Dropouts or Pushouts?

A teacher at Shadle Park High School in Spokane, Wash. has been placed on administrative leave for distributing lyrics from the song "Commencement Day" by Seattle hip hop group Blue Scholars on the first day of school.

The song — ironically, a rap about censorship at school — rails against a system that fails to graduate so many students and praises those who make it to graduation day.

“It goes one for the student who refuses to submit
And two for the teachers who are underpaid as sh--
It’s the next generation of mis-educated youth
Who demonstrate the truth and manage to make it through
It goes three for the strikes giving young bloods life
And four for the years you spent stifled inside
It’s the next generation of mis-educated youth.”

A school district spokeswoman told KXLY-TV that "the profanity in the song is the issue, not the song’s criticism of the educational system. Supplemental materials, such as lyrics to songs, are subject to the district’s approval process. That process looks at profanity in terms of context. This song did not go through the approval process."

But Paul Mencke,an assistant professor in the department of teaching and learning at Washington State University, doesn’t see how the song could possibly cause any harm. Much to the contrary, he wrote in the Spokesman-Review:

“I believe, and have seen firsthand, the positive effects this song, ‘Commencement Day’ by the Blue Scholars, can have on all students – especially those who ‘don’t seem to want to be in school. The song (as well as other material), which asks students to question the current model of curriculum, is exactly what must be used if we plan to curb the high drop-out rate. Our educational system’s insistence on ignoring the lives of our low socioeconomic and multicultural students, which are often portrayed in hip-hop music, is often what pushes students out of our schools. Therefore, we may want to reframe our label of these students as ‘push-outs’ instead of ‘drop-outs.’”