NOTORIOUS D.O.E.
High school remote learning lessons devolve into rap songs about dealing crack
This virtual-learning session was just plain dope-y. A Queens mother grabbed her son’s laptop (right) and began screaming at his A-Tech High School teacher in the middle of a Zoom economics lesson after overhearing the sketchy curriculum -- rap videos flush with drug deals, hookers and the N-word.
A Queens mother was outraged to discover that her son’s Zoom economics class for a Brooklyn high school consisted of rap videos featuring drug deals, prostitutes and vulgar language including the N-word.
The mom, who was working from home, got so upset during the lesson on “money, power and respect” that she grabbed her son’s laptop and yelled at the teacher, Deyate Hagood, of A-Tech HS in Williamsburg.
“You honestly ought to be motherf--king embarrassed. Disgusting!” she shouted.
When the social-studies teacher said, “I don’t like how you’re speaking to me,” she shot back: “You have rap videos using N-words, talking about whores and bitches and selling drugs. I’m working from home, and this is what I’m hearing my kid in his senior year learning in class.”
The clash — videotaped by the son — shines a light on what the mom called “lazy” remote instruction in a low-performing city high school, and the plight of teens stuck on screens and learning little during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’ve had to watch my high-school senior spend an entire year at home in isolation while receiving a very limited education,” said the mom, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her son from retribution.
“He has been unmotivated and now only talks about wanting to leave NYC.”
A-Tech was formerly Automotive HS, one of the schools in Mayor de Blasio’s Renewal program to fix failing schools, which he aborted in 2018. Enrollment there has plummeted from nearly 1,000 students in 2010 to 304 — mostly boys, 91 percent black and Hispanic.
The four-year graduation rate is 70 percent, and only 33 percent of grads are deemed ready for a career or college, city Department of Education data show.
The mom, an executive assistant with a younger son in middle school, said her 12thgrader did not have a book or syllabus for the economics class and told her that the teacher usually showed videos.
In the Feb. 24 Zoom class, Hagood played two hip-hop videos — one for the 1994 song “C.R.E.A.M.” by the Wu-Tang Clan and another for 1997’s “Money, Power & Respect” by The Lox, featuring Lil’ Kim.
The lyrics for “C.R.E.A.M.” — an acronym for “cash rules everything around me” — begin, “What that n---a want, God? Word up, look out for the cops . . . Word up, two for fives over here, baby. Word up, two for fives them n---as got garbage down the way, word up.”
“Two for fives” was a ’90s term for crack cocaine sales, two vials for $5.
In the Lox video’s intro, a lingerie-clad Lil’ Kim says: “First you get the money. Then you get the muthaf- -kin’ power. After you get the f--kin’ power muthaf--kas will respect you.” Hagood tried to spur a class discussion. “Are they saying money gives you some sort of status? Do you think people who have money have power, too? Is that something we can say?” he asked.
“Someone? Anyone? You’re supposed to be my smart class.”
At one point, Hagood pressed, “What are they trying to say in the video?”
A student answered, “I don’t know, you got to be a drug dealer to have money, power and respect.”
Hagood countered, “Just that? Is that a beneficial way to live our lives, though?”
The mom called the lesson “pathetic.”
“I regret losing my cool and cursing,” she wrote on Facebook, where she posted a video of the Zoom class, “but I’ve honestly had it with the stress of no [in-person] school, working from home and the guilt of knowing my kids have not been learning the way they should be.
“I’m really angry and sad for the kids. I hate that I can’t trust what is being shown and taught, and that my kids have lost so much learning.” She said the class raised questions: “Who is actually accountable for what these children are being taught? Is anyone watching and documenting what lessons are being given and by whom?”
A-Tech Principal Neil Harris did not answer an e-mail seeking comment. Hagood did not return a message.
DOE spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon said, “Two iconic songs were used as part of a 12th-grade lesson about economics, and the teacher provided appropriate context prior to streaming them.”
O’Hanlon would not explain the purpose of the lesson or the videos. She said the school had received no complaints from students or parents — despite the Queens mom complaining directly to Hagood.
The mother, who describes herself as Latina and whose son is also of Irish descent, was not sure whether teacher was using the videos to appeal to students of color.
“I don’t think it matters what color you are,” she said. “This is a classroom, albeit virtual, and you should be teaching something valuable. These kids are supposed to be preparing for college, and this isn’t helpful to them.”
The parentteacher clash shines a light on the plight of teens stuck on remote screens and learning little during the pandemic.