Graffiti 101 assignment 2: Mapping out public space

Antero Garcia, an English teacher at Manual Arts High, writes:

Though students have been diligently at work, this is the second major assignment in our class’ unit on graffiti and marginalized voice. (If you missed the first assignment, it can be found here.)

Now that we’ve begun honing our anthropological skills, we're going to start focusing on usage of public space within the community around our school (your neighborhood will suffice, if you’re not a South L.A. resident). As you go home from school today, please document signs, graffiti and miscellaneous ideograms you notice. Your goal is to record the ways you are confronted by messages as you travel to and from school on a daily basis. For each example that you write down, record the address or intersection, what you see, your interpretation of what you see and how you think the hegemonic majority would respond to your example.

A Collaborative Map

Over the next few weeks, students will add their public space examples to a specially created Google map. The map is collaboratively authored by students and will be updated throughout the coming weeks. This work in progress can be seen here. The goal is for these students to first gain cognizance of the ways public space affects student identity, perception of place, and agency.

Coming Up

Our next lesson will be an official introduction to our class text as well as a historical overview of graffiti.

Comments

[south LA]

Why not travel to other, healthier public spaces that do not have graffiti, trash and crime and compare and contrast them to this area? Then have students come up with explanations as to why some residents respect their public space and some don't? Have them confront the roles of individual and community responsiblity in dysfunctional versus functional public spaces.
I realize that would take the victim mentality you are cultivating out of it but it would be very valuable for them.

You see, the "hegemonic" majority such as you describe 85% of the US population, would never allow their communities to descend to such depths because they are busy promoting positive messages such as the value of an education, volunteering, respect for personal property and other "bourgeois" (in reality, working and middle class) values.
So when will you initiate the project of painting over graffiti, picking up trash, having students start a volunteer community organization to educate the community about where to report graffiti (311), stray pets and criminal activity in their neighborhoods?

Oh, I forgot, they can get shot for attempting to beautify their neighborhoods, as has recently happened when several citizens who are part of the "hegemonic majority" who have attempted to confront those defacing property. These "artists" happened to be carrying guns, quite normal for artists, wouldn't you say? Two citizens have been killed when confronting these proletarian "artists."

But they are from the hegemonic class so it doesn't matter.

The problems of the community are not the entire fault of the "majority." I challenge you to get your students to do something about these problems, but that is easier said than done isn't it?

Years from now you will look back and see the missed opportunity to actually model higher standards and do something about these issues instead of trying to blame them on others.

By the way, you might want to have your students do something for the earthquake victims in China- if they can find that country on a map along with their graffiti - filled neighborhoods.
There is also some great literature from China you might want to investigate since you are a Language Arts teacher.

"A child miseducated is a child lost." John F. Kennedy