An educator who substantiates his research with his own classroom experience, Ernest Morrell illustrates how the critical teaching of popular culture can produce powerful academic and social results with urban youth. The author draws from data collected during the eight years that he taught urban teens in the San Francisco Bay area and southern California, and focuses on specific manifestations of popular culture--hip-hop, film, and mass media. His classroom units, "Teaching Hip Hop Culture," "Teaching Popular Film," and "Teaching Television and Media" include classroom unit descriptions and vignettes where appropriate.

Arguing that hip-hop music is the representative voice of urban youth because the genre was created by and for urban youth (George, 1998; Rose, 1994), Morrell connects his classroom instruction to Freire's work where the raising of critical consciousness in people who have been oppressed is the first step in helping them to obtain critical literacy (Freire, 1970). The author explains the influence of rap as a voice of resistance for urban youth, and seeks to establish the relevance of teaching popular culture in today's multicultural classroom as a means for engaging students in an both an academic and critical literacy.

Morrell suggests that as classrooms become increasingly diverse and educators struggle to find curricula and pedagogical strategies that are inclusive and affirmative yet facilitate the development of academic and critical literacies, we need ways beyond what is available now in terms of multicultural education literature. Its limited conception of culture as a racial or ethnic identity, according to the author, offers little to help teachers attempting to make connections and create learning communities in multiethnic urban classrooms. Popular culture, Morrell explains, can help students deconstruct dominant narratives and contend with oppressive practices in hopes of achieving a more egalitarian and inclusive society. (author/ebm)