Why and how the African child is miseducated in the western educational system. Part 1

I would like to make an attempt to explain to our community and particularly to young parents why and how the African child has been systematically mis-educated in the western world during the last 500 years, so that they can better understand the root causes of some of the aberrations and self destructive forms of behaviour they see in our community and to help them realize that if they want a brighter future for their children and for our community, then it is imperative that they no longer leave the education of their children solely in the hands of the western educational system, but rather to follow the advice of Malcolm X who told us years ago that “the black child’s education starts when the school bells rings at 4 p.m in the afternoon.” (This may vary depending on what time school ends in your country) We didn’t follow his advice then and today our youth are suffering the consequences.

The situation of African children around the planet has considerably deteriorated since the days of Malcolm X, so that we are now forced to follow the advice of Dr Asa Hilliard one of Africa’s great educators who died recently and left us these parting words. “The education of African people is an urgent necessity. It is a matter of life and death. We cannot abide another generation of children who have no identity and who are ignorant about Africa.”

The late Professor Amos Wilson, another one of Africa’s foremost educators of the 20th century, posed a crucial question that all African parents and our community need to ask. What is the purpose of an education? He said that most black people have been ‘trained’ to think it is ‘to get a job with one of the ‘fortune 500’ companies”. However, according to Dr. Wilson, they are seriously mistaken, because the purpose of an education is to improve and further the interests of one’s own group and to ensure its survival.
Obviously the Indians, the Chinese, the Jews and other groups understand this, since that is what they do.

Our people often look at them and marvel at their unity and wonder why in contrast our community seems so fragmented and disorganized. Yet, when we study African civilization we can clearly see that it was well organised and group oriented and there is even an African proverb which states “it takes a whole village to raise a child.” If it took a whole village to raise a child, it must have been because our ancestors worked as a group and understood that on reaching adulthood that child would in turn do everything to promote the interests of their group. Our ancestors therefore never left the education of their children to chance because the cohesiveness of their society was of prime importance.

So, how have African people become such a fragmented and disorganised group of people today? “Why can’t we be like the Indians and the Japanese?” the question one of my 17-year-old nephews asked me some years ago. The answer is quite simple. We cannot be like them because we do not have the same historical experience.” We do ourselves a great disservice when we compare ourselves to other people since we can only compare that which is similar, not dissimilar. We are different because Africa was attacked by Arabs and Europeans, and our people were forcefully taken to another land and enslaved. Neither the Indians nor the Japanese have had that experience and therefore it is absolutely pointless to compare ourselves to them.

When slavery and later colonization took place, the vision that our ancestors had of educating and raising African children was taken out of their control and a new way was imposed on African people. Worse, this new system of education ran counter to the interests and needs of Africans. As a result, today, as Prof Wilson has again pointed out, African people have never had so many talented and educated economists, educators, sociologists, doctors, lawyers, artists, etc, yet we suffer the worst health, housing, and education on the planet because our education was never designed to promote our interests but rather the goals and the interests of our oppressors. The self destructive behaviour and derogative lyrics of the rap generation is a striking example of children who have not been taught to promote their interests.

Furthermore, our people hold advanced degrees from some of the most prestigious Ivy League schools and universities and can solve any myriad of problems for other groups but since they have not received an African centred education when it comes to their own, all their knowledge is null and void. Sometimes the more educated they become, the more alienated they are from African culture and more of a menace to our group, because in their zeal to promote the interests of others they often end up doing harm to their own people. So, Colin Powell, who sent African American soldiers to kill other African people in Grenada, should never be considered a good role model for our children, if we want to liberate African people from oppression.

If African leaders allow the West to take their wealth to feed Europeans and leave Africans to starve and face death, it is because they too have been taught to work against their own interests. For example, at the end of apartheid instead of putting reparations and land redistribution as a top priority for South Africa’s black victims, reconciliation with whites, the criminals, became the main goal. As a result, Nelson Mandela is feted all over the western world and the British even unveiled a statue of him recently in London, yet the only thing that South African blacks have received to date is some propaganda about living happily in a mythical rainbow coloured society. This is one of the reasons why African parents must be extremely careful with the kind of role models they present to their children. Danny Glover is a much better model for our children to emulate than Condoleezza Rice.

This new manner of raising and educating black children however has always posed a problem in the western world. Once again, Dr. Wilson gives us an explanation. It is problematic he says, because African people were not brought to the West to be educated. They were brought to be the slaves and servants of the people who enslaved them, in other words, to work. I used to teach African culture in an after school program several years ago and the first question we asked the children was the reason for our people’s presence here in the West. None of them ever responded by saying that African people were here to work as servants for white people. In fact, most black people will answer this question by a vague “we were brought here as slaves.” Have you ever noticed that anything meant for African people is often vague? For example, “Jesus is coming back soon” or “we are going to reduce poverty in Africa” or “we want to help Africa” What date specifically is Jesus coming back? By what date exactly are they going to reduce poverty and by how much? or what specific area of activity are they planning to focus on? We don’t know. The language is vague because it’s not meant to be taken seriously and they know that our people will not demand anything more specific. In return, we are asked to blindly believe, watch and pray and hope for a better day. Also very, very vague.

Yet what black people actually do is very specific. We serve our white masters. In sports and in music all the owners are white and the players and singers are black. This imbalance exists even in countries where the majority of the population is black. For example in the Caribbean most of the business and hotel owners as well as the tourists are white, while the workers are mostly black. In Africa, our people extract the diamonds and gold from the ground while Indians, Jews, Lebanese and Western businessmen sit in their offices all day and reap the benefits. This inability to understand the real reason for our presence in the West has led our community to the false assumption that we are here to ‘live in peace and harmony with whites.’ How many times have we heard black people say “they don’t see colour” yet when they move into a white neighbourhood, the whites move out, so obviously they do. If we are so mistaken about why we are here and our relationship with its inhabitants, is it any wonder that our children and our community are so confused and have so many problems in their daily lives?

In 1888, Ernest Renan, a racist French philosopher described Europe’s economic vision of our world when he said, “Nature has given us a race of workers, they are Chinese, a race to till the soil, they are Africans and a race of rulers and soldiers, they are Europeans”. This is exactly the world we live in today. Yet, this racially organized economic system has existed for the last 500 years but sadly African people are totally unaware of this fact because they are kept ignorant and uninformed the world over.

It is also this racially segmented economic system which is responsible for the persistent poverty and underdevelopment in Africa and the other countries where our people reside, but because of our ignorance, western propaganda has made us believe that it is because our leaders are incompetent and corrupt. We are meant to transfer our hatred to our leaders rather than to the racist economic system that Europeans have wilfully put in place to impoverish Africans. Luckily, the masses of poor people are passive if not there would be thousands of revolts every day, everywhere on this planet.

To keep African people impoverished the West intentionally bypasses Africa and the ghettos where many of our people live and invest in the Asian countries. The reason Chinese investment in Africa today terrifies the West is because they fear it may actually help lift Africans out of poverty and thus threaten their racially segmented economic system. To punish the Chinese, the West has simply mounted a propaganda campaign accusing them of selling tainted products and of ignoring human rights in Africa, but when and where in Africa has the West ever respected human rights? In fact, most of the anti democratic leaders in Africa are still in power because of the West.

Corruption in Africa therefore is not the cause of poverty but a consequence of it. People in Africa are corrupt because they do not earn enough money to live decently and therefore must resort to illegal methods to make ends meet. In fact, where ever you see crime take a good look, you will usually find high unemployment and intolerable living conditions because it is a consequence and not the cause. Improve the living conditions and corruption and crime will quickly disappear. It’s a very simple equation but of course no one is interested in this option because the capitalist system, which is really the old Roman slave system under a different name, cannot survive without access to a large number of unpaid workers or people who are barely paid. Under globalization, its modern name, 80% of the world is still exploited by the 20% who still continue to own all the wealth. Changing the name periodically (feudalism, industrialisation, capitalism, socialism, communism and now globalisation) is simply a strategy that the West uses to make us, the ignorant masses believe that there is genuine change taking place in society.

Now you understand why every country you visit and in every area of activity the owners and those who make money are always white or are close to white, while those who work, serve and are exploited are always black or close to it. This is what African parents must begin to understand so that they can explain to their children why African people are consistently at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder

To be continued.