Ratchetdemic
Reimagining Academic Success
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5.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“Ratchetdemic will inspire a new generation to be their authentic selves both within and beyond the classroom.”—GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan
A revolutionary new educational model that encourages educators to provide spaces for students to display their academic brilliance without sacrificing their identities
From the nationally renowned educator and New York Times best-selling author of For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all Too
Dr. Christopher Emdin advocates for a new kind of student identity—one that bridges the seemingly disparate worlds of the ivory tower and the urban classroom.
Because modern schooling often centers whiteness, Emdin argues, it dismisses ratchet identity (the embodying of “negative” characteristics associated with lowbrow culture, often thought to be possessed by people of a particular ethnic, racial, or socioeconomic status) as anti-intellectual and punishes young people for straying from these alleged “academic norms,” leaving young people in classrooms frustrated and uninspired. These deviations, Emdin explains, include so-called “disruptive behavior” and a celebration of hip-hop music and culture.
Emdin argues that being “ratchetdemic,” or both ratchet and academic (like having rap battles about science, for example), can empower students to embrace themselves, their backgrounds, and their education as parts of a whole, not disparate identities. This means celebrating protest, disrupting the status quo, and reclaiming the genius of youth in the classroom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Columbia University education professor Emdin (For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood) offers an illuminating guide to decentering whiteness in the classroom in order to allow students of color to thrive. Co-opting the slang meaning of ratchet ("the embodying of all ‘negative' characteristics associated with lowbrow culture"), Emdin proposes an educational model that teaches traditional academic subjects while uplifting BIPOC students' "culture and community" and giving them agency over their learning. He uses his Jamaican mother's disapproval of her fellow immigrants who were "too loud, too expressive, and too unabashedly Jamaican" as an example of how some teachers replicate the system "that silenced and harmed the very essence of who they were as students," and argues that today's "education-industrial complex" has its roots in "plantation pedagogies" enacted during the slavery era. Emdin illustrates his arguments with rap lyrics; the example of educators and civil rights activists including Septima Clark, whose citizenship schools, from the 1950s to 1970, helped illiterate African American adults "become part of the political process"; and stories of students of color who found success once they were given the freedom to pursue their own interests and speak without fear of having their language policed. This impassioned and richly detailed call for change will strike a chord with teachers in historically marginalized communities.
Customer Reviews
Phenomenal Read for Educators & None Educators
I found this book to give an educator the tools need to meet children where they are. If you find yourself code switching, this is here to give you the permission to move about the world with purpose, without having to code switch.