskirts. The classes for writing song lyrics, for example, besides functioning as an \u201cassertion of identity,\u201d as M\u00f4nica says, enable teachers to learn about more about the students involved.<\/p>\n

Exchanges<\/strong>
\nTo exemplify the interchange among the artistic productions of boys and girls with a vocation for what M\u00f4nica calls \u201cchronicles,\u201d the researcher recites verses by a boy called Renan, printed in a leaflet produced in class: \u201cI was an urchin, a black boy from the shantytown\/My father\u2019s a layabout who\u2019s always watching soap operas\/Afraid of dwarfs, he listens to Belchior\/ And here\u00b4s me, learning all that\u2019s bad out in the streets.\u201d \u201cSee how sharp they are,\u201d says M\u00f4nica .<\/p>\n

The same leaflet is illustrated with drawings. Among these, what drew the attention of the researcher was the number of pictures representing walls. \u201cThere were a large number of them and they symbolized what was keeping them apart from the rest of a city that is well served by public services.\u201d<\/p>\n

The context of the creations, even in the field of language, is also debated in class. \u201cWe talked about what ruptures these sorts of lyrics or what the broken rhythms allow. And we didn\u2019t only work with electronic media, but also with Afro-Indigenous drums, wind instruments, and rattles, for the students to start developing a new basis,\u201d she tells us.<\/p>\n

According to M\u00f4nica, there are similar experiments in US schools. In January of this year, she visited Hip-Hop Education, a study center that belongs to the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development in New York. Complementing their school curriculum, rappers and graffiti artists are invited to hold art and education workshops.<\/p>\n

There is a parallel here with S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s reality. In major US cities, school evasion and student disinterest are also problems for the management of the public educational network. \u201cBoth there and over here, it is important to go for something that motivates them, that strengthens their identify and respect in relation to society. Through rap, they impose themselves,\u201d says the researcher. \u201cWhen they can show their potential, this means the world to them, and that is how their artistic, poetic and esthetic work becomes more sophisticated,\u201d she advocates.<\/p>\n

Workshops<\/strong>
\nM\u00f4nica \u2019s research is also backed by testimonies. The journalists Djalma Leite de Campos took charge of recording interviews on video with rappers and funk artists and the content is shown in the classroom. \u201cThis has fueled our workshops. Some testimonies show what led these artists to become rappers. Others explain how to build bases and rhythms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

l\u00e9o ramos<\/span>The first Hip-Hop in Action in 2012, at Casa do Hip-Hop, brought students together to dance and discuss societyl\u00e9o ramos<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Milton Santos was one of the interviewed rappers and his testimony was recorded at the Moinho shantytown, following an episode of arson in the community. In this interview, he explained that he had lived in Vila Madalena and in other districts of the city\u2019s expanded central area, but that he had decided to return to the area he had grown up in, as he did not want to lose contact with the reality that had inspired his work.<\/p>\n

M\u00f4nica recounts that the proposal to work with rap and with funk, at first, generated resistance within schools. \u201cThe reaction was terrible because of a morality that condemned rap for its violent language and funk for the eroticization of women\u2019s body and for its sensual dances. This affected the teachers,\u201d the researcher tells us. According to her, the analyses that formed the basis of these refusals are superficial: M\u00f4nica says that funk advocates women\u2019s right to talk about their own sensuality, while rap copies violence, crime and the struggles with the police, putting the spectator in the center of action, to then generate awareness about the violence that reigns on the outskirts of the large cities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt isn\u2019t a pure imitation of violence and the discourse of crime. This is their language. Adolescents and youths first identify with the situation and afterward become aware of what that stands for in their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, in the second year of her research, M\u00f4nica\u2019s team also has the help of a geography teacher, Lourdes Carril, and of Claudia Florindo, from the field of literacy. \u201cWe often find semi-illiterate youths who managed to create lyrics, having been motivated by the workshops. Boys that couldn\u2019t read and others who could ended up producing things together,\u201d she tells us.<\/p>\n

Her bet on the hip-hop movement is based on yet another element. The United States, France, South Africa, Portugal and many other countries are part of a global movement around this esthetic genre. Like the Rationalists, rappers are chroniclers, as what often goes unpublished in the newspapers is stated in their lyrics. \u201cThat is why the rap and the hip-hop culture earned respect. It is an esthetic movement that works with rhythms from the past and that combines this with everything that is most up-to-date in terms of technique and media,\u201d the researcher explains. Though an approximation with the alienating mass media occurs first, what comes next is a critical withdrawal,\u201d she analyzes.<\/p>\n

The research concludes that the hip-hop culture offers tools for a review of the educational system, but there is another problem that remains rigidly solid, often hindering learning. The team coordinated by M\u00f4nica faced a number of difficulties, mainly because some of the children and adolescents still suffer from violence and oppression in the streets or in their domestic environment.<\/p>\n

There was the case of a youth who started to cry compulsively during one of the workshops. Or of the students who stopped paying attention. Or one student who lost his concentration because his friends had been murdered.<\/p>\n

The teachers’ wages are an altogether different chapter of this story.<\/p>\n

The Project<\/strong>
\nRappers, the new urban messengers of the Afro-Brazilian Diaspora on the outskirts of S\u00e3o Paulo city: the esthetic and musical contestation that emancipates and educates (n\u00ba\u00a02010\/52002-9<\/a>);\u00a0Modality\u00a0<\/strong>Program of Research into Public Policies;\u00a0Coordinator\u00a0<\/strong>M\u00f4nica G. Teixeira do Amaral – USP;\u00a0Investment\u00a0<\/strong>R$ 54,814.86<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hip-hop helps school system on the outskirts of large cities","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[226],"coauthors":[336],"class_list":["post-44487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44487"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=44487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}