Nana Baffour's Six ways Schools Do Not Teach About People of African Descent

[TShango]

Six Ways Schools Do Not Teach About People of African Descent Effectively

Reproduced from Infusion of African and African American Content in the School Curriculum

By

Asa G. Hilliard III

Lucretia Payton-Stewart

And

Larry Obadele Williams

1. There is no significant history of Africans in most academic disciplines before slave trade. In the total school experience of most Americans, virtually no attention is paid to the major part of the history of African people, even though that history is integrally tied to the history of humanity. For example the history of early man, the history that Africa played in the rise of early civilization, the history of Africa’s part in the world leadership in ancient times, and the history of the powerful influence of Africa in European culture is completely ignored.

2. There is virtually no “People” History. The history of African people is presented, if at all, in episodes and fragments of post-slavery. Nowhere during the course of school curricula can students gain a sense about holism about the descendants of Africans and place Africans and their evolution with community and thematic treatment. African people, generally, are decontextualized. Person history is sprinkled as in an Affirmative action quota in some text books. People history is virtually absent.

3. There is virtually no history of Africans in the African Diaspora. Students do not get a sense that the descendants of African people are scattered all over the globe. As a result, many are shocked to find African populations in Brazil, Fiji, in the interior of the Philippines, and Dravidian India, as well as many other places on the globe. They have no sense of where Africans are nor when or how they arrived at these locations.

4. There is no presentation of the cultural unity among Africans and the descendants of Africans in the African Diaspora. Treatments of African people almost universally tend to emphasize physical and cultural differences among Africans. While there are differences, just as Europeans differ, many are quite superficial. What is overlooked is the deep structural cultural unity that can be found among many African populations all over the world.

5. There is generally little to no history of the resistance of African people to the domination of Africans through slavery, colonization, and segregation apartheid. Students could easily get the idea that African people were passive in the face of oppression and would have few, if any, role models for resistance to oppression throughout the world which has been vigorous, continuing and unrelenting.

6. The history of African people that is presented fails to explain the common origin and elements in systems of oppression that African people have experienced, especially during the last 400 years.