...She, WISDOM, raises her voice in the public squares. Proverbs 1:20b NIV

2008-07-09T03:41:00.000-07:00

PREFACE

All parents must hear this. Much of the dysfunction we face in 21st century family relationships is a direct result of bad parenting. Parenting is designed to meet all the needs of a young child. Good parenting results from operating in all three dimensions.

Parent-Motivator Dimension: Disciplinarian, Parents must discipline their children. No one else can. No one else will. Everyone else will talk about your child and cite how bad they are even when it's too late for them to help. When a cop leads your child away in handcuffs, they will say, "I knew he was going to end up like that. Or when your child lies dead of a drug overdose or gunshot wounds, they will say, " I knew something like that was going to be happen." Discipline is the only kind of motivation that gets your child's attention. "Foolishness is locked up inside a child but discipline drives it double times out side of their reach." You cannot substitute friendship for discipline when it comes to your child. They will turn on you unless you discipline them early.

Teacher-Educator Dimension: Parents must prepare their child for school by training a child to be a student. Your child is destined for all kinds of problems in school unless you train them early. No one else can. No one else will. Training is a parent's job. They will become emotional misfits and tear up a teachers' classroom without the proper training at home. You train them to become disciplined themselves based upon Society's expectations for behavior. You potty train them in order for them to maturely meet that need. You have to do the same thing for their emotional well being. They cannot expect to have their way at school. They must learn new ways. They can't do that unless parents prepare them for it. They should be ahead in the three (r's) when they get to school. The parent owes the child that. You can begin to teach them to read and count at 2 or 3. I said begin. Education is a process that begins in the home.

Preacher-Inspirator (new pronounciation short (i) long (a) sounds like motivator and educator Dimension: A parent is their child's first teacher and their child's forerunner preacher. As a child grows up, they will subconsciously weigh relationships with other parents, teachers and preachers according to what they've experience at home. This is one of the main reasons some children display such disrespect and contempt towards their teachers. They haven't developed respect and love for their own parents that they should have. Parents-teachers-preachers are all in the same category. We are bread for our children. We are bread for each other's children. We are the life they live. They take their cues from us. When we send the wrong signals, they will not be just remain confused. They will demonstrate the inability to contain and restrain themselves to the saving of their own lives.

Is There A Generation Gap

Some of us may still think that the differences between the young and the old can be explained by a so called "generation gap." The HipHopProof Solution dispells the generation gap theory. There is no generation gap. There has always been an open channel of wisdom connecting each generation with the next. Your connection is tailor-made for your life. Each of us is responsible for plugging in to our own connection. It's a dream connection. More about the dream connection in my RG blog.

Many people do however experience a disconnect. It's useless to attempt avoiding this disconnect. You need to simply connect with your child. You can easily connect because you are already HipHopProof. Connecting with your child will make them want to be HipHopProof too.

Wisdom speaks to the Parent-Teacher-Preacher-N-U.

"...How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?" Proverbs 1:22 NIV

How much longer will we allow polluted words to have free course contaminating the minds, hearts and lives of our children? Is gangsta rap really an example of artistic expression of which we approve? I think not. "The tongue has the power of life and death..." Proverbs 18 :12 NIV

Our wives and mothers shouldn't have to put up with being referred to as bitches (objectionable slang used to label and define all women). Neither should our sisters and daughters have to put up with being called hoes (ebonics for female victims of promiscuity).
Our system of democratic justice safeguards freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Who then or what then is left to safeguard the hearts and minds of our children? We cannot afford to allow anyone to defecate upon the moral fibre of an emerging generation while you and I are responsible to "train up a child the way he should go." Gangsta rap has become the norm for speech affecting our children at a time when they are most likely to fall victim to seducing spirits.

Change is the only option. Who are we waiting for to change it? Someone has to... It's safe to assume that it's not going to change on its own. Are we looking to the hip hop industry or the hip hop culture to mend their ways and fix themselves? Are we waiting on government to fix it? Along with millions of others, I like what Barak Obama said, "We are the ones we've been waiting for." Aren't we government ourselves? Abraham Lincoln stated something very profound in the famous Gettysburg Address, ..."that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Then with the help of God, we are our own government because we govern ourlseves. Just recently Prophet Dr. Connie Williams said in her sermon at a meeting I attended near my home in Grovetown, GA "the prophetic is greater than its governor." Then we are at least greater than our government since we are the prophetic? In other words we see what's happening and we know what's coming even as we allow what is happening to continue.
We are called to initiate and instigate something altogether new in the life of every child. They must be ahead of their time rather than just in time or just on time. We owe it to them as menders of the breach that separates them from their destinies.

"Better a poor man whose walk is blameless than a fool whose lips are perverse." Proverbs 19:1 NIV

Introducing HipHopProof

Hip hop is alive and well and indeed should be. Culturally speaking, hip hop’s time has come. All cultures possess a minimum of three main elements that determines their face, image and style. Hip hop culture is distinctively shared among most racial and ethnic persuasions around the world. Three of its main foundation elements are dance (break-dance), visual art (graffiti) and music (rapping).
So when I talk HipHopProof, I’m not talking hip hop culture. I’m talking solution for the pollution. The pollution comes directly from gangsta rap. Our children have been subjected to great harm by the repetitious B’s (rhymes with itches) in reference to women in general. Our wives, our children’s mothers and sisters are not excluded.
Usually, I’m also angered by the casual use of the N-word as a innocent reference when it’s not. It is violence and it defines violent acts throughout our history. In the least gangsta rap, hip hop’s music genre, corrupts good manners . It’s the culprit behind their failure in school.
I’m not coming out against rap or rappers. The language is a killer that must be stopped. Parents require a tool to neutralize the effects of those killer-words that cause ill affects on their ability to “...train up a child the way he should go.” I gotta say it! HipHopProof is that tool.

A Global Forum

'Forum' was the word for 'marketplace' in ancient Rome. Hip hop is a global marketplace or global forum that Fortune 500 Companies like Coke, Pepsi, Nike, General Motors, and McDonalds are using to market their products. I submit to you that HipHopProof is a marketplace strategy for parents as their child's first teacher and forerunner preacher. In so many words, HipHopProof then is a global forum that we can use as a strategy to cause each child to take responsibility for their own behavior.
We advocate getting in hip hop's face with HipHopProof. HipHopProof then becomes one of the platforms right in hip hop's face whereby we have begun to educate, motivate, and inspire our youth. We then become better informed about what our children need from us in order to grow, develop, and succeed.

We must take the HipHopProof message to where our children have immersed themselves in the contamination, mostly from rap music coming through hip hop culture. The alternative is a quote from the writings of Dr. Undrai Fizer of Houston Texas. "Our children will live in our message or die in our bellies."-

HipHopProof gets children, youth and adult attention. HipHoopProof gives parents a tool we can all use to help our youth rise to a place where they do responsibly respond to training.

The Hook

(Repeated after each Verse 1-4)

HipHopProof! No Body Goofed; Telling The Truth.
It's Not Planned Parenthood; It's All Good.

Verse: 1

JB's "Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud." was tight.

Adding momentum to our struggle in spite of our plight.

R Kelly's "I believe I can fly" encouraged us to try.

Music is sent to make us; Unlike gangsta rap, which will surely brake us.

Verse: 2

We're talking survival; It's going to take the Bible.

Parents, teachers, and preachers, Come down out of those bleachers

Down on the Training field; We've got to get real

You know the deal, Every body's got to yield.

Verse: 3

They're jumping much up in the church

where the people meet with the same beats

The culture isn't wrong, neither is the song

We want wisdom's voice heard, we must live according to her word.

Verse: 4

So stop calling names and stop laying the blame

Our youth aren't the problem; we hav'em, but united we can solv'em

Take a long look, read the good book

Rise up dreaming and you won't have to go around (Name Your City) scheming.

At the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech: Proverbs 1:21 NIV

She Cries: HipHopProof! No Body Goofed Telling The Truth.

I heard HipHopProof in my head in May 2005 while on substitute-teacher assignment at the Richmond County Board of Education Alternative School at Augusta, GA. I didn't think it up. I didn't make it up. I didn't make it happen. It happened to me. I was minding my own business putting some books away.

HipHopProof came to me as one word. I had never heard it that way before. I had never thought about it that way before that very moment. At the time, I didn't even know what it meant.

Since that time I have learned to trust the "Good News" of HipHopProof. This good news came during a very frustrating time for me. I was upset over some students, their lack of responsiveness to their school work and their outright disrespect for adults. I could not get over it. I could not grow accustomed to the arrogance, the lack of discipline, and the disrespect for authority displayed by them. Some people seemed to accept it as normal. But it's not normal. I cannot accept a child's way of doing things as final.

At an earlier time, noticing my frustration, a public safety officer who had become a friend said to me, "Mr. Harris, you can't take it (meaning student misconduct) personal." I could have accepted Officer Willie McCall's advice because I knew he was right. I understood his point. Taking things too personal may cause loss of objectivity which is always required to make quality decisions.

But in this case, if I don't take it personal, then I don't take it serious. If I don't take it serious, then it really doesn't matter to me, enough. If it doesn't matter enough to me, then my power to change it will diminish more and more with each passing day. That's really what has happened to us as far as disciplining our children in the public schools. Since we've been losing our power, things are getting worst. Our power is our ability to care about making a difference in the life of one child, even if that child is mean, ungrateful, and incorrigible. We must show our love. Love is power. We've got to get back to demonstrating our love. Love never fails.

As a student, my mother and father took my conduct at school personal. They were serious about any misconduct in the presence of another adult, especially teachers. Parents should always love enough to make sure that teachers and substitute-teachers aren't made to put up with any kind of misbehavior more than once from their child. "The rod of correction imparts wisdom but a child left to itself disgraces his mother." Proverbs 29:15 NIV

I was up to my eyebrows with it. "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost you all you have, get understanding." Proverbs 4:7 NIV I cannot take any credit for it. I must share the blame with others for not doing it earlier. This time marks the moment when I began to seek to understand rather than continue seeking to be understood. Before now, I was only remotely aware of hip hop/rap music. I was presently interested in reaching these would-be-students had it not been for their preoccupation with hip hop. I was assigned to supervise them at school inside their classroom. But they were not there. They were at hip hop. They were into hip hop. Hip hop was in them. They were busy reciting the awful rhymes they were hearing on the radio and on their cd players. They were even manufacturing some of their own. They were weaving and bobbing and shaking and nodding their heads. They were not listening to me nor any other adult. However, they were dreaming. As contrary as it seemed to me to be at the time, I know now that they were dreaming about acceptance. They were dreaming about notoriety. They were dreaming about success. They all were.

She Cries: HipHopProof! No Body Goofed Telling The Truth.

"Train up a child the way he should go and when he is old..." Proverbs 22:6a "...he will have become HipHopProof." 'RG'

Children are the biblical intended HipHopProof. Children can't know how important school is to their future success on their own. They must be trained by their parents for school. When a child leaves home (the crib), they go straight to school to learn. As a society, the surviving generation prepares the emerging generation to become a thriving generation by sending them to school. Parents who operate in all three dimensions are the ones who always successfully prepare their children for school. That's why toddlers are potty-trained. We train them before they get to school. "Folly (foolishness in the KJV) is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline (correction in the KJV) will drive it far from him." Proverbs 22:15 NIV Parents are designed to deal with this foolishness. Public school teachers already have their hands full educating their students. We cannot afford to allow fools-n-school up in there.

Children can become good students at school when they're trained, disciplined, and corrected at home by parents. You may say, "They already know better." I say, "Sure they do!" But if they get out of the house with foolishness bound up in their hearts, they're going to act dumb, stupid, and disrespectful. They will think being a fool is cool. When we train them at home, it's like them getting their polio shot or small pox vaccination. They become infected with discipline and affected by good manners. God knows they need good manners. Parents must vaccinate their children at home with the proper training against the contamination they were born with. Parents must inoculate their children against the contamination which attaches itself to their lives in the streets on their way to school. The training experienced in the home hiphopproofs your child.

"...and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6b Having become HipHopProof is proof that hip hop won't make your child act a fool in public school. As a benefit of a parent's intervening relationship in a child's life, the student within that child meets all the expectations of the teacher. Teachers are parents in their own children's eyes. It is impossible for a teacher to assume the role of parenting other people's children. When a teacher tries to parent a child that hasn't been home-trained, that child will say to that teacher. "You're not my mama, you're not my daddy!" Every child knows that their first teacher and preacher was the fuction of their parent (s). A child trained at home wouldn't dare say such to a teacher because they would have already become a student. A child is required to have become a student by the time they reach school. Students are hiphopproofed children.

After three years of pondering strategies to share HipHopProof, It appears we have acquired some insight into the problem of child misbehavior and student misconduct. As we cooperate with one another, we will experience a breakthrough solution in the public school arena.

It was there, at the Alternative School in Augusta-Richmond County Georgia, a common thread of hope began to emerge as a predition of success realized.

Note: These writings are not at all about hip hop. They are all about HipHopProof because nobody goofed telling the truth.

See Below Links To Blogs Under Construction:

http://thirddimensionthinking.blogspot.com/

http://rappingrandaddy.blogspot.com/

Program Link Below Up And Running:

http://www.studytowin.net/

NEXT: Defining HipHopProof

The HipHopProof Solution "Parenting In Three Dimensions"

...She, WISDOM, raises her voice in the public squares. Proverbs 1:20b NIV