Freedom Schooling
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen Newspaper, 8/20/2000
At the June meeting of the Black Radical Congress in Detroit, conferees
delegates decided to launch a campaign for “Education, not Incarceration.”
That means we have to redefine what we mean by Education. We can’t possibly
mean the present system which is widely recognized as responsible for so many
of our young people ending up in prison.
For example, at the Back to Basics Community Convention held in Detroit on
Saturday, May 6, the Education Task Force passed the following resolution:
WHEREAS the current educational system has been organized to fail 50% of our
young people, many of whom end up in prison, and
WHEREAS the current system does not develop critical thinking or build
community.
BE IT RESOLVED
1. That we create a community curriculum that will empower our children to
recognize the truth from untruth and develop the ability to assess
information for
the best possible solution for themselves and for the community; and
2. That we develop tutorial programs that will implement a community
curriculum that
includes remediation but emphasizes critical thinking and empowering
children to
make a difference.
Today’s schools build addicts and prepare our children for prison because
they teach passivity whereas what our children need most is a sense of
themselves as change agents and decision makers. Our children need not only
academics but character building.
To appreciate their neighborhoods and understand their environment.
To be developed as whole persons with manual, mental, social and
environmental skills.
To become resourceful and independent thinkers.
To see themselves in the context of community and practice what enhances
community life.
To recognize their worth because their input makes a difference.
To work together to change the community.
In the 1960s Movement activists had to create Freedom Schools in the South
because the existing school system had been organized to produce subjects,
not citizens. People in the community, both children and adults, needed to be
empowered to exercise their civil and voting rights. To bring about a kind of
“mental revolution,” reading, writing and speaking skills were taught
through the discussion of black history, the power structure and building a
Movement to struggle against it. Everyone took this basic “civics” course
and then chose from more academic subjects, like algebra and chemistry.
All over Mississippi, in church basements and parish halls, on shady lawns
and in abandoned buildings, volunteer teachers empowered thousands of
children and adults through this community curriculum.
This is the kind of Freedom Schooling that we need today.
<<http://www.boggscenter.org/>>
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