Until 1999, Radcliffe Fellow Meira Levinson's two professional worlds - she's an urban middle school teacher and an Oxford-trained political theorist - existed separately. Her days in the classroom didn't overlap with the academic papers she published or conferences she attended.
Levinson's worlds collided, however, on a bus ride across Atlanta four years ago. She and her middle school students, who were all African American, were returning from a quiz bowl at a school on the other side of town, where they had suffered a resounding defeat by the mostly white team there. But Levinson was less interested in discussing their loss than in probing one question: Had her students understood why the rival team laughed when they missed identifying Kurt Cobain as the leader of the band Nirvana, instead pegging him a Wimbledon winner?
They hadn't, she learned, because none of her 35 students had heard of Kurt Cobain or Nirvana. Levinson tried to help them bridge the cultural gap. "Those white kids all know who Kurt Cobain is the way all African Americans know who Master P is," she told them, naming the hip-hop artist who topped the charts that year.
Her students protested the analogy. "Dr. Levinson, you don't get it," they told her. "Everyone knows who Master P is!"
| Continue Beth Potier's Harvard News Office article "Kurt Cobain vs. Master P: Multiple approaches to education"
posted in articles on November 20, 2003 5:48 PM | t (0)
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