Trap Civics: Amalgamating Critical Conscious Learning with Joy for Critical Civic Learning

• In Event: United We Stand: Interdisciplinarity and Progressive Politics in Pre-K–12 Classrooms, Communities, and Curriculum

Abstract

Purpose
Black music – as art – has long alchemized narratives of pain into joy, from slave songs to gospel and blues as well as hip hop (Bey, 2017). However, Black music's alchemic quality as a pedagogical tool for aiding teachers in promoting critical civic–reasoning capacities is understudied. Although hip–hop pedagogy has informed teachers' pedagogical practices, content, and celebration of students' culture (Emdin, 2016) by increasing cultural relevance (Halverson, 2021), Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy research into how teachers prioritize an honest historical understandings alongside students' emotional well–being is needed.

I investigated joy, critical consciousness, and civic literacy relationships evident in critical hip–hop pedagogical models using case study. Examining how teachers fused art and social studies learning using critical hip–hop pedagogy (Epstein & Peck, 2017), I considered how Trap Civics –a self–designed critical hip–hop curriculum – facilitated joy and critical consciousness while examining it as a new method for liberatory social studies education. The following questions guided me: 1) How did students develop critical consciousness through joy – while studying difficult history – using Trap Civics? 2) What implications might Trap Civics have for education?

Theoretical Framework
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) gave me a theoretical framework for recognizing when students developed critical consciousness through joy (Paris & Alim, 2017). Broadly, CSP provides the foundational understanding of liberatory joy and critical conscious learning and the need to create conditions for students to experience joy along with understandings of oppression. I used CSP to elicit data moments where students (re)named the world and took up joy alongside pain (Alim & Wong, 2020; Tuck, 2009).

Methods
500 Midwesterner middle schoolers participated. Over eight months, I generated data using video, fieldnotes, and student artifacts while teaching the Trap Civics curriculum I designed. I analyzed using CSP and coded for critical consciousness and joy. I noted two findings: 1) creating space for students to share their lived experiences leads to liberatory joy and critical civic learning, as they are learning to know themselves and to identify their social worlds (Desai & Marsh 2005; Hall, 2023); 2) designing for joy and critical conscious learning means allowing for ratchet language and behavior (Emdin, 2021).

Findings
My findings suggest that when students wrote their own rap songs rather than merely analyzing existing ones, they cultivated new forms of civic literacy. I argue this is because students are knowledge producers rather than consumers. For example, students used self–penned Black history raps as a technology to have a conversation with the past while reflecting on how history impacts them.

Significance
Jim Crow, genocide, and slavery can be difficult for students to process and hard for teachers to present in emotionally nourishing ways (Epstein & Peck, 2017). As a result, these histories are often ignored; this erasure negatively impacts students and civics education. For a multicultural democracy to thrive, BIPOC curricular models for teaching Black history through culturally sustaining means are an essential focus for educators (Lee, 2021; Swalwell & Payne, 2019). Critical hip–hop pedagogy – particularly Trap Civics – provides valuable avenues for fostering critical consciousness through joy while studying difficult histories.

Author

• Jonathan Tunstall, Bowdoin College