Thursday, June 19, 2008 (8:16 am)
My Obligatory Post on Yet Another Buzz Word
Posted by: Matt Crosslin In: Current Events
EduPunk seems to be the new buzzword for… oh, I who knows. Wired Campus had this to say about it: “Punk rock was a rebellion against the clean, predictable sound of popular music and it also encouraged a do-it-yourself attitude. Edupunk seems to be a reaction against the rise of course-managements systems, which offer cookie-cutter tools that can make every course Web site look the same.” I love punk rock, so I just don’t see how that term even makes sense. True punks really rebelled against all things organized and governmental, and education is exactly that – organized and governmental.
If anyone knows the history of punk rock, they know that there was a whole punk underground that existed for a long time before anyone noticed, and then it became popular to be punk. They you had a ton of poser pop-punk bands coming along just making the term “punk” silly. That is what this seems like to me – “edupunks” are just doing what many of us have been doing for years, but seeming to make it look silly. Especially when you use rap/hip-hop lingo terms to discuss a punk term :)
Besides, the true “punks” tended to hate be categorized in any way. (I type this as I listen to Bad Brains “Rock for Light” :). So, I guess maybe I am a true EduPunk – because I would really hate to be classified by such a silly term. But I really have severe problems with BlackBoard (like many do), so if the EduPunk movement is the one that is fighting against it, I guess I have to join it.
Ultimately, the true punk rock music movement came to be about doing what you want, regardless of what others told you was “cool” or “hip.” The problem with pop-punk was that it told you you still had to fit a particular rebellious mold to truly be punk (see a great song called “School?” by a band called Crashdog for a good riff on this concept). From what I am seeing of the term EduPunk, it seems more like it should be called EduPopPunk.
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