By Robin Chandler

Two years ago, an irate parent called me to complain about an interview I’d given to the Boston Globe, in which I talked about my work as a scholar and professor, and the courses in hip-hop I’ve been teaching since 1999. Hip-hop is violent, aggressive, and misogynistic, this father of preteen girls said. How could it possibly be an appropriate topic for college classes?

I asked him what artists he had listened to, and he reeled off the names of a few of hardcore rap’s heavy hitters: NWA, Snoop Dogg, Lil’ Kim. I told him I agreed that some hip-hop artists’ lyrics were vulgar, that some performances and videos were raunchy and exploitative. Then I asked whether he’d heard about some of the more progressive and positive points of light in the hip-hop spectrum, like Erykah Badu or the Roots. It was clear he was painfully underinformed.

Back in the mid-1990s, my own music tastes ran to Bach or Miles Davis. To me, hip-hop was a pulsating quadraphonic blast coming from the SUV behind me on the highway. My daughter and her friends accused me of being narrow-minded. They tried tutoring me. I paid attention. Sort of. "You’re not even listening to the lyrics," they admonished. Time passed. I began to listen better.

I’m glad I did. I’ve realized hip-hoppers are a multiracial, multireligious group, and a voice of their generation. They are not so much critics as partners in the development of the cultural life of America—and the world: I’ve received CDs from Poland’s hip-hop underground, from Cuban women rappers, from a young Iraqi American who assured me his group’s music was the dopest and most enlightened commentary on the current conflict in Iraq.

What, exactly, is hip-hop? It’s an umbrella term for a category of music that includes rap, b-boying and

b-girling (formerly known as break dancing), DJ’ing (manually manipulating a vinyl record to create a rhythm), and MC’ing (speaking or singing over a DJ’s beat). Graffiti art and spoken-word poetry are close artistic relatives. The hip-hop world is an ever-changing, dynamic culture, not to mention a global multibillion-dollar industry.

"Going native" into the hip-hop fold has been essential to my understanding the culture. I have been mentored by the young on how to recognize the rap poetics of lyrics created by Cree Indians in Canada, why Japanese kids have swallowed the hip-hop culture whole, how Johannesburg Kwaito music has fused with American hip-hop, what the average student really thinks about the "Cop Killer" controversy that pitted Ice-T against Charlton Heston, how deeply Latin hip-hoppers like Cypress Hill and Kid Frost truly love the salsa, bomba, and merengue music of their parents.

Many colleges and universities, such as Stanford, Michigan, and Columbia, are studying the various forms of hip-hop within different disciplines—music, communications, sociology, journalism, English, ethnic and cultural studies. At Northeastern, I lecture on hip-hop as a tradition, an art form, and a social movement, as a means of recapturing and firing the imagination of my students.

Now, as a curriculum movement, hip-hop is taking deep root in America’s middle and high schools. Educators are finding new ways to use the music to reach youngsters—both students at risk and the best and the brightest.

I get telephone calls and e-mails from all over the country enlisting my aid in developing teacher training, educational modules, and tutorials for translating hip-hop into the classroom. A few years ago, my research in culture, education, and multimedia technologies led to the creation of the Hip-Hop Tutorial Project, partially funded by the National Science Foundation, and launched at a Houston, Texas, middle school in 2001.

The project, which integrates hip-hop content into traditional disciplines—math, biology, literature, music, and law, for example—is designed to increase the literacy skills of K­12 students by encouraging reading, studying, and informal research. Computer-mediated learning helps reach students who may be discouraged or bored by standard educational methods. College interns help mentor and teach the middle and high school students.

Last November, the H2Ed (or, Hip-Hop Education) Summit, held in New York City, served as another landmark in the creation of new learning models. Bringing together hip-hop artists, public school teachers, political leaders, community activists, and academics from all over the United States, the gathering confirmed the widespread popularity of using hip-hop music and culture to educate young people.

Though younger teachers may know intuitively that hip-hop offers a powerful tool for teaching subjects as diverse as creative writing, history, and digital-media skills, they don’t necessarily have the strategies to make it happen. H2Ed was an important step in educating educators and stirring and gathering ideas. The online database unveiled after the summit—a central repository of lesson plans, participating teachers’ names, and resources—will help build a community of "new school" educators.

Back on the Northeastern campus, the Hip-Hop Library and Archive Project started taking shape in 2002. A traditional library of material culture, texts, films, CDs, and dissertations that articulate hip-hop’s history, participants, and movements, the archive was initially funded under the Provost office’s Practice-Oriented Education Initiative. Hoped-for future funding will allow the installation of a multimedia study room for middle and high school students as well as Northeastern students. And the university’s Institute on Race and Justice has funded a two-year research study of the hip-hop community’s responses to public media controversies, to assess collective action and activism among young people.

Such initiatives may seem to pale when compared with other national and global issues, such as homeland security or antiterrorism. And yet hip-hop studies have a real relevance. Incorporating contemporary culture into a college curriculum encourages a rigorous analysis of social history, introduces students to a deeper understanding of cultural differences through critical thinking, and expands human consciousness.

Today’s young people are a digital generation. They have invented new techniques for music production that originated in the tough streets of the South Bronx in the 1970s. They are sophisticated users of the latest information and communications technologies. But, most important, they have a vital interest in global grass-roots organizing. They care about issues related to social welfare, HIV/AIDS, voting, racial profiling, the justice system, educational reform, and so much more. They are truly engaged activists.

So why hip-hop? If our democratic society resists intellectual inquiry into a lifestyle and culture one generation finds repugnant, immoral, or disagreeable, how will we ever maintain our moral, ethical, or political center? Nervous baby boomers should recall their own youthful love of rock and roll and heavy metal, which are threaded with sexual and violent messages. Besides, for every gun-boasting or car-loving rapper, there’s a more socially conscious hip-hop act to point to—Common, Wyclef Jean, OutKast, Jill Scott, and Nas, to name a few.

Popular culture has power. Why not strain every nerve to communicate with a generation to whom the baton of critical thinking and leadership will soon pass? As we work to stabilize and energize a failing educational system, using hip-hop in the schools is an innovation that connects, teaches, and motivates today’s youth around the world.

Robin Chandler is an associate professor in Northeastern’s African-American Studies department.