Education is defined as the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university. I’m writing this piece as someone who’s been a product of public education with an understanding that education, in its most impactful form cannot be confined to classroom instruction. The current agenda for developing a more equitable educational system for black students, within the current structure, concerns zoning, teacher compensation, charter schools, learning disability designations, IEPs, and the school-to-prison pipeline. These concerns need to be discussed and worked through the system of leadership laid out in Modus Operandi 2. To the extent progress will not be made swiftly within the system, educational augmentation, specifically in homes, churches, and other community based organizations, should center around three factors: teaching children how to think critically, knowledge of history/self, and focusing on making life better as a person finds it. An education focused along these lines will have much more impact throughout the scope of a child’s life.
The foundational element for educating black youth is teaching them how to think, instead of what to think, is a two-pronged issue. First, education in its current state is predicated on the rote memorization and regurgitation of facts and theorems to be assessed on standardized tests. Educators must teach children frameworks for analyzing and evaluating problems and arriving at solutions through their own intellectual discovery. The overly bureaucratic nature of public education places value on what a child knows as opposed to a child’s ability to reason, the latter of which is the more valuable skill. Second, within the current education construct, black children are taught to view themselves as less than. Black students instructed by teachers who know very little, and are unwilling to learn, about the students they serve are at the mercy of teachers’ innate biases. Those biases, which are typically negative manifest in punishment. A 2013 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a federal watchdog agency, titled: “K-12 Education: Discipline Disparities for Black Students, Boys, and Students with Disabilities,” found that in Academic Year 2013–2014, black students accounted for 15.5% of all public school students but represented about 39% of out-of-school suspensions. Carter G. Woodson, the great black thinker and educator of a century ago stated, “When you determine what a man shall think, you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it for himself.” The cumulative effects of not teaching black students how to think critically, and to view themselves as less-than, will continue to have grave ramifications.
The next element of import in the education of black children is a knowledge of self through history. Lao Tzu, in his great spiritual work, the Tao Te Ching stated, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.” Presently, public school education gives nominal treatment to the rich history of black people, outside of the obligatory acknowledgement during black history month. Concerned entities outside the mainstream educational construct must provide an objective understanding of history, the good, bad, and the ugly of all races, ethnicities, and religions, instead of the idealized version found in public schools. Teaching black children their contributions in the arts, sciences, religion, and scholarship leads them to understanding of their rich history. Many black students matriculate a K-12 public school education without being taught the following: Imhotep, an Egyptian, was the father of medicine; St Augustine, an African man born in present day Algeria, wrote “Confessions” and “The City of God,” which are seminal works of the Christian faith; the first university in the history of mankind was started in Morocco by a woman named Fatima al-Fihri; and the first list of human rights, the Manden Charter, predating the Magna Carta, was agreed upon in advance of the formation of the Mali empire. Today, it is easier than ever to change the narrative or craft a different one due to ubiquity of information, lack of scholarship, critical thinking, and firm grasp of history. Black children must understand their history and the power in the things which they’ve been made to feel were insignificant or shameful.
Lastly, the education of black children has to be infused with a responsibility toward improving life as it is; first in black communities, and then the world. Education of all people must be imbued with a level of practicality and relevance, but this is particularly relevant in the black community. For instance, in the realm of economics, schools gear curriculum to strategic level theories of economic systems, if they touch on economics at all. This information is important, but it is only useful to the extent black children have first learned how to direct personal finance, run small businesses, and learn how to own and capitalize off their intellectual property. Community entities must teach economic wellness beginning from the tactical level and moving to the operational, laying the groundwork for the organizing of communities: establishment of banks, grocery stores, schools, and hospitals. A firm grasp on the foundational tenets of personal and community economics must be the basis. Once the scaffold is in place, only then does it make sense to begin opening the aperture and directing academic energies toward theories of economic systems, the psychology of Wall Street, and world economic policies. Economics is just one facet of life, but the example has applicability to science, politics, religion, and the arts. Education for black students must be practical for life as they find it. The application of knowledge should first be personal, then communal, national, and global.
Public education is an institution which exists, at this point, to serve itself rather than the customer (students). Ergo, the system will be loathed to change in any meaningful way. While it is still of important to change the system from within, the greatest return on investment will come from augmenting the education of black students outside the public school construct by way of charter schools, churches, community centers, etc. Education which teaches black children to think critically, understand their powerful history, and which has applicability to daily life will be transformational for black students, and ultimately the black community. We must begin putting a plan together that operationalizes these educational pathways in every community.
