Hip Hop Learning: Graffiti as an Educator of Urban Teenagers

Educational Foundations, Fall 2003 by Christen, Richard S

Graffiti and Other Educational Organizations

There are potential liabilities in any education, and whether teaching beneficial or problematic knowledge, skills, and values, the graffiti crews clearly function as educational organizations.60 But how do their pedagogical goals and content compare to those of more traditional American educational organizations such as schools and more formal arts institutions? Schools have functioned as status-quo organizations since at least the mid-nineteenth century, when Horace Mann and other common school reformers promoted public schools as a way to assimilate Americans into the mainstream ideology of republicanism, Protestantism, and capitalism.61 For the progressive reformers of the early twentieth century, schools were a way to ready students for the challenges of America's new urban-industrial society. Progressives disagreed as to how schools could best achieve this task some favored child-centered, experiential approaches; others emphasized social justice and transformation. But in the end, most schools favored a social-efficiency model that prepared students for specific economic, social, and political roles in the U.S.62 Since the progressive era, this pattern has become even more streamlined, with vocational preparation-what Neil Postman labels "economic utility" - arguably the most valued educational goal in today's schools.63

In America's cities, cultural institutions such as museums and arts societies have also been important educational organizations, evolving during the first half of the twentieth century "from essentially custodial institutions with ancillary educational functions into primary educational institutions."64 Urban arts societies have typically complemented but not replicated schools, supporting them in their efforts to assimilate students into mainstream society but preparing students for the private sphere rather than the public arena - domestic life and leisure time rather than jobs, voting, or political leadership.65 For example, the popular progressive-era Arts and Crafts societies sponsored classes, workshops, and exhibitions that taught the appreciation of beauty in everyday objects and the importance of individual creative expression. For William Morris and other nineteenth-century founders of the Arts and Crafts movement, these concepts were the keys to altering the monstrous work and social conditions of the English industrial revolution. But the American Arts and Crafts societies paid little attention to social reforms. Instead they urged their mostly middle class and affluent adult students to counter urban-industrial difficulties with an ideal domestic life - a home filled with beautifully crafted goods and leisure time centered on the production and purchase of these objects. Their classes encouraged students to tap their creative sides and prepare them to recognize, consume, and even make beautiful objects for their private enjoyment.66 Over the years, a number of American Arts and Crafts societies have broadened their clientele to include children and the working classes as well as prosperous adults, but they have continued the tradition of directing students toward a private life that copes with rather than attacks public problems.67