My experience with education was positive, however after I begun reflection, I realized that oftentimes it was oppressive towards Aboriginal peoples. I remember being taught about Aboriginal peoples culture, and students would often roll their eyes when that topic came up. Not because the students were trying to be oppressive or racist, but rather because we we felt as though there was no reason to be learning the content. I now of course realize that we had no knowledge about treaty education, however we were never taught the importance of treaty education. I truly wish that somebody could have sat our class down and told us why treaty education is important, the effects of colonization, and attempted to decolonize our ways of thinking. I feel that in this sense I was robbed of a full education, I feel lucky that I was able to take Indigenous studies in university, as well as classes such as these that teach us about the importance to hopefully change the future of education.

Hip hop and education are often two things that are never compared; however there are many ways that they can be used to assist each other. The article I am focusing on today is Paulo Freire’s study around student participation. Focusing on hip hop encourages students to take a step back and re examine their views around race, religion, gender, socioeconomic class, sexuality, and other things that they may not stop to focus on. Hip hop gives the freedom of speech to talk about experiences that many people do not have to go through. A lot of the time these experiences talking about social or racial inequality in particular, resonate with a lot of students. It is very important to not brush off Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy, and instead try to incorporate it into everyday learnings and teachings in order to teach students, as well as ourselves about different perspectives. An example of this is the broadway play, Hamilton. It changes the narrative of history, by adding a hip hop twist to the historical story. Many of the characters were also casted to African American actors, casting black people into historically white roles, like society has been doing for years by casting the roles meant to be played by people of colour to white actors. It is a great way of changing the narrative in a new and more relatable way.

Curriculum has never been an unbiased topic. There has always been underlying intentions and agendas. I found it very interested that teachers did not have the most say in curriculum choices, considering educators are the ones who will be teaching the curriculum to students. Every little thing affects the curriculum outcomes, such as which party has political power, political views, the general views of the people in the certain region and societal views. Up until recently Aboriginal peoples struggles with colonialism and intergenerational trauma were ignored, because as a society, people believed that Canadians did no wrong, and that Aboriginal people were the issue. Luckily now this is changed, however that view had a huge impact on curriculum. Societies political views always impact curriculum as well. For example, 50 years ago, as a society our views were typically more “conservative,” in this sense I am saying conservative as in a society focused mostly on the growth of a nation, or growth of an economy, not keeping minorities, or people of lower financial means in mind. However now, our society is more “liberal,” meaning the typical views now lean towards helping people, over the economy and growth of the nation. This of course shifts our views of “right” and “wrong” and changes what we believe needs to be taught.

So in conclusion, countless things can impact the curriculum, and as our knowledge expands and changes, our curriculum will as well.