INTELLIGENTNEWZNET
INFORMING the HIP-HOP COMMUNITY
INTELLIGENT CURRICULUM…BLACK TO SCHOOL
History is a clock that people use to tell their political time of day. It is a compass that they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It also tells them where they are, and what they are. Most importantly, an understanding of history tells a people where they still must go, and what they still must be.
Dr. John Henrik Clarke (from his 1987 essay Why Africana History?)
Ok ladies and gentlemen its “BLACK HISTORY” month, how appropriate for my first blog of the New Year. I initially began writing something “inspirational” you know some journalistic libations for the noble ancestors upon whose shoulders we as a people, nation and individuals now stand. But sadly, that train of thought was derailed by a BBC article that came via the mighty Mundah and the Real News Network. The article entitled “Canada Afrocentric School Sparks Debate” served as a confirmation of my position that “We [black folk] just don’t get it?”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7217212.stm
The first paragraph of the article gets right to the point and focus of the article saying that “A decision to create the first Afrocentric, or black-focused school funded by taxpayers in Canada's biggest city has sparked a heated debate.”
Why should, or how could an African Centered school “spark heated debate” in a society of the “western world” where grandiose ideals like “diversity”, “inclusion”, “tolerance”, “pluralism”, “multi-cultural” and “melting-pot” roll off the tongues of western world citizens like stanzas from a Shakespearian play? I mean the current public school system (which is also funded by taxpayers money) is extremely Eurocentric or white-focused even when 90% of the children in attendance are non-white? So the first question that comes to my mind is that if it’s okay to use “taxpayers” money to fund a Eurocentric public school curriculum, then why should it “spark heated debate” to create an Afrocentric one in an African Centered School?
I believe I can say without too much rebuttal that the over whelming majority of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native citizens of Canada and America pay taxes with the same pleasant irritation as European or White American/Canadians do, and I’m quite sure that they have earned and deserve the right to have an educational system that is reflective of their ethnic and cultural contributions to the nation in which they live. Why does the idea of an all-inclusive or should I say more simply an honest and balanced view of history create such negative feedback and adult angst?
I believe that if you're teaching history
Deal with straight up facts no mystery
Teach the student what needs to be taught
Cause Black and White kids both take shorts
When one doesn't know about the other ones' culture
Ignorance swoops down like a vulture…
KRS ONE… “You Must Learn”
So now that the “can of worms” has been opened, we can see that the western worlds non-white citizens have been paying taxes to help fund the current predominantly Eurocentric or white-focused schools throughout the entire western world to their own detriment. The article goes on to say that the “scheme” yes, the “scheme” (read plot) was approved at a packed meeting of the Toronto District School Board.
From kindergarten to the western university taxpaying non-white students are bombarded with overtly racist ideas, myths, falsities, omissions and all sorts of gross misinformation that comprise the legendary lying lore that western “mis-education” is fashioned of. This is why Noam Chomsky said that “education is a system of imposed ignorance”. I mean truth be told Pythagoras had no original patent to the concept of a “theorem.” The square root of the hypotenuse was used in Egypt some two-thousand years before Pythagoras was a drop of semen. Columbus “discovered” nothing. There were people in the “New World” when he got here. The journals of these same Spanish explorers confirm that West Africans had long been making the trip to the “New World” before Columbus was a drop of semen. The Egyptians were black! Hippocrates was NOT the “father of medicine”, and the Civil War was NOT fought to “free” the “slaves” because the North thought enslaving human beings was wrong! Now should non-white taxpayers continue to support and fund the perpetuation of the Eurocentic legendary lying lore?
Considering the above, we must honestly ask and answer the question of what’s wrong with a public school in the west wherein the curriculum aim to use "the sources, knowledge and experiences of peoples of African descent as an integral feature of the teaching and learning environment”?
With a drop out rate among young black males as high as 40%, it is obvious that the current system is not working for a very high percentage of young black people. Why then is the people’s attempt to implement a solution that has been proven to work (as evidenced by privately funded CIBI schools in the U.S.) met with such visceral public resistance from the custodians of the legendary lying lore?
"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today"
Malcolm X
Take the statement from Anthony Hutchinson for example, an economist and former university professor who the article says “has been involved in a number of youth outreach and employment programs.” The article quotes Mr. Hutchinson saying "This belief that if we teach kids about their social and cultural identity they're going to perform a lot better is just stupid." Now how can teaching people the history of themselves (good and bad) be “stupid”?
The above quote is disturbing and interesting because the same individual previously states in the same article that he “blames the school system for marginalizing students.” To marginalize someone means to make them feel unimportant and unnecessary. To lay blame for this marginalizing of black students at the foot of the school system you must know that the school is responsible for making black youth feel like they are nothing. How does the school marginalize black youth? It tells them they had no history before slavery at the hands of Euro-Americans. It teaches them that their culture is “primitive” or “third world”. It severs Egypt (and recently Ethiopia) from Africa and made them and their marvelous accomplishments apart of a fictional land mass called “the middle” or “near” east. The current Euro-centric or white-focused system teaches the black child that slavery was a blessing and forever repudiates the black world as being of no value!
The only way to reverse the lying lore of the Euro-centric or white-focused system is to establish a system that deals with the truth concerning the people that have been oppressed and exploited to no end. This must been done even if it means the establishment of a counter Euro-centric or white-focused, African-centered or black-focused school. When does Africa get to tell its side of the story? When does the Native American get to tell his story? When do ALL non-white people get to tell their story? Why have we accepted the exploiters version of the story (his-story) as the only story? I don’t see any of these custodians of the legendary lying lore pointing out the undeniable fact that the current school systems of the west are Euro-centric and white-focused in their curriculum.
"what you're calling Negro history, and
African history is the missing pages of world history."
Arthur Schomburg speaking to Dr. John Henrik Clarke
Next the professor states that an African centered school is "counter-intuitive and counter-productive” arguing further that “You’re going to take public money from the public school system to channel towards a special interest imperative. This is a slippery slope that we do not want to go down." If you really want to start talking about what has been “Counter-productive” we can deal directly with the current Euro-centric system to the tune of a 40% black male drop out rate? This is not a matter of “taking public money from the public school system” it’s a matter of scraping the singularly Euro-centric and white-focused public school curriculum and replacing it with one that reflects and includes a more honest and complete historical perspectives of all of its students. Furthermore, is the current public school agenda not a “special interest imperative?” Are not black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American/Canadian students a “special interest” of the current system? I guess not. That being said, the reality of the built-in failure mechanism for black and other non-white youth in the western world public school system is crystal clear.
But how about the statement from the city's influential newspaper, The Toronto Star, who said that the idea of an African-centered school “smacked of segregation, which is contrary to the values of the school system and Canadian society as a whole". If 90% of the student body in the poorest schools are predominantly black, but 90% of the student body in the wealthiest schools are predominantly white…YOU ARE ALREADY SEGREGATED!!! What kind of a pathological flight from reality must one be suffering from not to see this?
Furthermore, how is it segregation when children of ANY RACE, ethnicity or cultural background can attend? No one has said white kids can not attend the African-centered or black focused schools. Segregation was predicated on the idea that blacks could not attend the same schools as their white counterparts. This is not the case with the African-centered school. My son attended the Afrikan Peoples Action School (APAS) in Trenton, NJ for his entire elementary school experience. In such an institution ALL CHILDREN are welcome, but in this dynamic it is pointed out that George Washington cut down the cherry tree and crossed the Delaware but it is also conveyed that he was a slave-trader that owned over 300 slaves, reportedly raped black women and sold a Blackman for a jar of molasses. This is the TRUTH! This is real and complete EDUCATION, and not legendary, lying lore!
There can be no greater tragedy than to forget one's origin and finish despised and hated by the people among whom one grew up. To have that happen would be the sort of thing to make me rise up from my grave.
Paul Robeson, 1938
Next the article lauds the mother that lost her 15 year old son to gun violence when she said the following in opposition to the African-centered school "Martin Luther King and so many of our fathers fought to come together so black and white can be together, for us to sit in the front of the bus together. What we're doing is all segregating each other. We should be one…" Again this in NOT about segregating each other, it’s about creating a true and accurate historical educational system that ALL people can participate in and benefit from. Now let’s get to the reality of segregation in 2008. At what point will we realize that America and the west are as segregated as it’s ever been? When you get on the bus in your hood how many white people do you see sitting next to you (front or back)? When you gaze across the street, up and down your block how many white faces do you see? When you look around your classroom in your inner-city public school how many white faces do you see? Few and far in between I’m afraid.
Martin Luther King and our fathers who fought with him set out to accomplish a great work…changing the hearts, minds and attitudes of Americas white majority…unfortunately the only thing that changed were “paper-precepts” i.e., laws, while the hearts, minds and attitudes of the white majority remained exactly the same as they were when Martin Luther King lie bleeding from the neck on a Memphis motel balcony. In the late fourth quarter of the Civil Rights initiative Martin left us what was in my opinion, his most valuable lesson. This lesson came in the form of a premonition of sorts and was conveyed to his close friend, confidant and brother Harry Belafonte. The message was “Brother Harry…I believe we are integrating into a burning house…”
To the good people of Toronto Canada who have set out to accomplish a great work…changing the hearts, minds, and attitudes of black youth…in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Booker T. Washington, Maria Stewart, Frederick Douglass, Kwame Nkrumah, and all the many…OPEN THAT SCHOOL…By Any Means Necessary!!! At least Black History will then be for an entire school year!
… “A final reason for the African centered curriculum is the nature of the population composition in the United States. This country is composed of a variety of ethnic and racial groups. As such the country should properly be conceived of as the United States of various ethnic, national and racial groups. The Eurocentric curriculum, more or less, serves the cultural interest of most European ethnic groups. It does not serve the cultural interest of most people of African descent. Since population patterns are such that most African Americans live in predominantly African American communities and attend predominantly African American schools, it is logical that they should be taught from an African perspective if they so choose…”
Jacob H. Curruthers…. Essay on African Centered Education
Just a little bit more of tax payer Public School history on my way out the door…
It was Georg Wilhelm Hegel who, in order to lend credence to his ignorant assumption that Africa “has no history”, proposed that Egypt be severed from the continent and made a part of a pseudo-geographic land mass called the “Near East.” Hegel knew that Egypt was a black African civilization and that the certain Africans were the Egyptians, but this fact did not support his racist supposition that Africa had no history, so he had to take Egypt out of Africa. But, Hegel did not stop there. To explain the great civilizations of Carthage, Tunis, Cyrenica, etc., Hegel proposed that “North Africa” be considered a part of Europe ascribing it the appellation “European Africa.” The falsities, ideas, and assumptions of the racist George Wilhelm Hegel, are the very same ideas that shaped and developed the American Educational System. This is not good for black people in general, let alone our children.
Although the German Hegel did not contribute directly to the American System of education himself, it was rather through his “Hegelian” students (as they were called) William Torrey Harris, Horace Mann and John Dewey that his ideas were laid at the foundation of American education. In The Origins of American Philosophy of Education, J.J. Chambliss states that William Torrey Harris was the "central figure in rationalism's influence on American philosophy of education" (Chambliss). In Public Schools and Moral Education, Neil G. McCluskey informs us that the "consensus among historians of education and students of social thought clearly indicates that Horace Mann, William Torrey Harris, and John Dewey can be considered the triumvirate whose thought has most affected the creation and development of the present philosophy of the American public school" (McCluskey).
Neil McClusky informs us that “the roots of Harris's work in the American educational system were firmly planted in Hegelian principles.” The following definition of “Hegelian” principles shows us how Hegel’s students believed that all power to control the individual should be held by the institution. “To the American Hegelians, education was an effective tool for developing the individual mind to promote "self-activity," or to cultivate the mind to a point at which every individual became entirely aware of his position as a subject in the complex interactions of reality. As Harris put it: "...education is the process through which the individual is led to attain his freedom" (Harris, Twentieth Annual Report). Although the ultimate goal of Hegelian education is freedom of the individual, "freedom" in the Hegelian context denotes a dependence on the influence of institutions. Institutions, as the embodiment of man's rational behavior and thought, are the ultimate tool of freedom.”
For more on the Hegelian school of thought: http://gyral.blackshell.com/hegel/hegedu.html
Book List
Boone, Richard G. ed. by William T. Harris. Education in the United States. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1903.
Brackett, Anna C. "The Science of Education," Journal of Speculative Philosophy, December 1878.
Chambliss, J.J. The Origins of American Philosophy of Education. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960.
Harris, William Torrey. "The Education of the Family, and the Education of the School," Journal of the American Social Science Association. XV, February 1882.
Harris, William Torrey. "The Church, the State, and the School," North American Review. CXXXIII, September 1881.
Harris, William Torrey. Twentieth Annual Report to the Board of Directors of the Saint Louis Public Schools for the Year Ending August 1, 1894
Harris, "The History and Philosophy of Education," The Chautauquan III, October 1882.
McCluskey, Neil Gerard. Public Schools and Moral Education. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1958.
Schaub, ed., William Torrey Harris, 1835-1935. Unknown publisher, date.
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