Developing the Undeveloped Minds of African Children by Amos Wilson

[TShango]

Developing the Undeveloped Minds of Afrikan Children

By

Dr. Amos Wilson

We must study the cognitive and behavioral style of Black Children
We must study the developmental psychology of the Black Child
We must stop looking at the Black child as a White child who happens to be Black
The content and design of curricula and tests is based on an implicit child, a white middle class implicit child.
We have to study of the Black child’s biological and psychological development.

There is a difference in the organization of the abilities of Black Children
A school system designed based of the psychology and the structure of white children by its very design and nature will actually destroy the intellectual potential of a Black child.
One of the major problems is we do not know our children. Therefore we have trouble assessing what they need in their development.

The psychology of Black people is a result of the history and experiences of Black people. The psychology used in school today is based on the history and experiences of the European consequently the educational approach is inadequate for meeting the needs of African people. Our children are blamed for this mismatch they are described with deficiency and deviances and defects and other kinds of things we hear so much about in the everyday world.

The genetic inheritance, the genes are not mere chemical packets that determine their physiological aspects but the genes are capsulated histories of the experiences of our people. In other words, the cultural history, biological history, climatic geographical history, the interactions our people have had with other people, the interactions our people have had with their environment on the African continent and other places over the thousands and thousands of years are carried right in the bodies of our children. It is a part of their psychology as well as their biology. Therefore the education of our children must be based on the knowledge of that history and the psychology that flows from that history.

The education of a people must depend upon the problems those people have to solve. Therefore, I often say the destiny of the Black child is revolutionary while the destiny of the white child is conservative. The major thing that the white child must do is maintain the advantages and privileges that whites already have and ideally add to those advantages. When we refer to Black people and the Black child as being disadvantaged we are referring to the fact that we do not have our share of what this world has to offer. And when we recognize that we will have to take that share from other people and that we will have to be able to protect that share once we take it from other people. We must realize that the destiny of our children is revolutionary. And then we are in a sense preparing our children for warfare.

That means that the children must be reared and educated to take on those tasks. Therefore that means they can not be reared and educated in the same ways of white children. We must design their education in terms of their destiny.

There is no such thing as “standard” education. There is no such thing as “equal” education. These things you must get out of your minds they will destroy you. There is no universal, non-ethnic, non-political type of education. Education is political to its very core. It is ethnic to its very core.

It is not enough to go to the Board of Education and say you want a better education for your child. You have to be specific, you have to know what you want and you have to know how to get it. But in order to do that you must know how your children think and how your children behave, how the system has organized them to behave, how the system has organized them to think. So you will know exactly how you want to reorganize their mental and behavioral structures.

We can start to analyze how the Black child thinks and behaves by trying to answer the following questions:

• How must that child behave and
• How must that child think
• How must Black people, African people behave
• How must African people think if the European is to maintain his power and domination over Black people.

I want you to meditate on this question for a second.
If you were in power, how would you prefer that the people you ruled over behaved? What kind of mental characteristics would you prefer of course you would want them to be passive, of course you would want them to be obedient wouldn’t you, you would want them to love you, even though you kicked them up their butt and mistreated them, wouldn’t you. You would want them to think you are the greatest in the world that you are the smartest and that you are invincible and that they are the dumbest and stupidest and the whole bit wouldn’t you. And that would make life very good for you wouldn’t it. You have to recognize this ladies and gentleman. The theory of racial complentarity. How when one race in power it tries to design another race to try and compliment it’s power.

We must move beyond the hero worship approach to history and look at it analytically for the lessons it teaches us. We must look at our heroes critically and analytically so that we gain critical answers to solving our problems. It not nearly enough to feel good. Feeling good is not going to save your African lives. Look at our heroes in terms of their culture, the mistakes they have made, how the solved problems, and what they planned for the advancement of their people.



Taken from a Speech made by Dr. Amos Wilson