I am writing with regard to FSEM 1010: The Rhetoric of Rap Music. I understand that it is customary for students of a certain demographic to take a FYSEM course, with the idea that it will acclimate them to the college experience. It should not be, however, customary to coerce them into taking courses pervaded by obscenity.
In one recent class session, I was told to expound on the role race played in Eminem's song "White America." The lyrics include some of the following: "[F]**k you Ms. Cheney, f**k you Tipper Gore, f**k you with the freest of speech this divided states of embarrassment will allow me to have, f**k you.
" I am surprised to find that this is what constitutes "higher education" in today's world. The objective of education, it has been impressed upon me, is to teach people to become respectable citizens and productive members of society. I am uncertain how this course accomplishes that objective.
Further, due to the bias of the course instructor, I find myself unable to attain any grade higher than a low C. In one paper, for example, I asserted that a certain rap song offered a "hopeless vision of life." The instructor wrote the comment, "Why?
Add reasoning evidence." Fair enough. In the conclusion, however, I wrote a statement with which I disagreed, but which I knew patronized the teacher.
"Such songs are interesting in that they represent American culture...
. [T]hey are an insight..
. and the understanding they may provide to outsiders will always be useful." Something far more insightful is the fact that, rather than telling me to provide illustrations and evidence for an obviously controversial statement (I disagree with it wholeheartedly), the instructor simply wrote, "Nice conclusion.
" In the same paper, I used the word "emblemize.
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