To connect with their students, teachers are doing the hip-hop Crank Dat Soulja Boy dance, reports NEA Today. It’s just like the Twist or the Macarena.
Dream Teacher was “cranking it” to her pre-teen students’ delight — until her 24-year-old son told her to look up the lyrics online.
If my students answered correctly, they’d all shout, “Do the Soulja Boy!” I’d crank it in front of the classroom. At the school dance in the fall, I was out there cranking it with the best of them. I even downloaded the “Soulja Boy Instructional Video” for the After School Program so that we all could crank it.
She was horrified to realize the song’s meaning — and sure her students knew it was a sex song all along.
NEA Today knew the Soulja Boy dance was “controversial,” but ran the story anyhow, writes Hildebrand Road.
Even if a middle-aged white nerd such as myself is too daft to figure out that when a rapper uses words such as “superman” and “robocop,” he’s probably not referring to the movies, the repeated use of “b*tch,” “ho,” and “c*ck” should provide a clue. (If the slang in this stuff is beyond you, urbandictionary.com is invaluable. It’s a resource that anyone who has or works with kids should know.)
. . . I have several fourth grade boys who have a pretty good idea of what “get up in that ho” (oops, I guess that’s “oh,” not “ho”) means. They were taking great pleasure in singing the song on campus. Until I caught them. Think some of those kids, especially the older ones, aren’t getting a REALLY good laugh at their naive, hapless teachers who are dancing along to explicit lyrics because they didn’t bother to do their research?
Here are links to the lyrics, which are nearly unintelligible when sung, and the video, which implies that small children, elders, middle-class dads and crossing guards are all cranking that cute little soulja boy.
Unintelligible when sung? Heck, they’re unintelligible when read… perhaps they should require that music artists take a 4th grade reading and writing test?
This just blew my mind. And so many of those folks wonder why parents want to homeschool their kids, and object to them doing it.
Every generation has a song where if you really paid attention to the lyrics you would be appalled. For my generation it was My Sharona, #1 song for all of 1979. Great song. Filthy lyrics.
I agree with SuperSub, I can’t read this. Or loose interest at about the fifth “ow Watch Me yuaaaaaaaaaa”.
If nothing else…many of the “popular” rap songs seem to be even more repetitive than Meatloaf’s library of music. Not to mention that many of them end up sampling other’s music and/or lyrics.
There was a group of individuals who created a computer program that was able to randomly generate a scientific paper for publishing. I wonder if many of the current crop of rap artists use a similar program to write their songs for them.
Let’s see whether their test scores improve. Maybe this teacher’s on to something. Then again, a teacher singing Louie Louie in my day probably wouldn’t have caused me to learn very much.
Here’s a link to My Sharona’s lyrics.
To appreciate the filthiness of Crank Dat Soulja Boy, start with the translation of “Superman.” Then go on to “robocop.”
I understand that we as teachers want to connect with our students, but get real, dancing!? I plan to stick to relating that I know what it feels like to struggle with learning, and growing up in general. Most of the music students listen to these days is nothing that I want to hear, and I am not going to pretend to like it so my students think I’m cool or hip or anything. If students listen to music I like, I make sure I only have songs which would pass appropriate language and content. The music I like does have a fair amount of swearing and innuendo, but that is only heard in my car or home, never in my classroom. Decorum and setting a proper example, maybe that is a more appropriate role for a teacher to play than “I want to look cool in my students eyes.” maybe I’m just old fashion.
As liberal as I am with regards to our kids and how we should teach them, and as much of a hip-hop fan as I am, I have tons of concerns when we don’t use hip-hop effectively i.e. to educate rather than entertain. I understand the song’s popularity, but as a teacher, one has to recognize how quickly the line blurs between slight entertainment and implicit association. Soulja Boy, who himself doesn’t have a high school degree, might have been able to use a couple more years in the classroom to upgrade those lyrics. Just a thought …
This reminds me of a theme for a Red Ribbon Week several years back. The theme that year was “Light Up Your Future”. Several schools had Timbuck Three’s “My Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades” playing on their floats in the parade. Obviously they didn’t listen to all the lyrics:
I got a job waiting for my graduation, 50 thou a year will buy a lotta beer
And
I’m heavenly blessed, and worldly wise, I’m a Peeping Tom techie with X-ray eyes
Carl, Every generation has a song where if you really paid attention to the lyrics you would be appalled. For my generation it was My Sharona, #1 song for all of 1979.
I gotta smile at this. Couple of points:
1) Boomers are always making this type of comparison. I can’t see it; it’s like saying crack and weed are the same.
My memory is not the best, but I think My Sharona is just an over-the-top love/lust song that had nothing like “superman” or “robocop” in it, both of which are pretty ugly ways of degrading and humiliating women. Soulja makes the ’60s look like the 1800s!
2) SAT Verbal Scores took a serious nose dive right around 1970. Hey, could it be…???
1969, My Sharona, SAT score 543
2007, Soulja Boy, SAT score 503
(note: this is a JOKE! Please don’t flame me.)
I don’t understand this trend whereby teachers make complete ass*s of themselves, and are thereby supposed to ?inspire? their students.
Whatever happened to respecting authority figures?
The kids don’t hear the degradation, they don’t think degradation, they aren’t doing degradation. To them, it’s just a song. To the casual listener, it’s just a song. Even to some of the people who clicked out of their way to actively read the lyrics, it’s just a song, albeit a poorly written one.
The My Sharona comparison was apt. I’m also reminded of Elvis Presley’s hips.
I don’t see that this should be such a big issue. It isn’t like the teacher was rapping “Cop Killer” or “Fuck the Police” or anything.
If the teacher is in charge of an after-school program, then this dance, using the radio edit of the song, fits in perfectly. It isn’t like they took a week out of history class to learn the dance.
Ms. Jacobs, thank you for linking me here. What an honor.
I can’t let Mr. Baxter’s comment go by. The My Sharona comparison is not apt. For one thing, I can’t imagine an elementary school teacher playing that song in the classroom during that time period. Vital Core’s comment regarding the difference in tone of the lyrics hits the nail on the head.
The attitude of “It’s just a song” doesn’t belong in the classroom. How can we teach if we don’t understand the power of words? Is it really okay to let children parrot hatespeak because they don’t understand it?
I wrote my piece as an elementary school teacher who saw that song rear its ugly head in my fourth grade classroom, and because it came home with my third grade son. I for one, don’t want my child singing a song that calls women “ho’s” or singing about a man dousing a woman with semen as she sleeps because she won’t have sex with him–just because the child doesn’t know what it means. That meaning is still present in the “radio version.” If my son DID come home singing such a song, I’d be banging on the principal’s door the next day. That’s not what I send him to school to learn.
And by the way, some of those children ARE doing degradation, even in elementary school. I’ve got suspension notes in my file to prove it. Mr. Soulja Boy himself was a whole 16 years old when he recorded the song. Do you think he wasn’t doing degradation?
We need to wake up people. This IS a big deal. Especially when a publication like NEA Today recommends doing this dance/song in the classroom without mentioning the lyrics.
We, as teachers, must uphold standards for education and behavior in our classroom. There is no excuse to have this song playing in any classroom, it merely reinforces the popularity of the song.
I’m tired of the “we did it in the 60’s/70’s” line. Just because you or others (I’m only 27) made a mistake in your past, that does not give the present generation a free pass to do the same, or, in this case, worse.
On a funny note, my students will have no trouble discussing their sexual exploits using these colorful terms, but ask them to say the word “penis” once as we cover male reproductive anatomy and they’ll giggle like 5-year old schoolgirls.
These students, despite their interest in sex, money, and violence, are just kids, which is why they can’t say the appropriate terms without breaking up. They are still learning what is acceptable behavior, and if thats practically raping a girl for the sake of “teaching her a lesson”, that’s what they’ll walk away with.
Why the need for gimmicks? Do we think kids are so shallow that unless we wrap every minute of the day and every academic concept in something loud and glittery they won’t learn or be inspired?
Kids do pay attention to the lyrics, by the way, and even when they don’t ‘get it’, they get it. Overall message is powerful, and repetition is the basis of indoctrination.
This reminds me of the advice given to parents: don’t be your child’s friend, be his parent. Why in the world should a teacher try to communicate with her students by going down to their level? Isn’t it her job to try to raise them up to her level?
I’ve been laughing about this since I read it. I honestly thought it could be fake, even. Dream teacher? But the evidence speaks for itself. This song is performed in schools around the country.
In one sense I think different people have different reactions to levels of sexual innuendo in their music- especially when it’s hard to understand.
I use music in my class a lot as I teach language, and let me tell you: all music has sexual innuendo! It’s very hard to find music that does not have it.
I teach 100% Hispanic teenagers, and since it’s my job to assimilate them via language and culture I make them listen to Jimi Hendrix and Billie Holiday and the Rolling Stones. I make conscious decisions about what I’ll allow and what I won’t.
That said, that’s one of the worst hip-hop songs I’ve ever heard! Really, I was expecting some great soul-thumping beat, and some cleverness at least.
Dream teacher: you should confront your language issues head on. Explain sexual innuendo to them and make them understand that there is a time and place for everything.
I agree teachers do have to be careful in what they portray.
The reason I know the lyrics to the Timbuck Three song is b/c I sat down and listend to them before I played them from our school’s float.
How about a little zero tolerance for morons masquerading as teachers?
Just a note of caution: Many things written in UrbanDictionary are… simply false. Or urban legend meanings that aren’t in actual use, or meanings only used by localised cliques.
For instance, it’s plausible (if hard to research) that “super man” as a verb in this use originally was simply a reference to immense sexual prowess and stamina, and then people invented the ridiculous connotation it has on UrbanDictionary.
Internet pubescents make things up all the time; hell, people did in the pre-internet age, they just had no way to spread their moronic inventions to the point that people would find and believe them.
In short: Just because it says something on UrbanDictionary, does not mean that any real-world usage ever had that meaning, especially for the utterly ridiculous.
(UD is also, of course, generally accurate on things that do have a widespread slang meaning.
Though if you look around, you’ll find enough unrelated uses for various terms that it becomes clear that, well, slang is messy, at best.)
My students are afraid of growing up.
As long as sex is dirty joke, a joke they get, then it’s not so frightening.
You know what I find interesting is that these same students who love Soulja Boy turned their heads and couldn’t watch Romeo and Juliet kissing on her balcony when I showed the 1968 movie.
Stupid is as stupid does. I watched the video(s), read the comments. What part of being a Respected adult is missing from this picture?…You are how you behave, not how your students “feel” about you.
After reading the lyrics and then reading the definitions in the Urban Dictionary, (my 19 year old cousin clued me in to this a couple of months ago), it was pretty apparent to me that the particular definition we are discussing is not an urban legend.
I don’t care if it was written by a poet laureate instead of a child with a poor English eduction. I also don’t necessarily care that the song is about sex. My impression is that this song is not just “dirty”, but also condones violating women.
This would be like My Sharona only if My Sharona advocated “hosing” (nicest word I could think of) Sharona down and sticking a bedsheet to her back if she didn’t finally agree to give it up!
Yikes!
This is where parents and adults who work with children need to understand what is going on with them. Unless we check out the websites they check out, etc, our uneducated attempts to fit in or even just relate to kids and teens risk undermining, if not completely reversing, our credibility with the children. They might not all know what this song means – but I’m absolutely sure that a lot of them do, and I don’t imagine their respect for teachers (or parents!) who get into this song increases.
How about teachers stop trying to act like they’re one of their students, and start acting like professionals? Or even just adults?