Song Title: Freedom
Artist(s): Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar
Teaching Beyonce’s 2016 song Freedom with Kendrick Lamar in an K-12 classroom can bring about important conversations about societal and racial inequalities people are living with today. Specifically, the song provides an empowering take on the oppressions Black women face and how Beyonce and other women can work to fight against it .Having discussions that bring up topics of race and racism in contexts other than those coming from a scholarly source, it can allow students to understand critical ideas past just reading it in literature which address the tenant of incorporating literature and oratory. It also allows students to have discussion on the problems within society and how change can be made to fight against it. By hearing Beyonce, a successful black woman, singing about how she’s fighting for freedom for herself and others, they are engaging in ideas that go against the status quo and fight for change. Similarly, a teacher using their position to discuss these topics the song brings about requires them to realize their position as political beings like Stovall discusses. By doing so, they are forced to use their own sociopolitical consciousness, as well as create an environment for their students to explore and enhance their sociopolitical consciousness. Addressing both teacher and student sociopolitical consciousness also pertains to engaging in critically relevant pedagogy, as it is one of its tenets.
In terms of how these lessons could play out in a school setting, it could start as a class discussion asking students the day before showing the song to the class anything that comes to mind when they hear the word “freedom”. I would tell the students to keep this paper with them as they will need to for class the next day. At the start of the next class, I would show students this song and ask for preliminary thoughts such as if they like or dislike the song or how it made them feel. I would, then, ask the class to share what they feel Beyonce is talking about with her lyrics of freedom and what they think she may be freeing herself from. The students could then take out what they wrote about the word “freedom” the day before and see if there is anything they want to add or change about what they currently have written based on discussing the context behind Beyonce’s lyrics. It would also be helpful to have a print out of the lyrics for students to read after listening and asking these preliminary discussion questions, in order to get into the more specific issues of racism and oppression the lyrics discuss. The song lyrics range from topics such dating from slavery to the recent Black Lives Matter movement.