According to a recent 67 page report published by Human Rights Watch, “although whites commit more drug offenses, African Americans are arrested and imprisoned on drug charges at much higher rates, the reports find.”
This report by Human Rights Watch also includes suggestions for how to help address this problem, including directing funding to inner city programs and:
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In working with a few different oral history programs, I have always been intrigued by how much information these interviews about rural life in North Carolina, Arkansas, or central Kentucky contain about climate change. When men and women in their 80s and 90s discuss their childhoods, they often recall extended winters, greater amounts of snow, creeks running so deep they would flood their banks, and trees so filled with robins that robin soup was a popular dish.
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I have posted the annotated bibliographies, which you can find under the pages section of this blog. If there are books, articles or radio programs that you know of that I have not listed, please post and let me know!
Participatory research is typically defined as a form of research which combines three things: research, education, and action. Strongly linked to social action, participatory research is largely becoming the norm in many fields which folklorists sometimes see as competitors in the fight for departments and funding such as Women’s Studies, African American Studies, Pan-African Studies, and American Studies to name a few. Read the rest of this entry »
I am in the process of finishing up the podcasts created for my independent study and preparing an annotated bibliography of useful sources that combine folklore and human rights education.
Once complete, the annotated bibliography will be housed here.
If you have any suggestions for books, webpages, school programs, archives, etc, please let me know. I am hoping this site can be a resource for people interested in the combined possibilities of folklore and human rights education, so feel free to post!
Last year in Dr. Tim Evan’s Folklore and Education class I began writing a lesson plan for high school students entitled “Listen Out Loud: Youth Radio Audio Documentation Project.” Inspired by my former work as a public radio producer and the possibilities of combining oral history, folklore, radio, and student-based research, I also drew inspiration and ideas from other youth radio programs such as NPR’s Youth Radio and Youth Radio Vermont at the Vermont Folklife Center.
During my summer internship I worked with the Kentucky Remembers! Project which gave me the wonderful opportunity to work with youth in Bowling Green and Paducah teaching the basics of oral history and folklife interviewing. Students worked in teams to document the oral histories of Civil Rights and human rights leaders in Kentucky. In working with the youth this past summer, and in extended work on the Kentucky Remembers Oral History Curriculum, I realized more than ever the power of the recorded voice to share something essential about what it means to be human. That is through the human voice we share stories, seek a more just world, and become active participants in the wonderful cultures around us. This summer I will continue to work with Kentucky Remembers and will have the opportunity to utilize a new and expanded version of the Listen Out Loud Program to teach those students who attend the Voices of Conscious: Human Rights Leadership Camp how to produce audio documents for radio and podcast. These audio documents will reside on the Kentucky Remembers webpage where they will be used in the public schools and after school programs. A large portion of my independent study is preparing to teach the summer youth camps and create model audio documents. To learn more about this summer’s program go here.
In researching and preparing for this summer program while also preparing the audio editing portion of the Listen Out Loud Audio Documentation Project, I am excited to see that in just the past year since I first began creating the radio documentation lessons, there has been a great proliferation of youth produced radio. Last year I did not come across hardly any lesson plans for this kind of work online. Now, just a year later, I can find multiple approaches. Youth produced radio seems to really be working! As I work on the lesson plans for this summer and prepare for the workshops I will teach in April, below are links to just a few of the youth radio programs I am currently enjoying and learning from.
Know of any more? Or have any other related ideas? Please share!
Note: All of these youth radio programs will also be listed under the “Annotated Bibliographies” section of the blog.
Blunt Youth Radio
Curie Youth Radio
Rise Up Radio
YouthCast
Youth Noise Network
Youth Radio Vermont
We Make the Road By Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change consists of transcribed conversations between Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Myles Horton, founder of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. Referred to as a “talking book,” these transcribed conversations take the reader through these revolutionaries’ discussions of their formative years, their ideas about educational practice, and their beliefs about education and positive social change. Read the rest of this entry »
This blog will explore readings, discussions, experiences, and other forms of communication that bring together social justice, human rights-based education, and folklore studies. The original inspiration for this blog came about during my first semester of graduate school when I discovered that googling “folklore and social justice” resulted in few hits. Over the course of the past year and a half, my work as a Folk Studies graduate student interested in human rights education and social justice activism has led me to believe that each of these areas of action and study have a great deal in common and can learn a great deal from one another. This blog will be an interactive learning tool where I can share what I am reading and learning with others as I continue my exploration in these themes.
No doubt many folklorists already work in areas of human rights based activism and many activists employ the skills of an ethnographer. I hope this blog can highlight that work and those resources and serve as an interactive annotated bibliography of sorts for other folklorists and students interested in such work.
I welcome any comments, discussion, feedback, and reading suggestions. I would like to thank Dr. Tim Evans for serving as the director of my Independent Study of which this blog is a small part.