Teaching the Truth and the New School Year

The movement to implement an appropriate African Centered Curriculum in predominately African in America inner city schools is critical to the on–going struggle for the liberation of African people in this country. We must continue to demand that the truth be taught as the new school year begins. If this movement is to be successful, just like the impact of the youth in the 1960s, it will be the youth of this era that must rise up and take leadership in changing America’s public school systems to teach the truth.

This movement has now become popularly known as the African Centered Education Movement. Simply stated, it focuses on teaching the truth concerning the contributions of African people to the development of civilization in all subjects. During this new school year, we must heighten the dialogue concerning the importance of this movement.

Throughout the country, Africans in America have become more sensitive to challenging the racist and white supremacist basis of the African public school curriculum.

Through the National Black United Front (NBUF) and its world African Centered Education Plan, more Africans in America are beginning to see the need for massive curriculum change in the public schools of this country and the youth must take leadership in this project.

There is not a day that goes by that someone does not call my office seeking information and help on how to start the process of changing the curriculum in their school. Parents are becoming more and more dissatisfied with what their children are being taught. They are also beginning to realize how much isn’t taught.

It is clear that the public school system is the place where African in America children receive a significant portion of their view of the world and the history of the world. And, it also is a place where large numbers of African in America youth are miseducated under the system of white supremacy through the ideas and interpretation of history that is presented to them.

Let’s turn to Carter G. Woodson’s great book, The Miseducation of the Negro to get some further insights into this problem. Woodson observes “the so–called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker people.”

For example, Woodson says, “The philosophy and ethics resulting from our educational system have justified slavery, peonage, segregation and lynching. The oppressor has the right to exploit, to handicap, and to kill the oppressed.”

Continuing on Woodson explains that, “No systematic effort toward change had been possible for, taught the same economics, history, philosophy, literature and religion which have established the present code of morals, the Negro’s mind has been brought under control of his oppressor.”

Concluding on this point Woodson states, “The problem of holding the Negro down, therefore, is easily solved. When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.”

Therefore, it is inspiring to see so many of our people waking up all over America and seeking the truth concerning the real contributions of African people to the world. Through study groups, conferences, Black talk radio, information network exchanges, African Americans are coming into a new African consciousness that seeks to reclaim the African mind and spirit.

Through the Portland Model Baseline Essays, the work of the Kemetic Institute, the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC), and other writings and curriculum materials, Africans are becoming much more aware of the following points that must be incorporated into the curriculum.

These ten points, and others, have become the basis upon which we can judge the white supremacy public school curriculums content in textbooks and other learning materials.

In other words, these points have become the basis of determining whether the truth is being taught in the public schools of this country.

The Truth will set us free!