PART I - The Miseducation of

Black History:How successfully is Black

History integrated into public school history

curriculum?

Clifton West, Co-Founding MemberBlack Men Who Mean Business (with Dr. Cornel West and Mike Dailey)

www.cornelscorner.com

“We’ve made some strides but it’s almost at the expense of our connection to our past... now that we’re merging into the mainstream, and I think that’s a dangerous thing.

“Our story is a guidepost to where you’re going. The importance of our story has to do with even why we’re still here, and it has to do with how we proceed ahead into the future.

“When you look at mainstream America’s story, our story has been rendered invisible. There’s a reason our story is invisible, it causes a pain and uncomfortability.

“We can’t buy into the invisibility of our story.”

Dr. Tyrone Howard, Associate Professor

UCLA Graduate School of Education

“I see three problems: One, I don’t think teachers have enough knowledge of the Black experience to teach it.

“Two, it has really been about the same cast of Black heroes it has never gone beyond the Kings, the Rosa Parks. It has never been given a more comprehensive approach to the Black experience here in America.

“Three, it has not been allowed to be integrated across all areas, for example, biology.”

Dr. Erin Winkler, Associate Professor

University of Wisconson, Dept. of Africology

“There’s a group of scholars, educators, community members who would and do argue that education for Black children has declined since Brown v. Board of Education ...

“Under ‘integrated’ schools since the case, Black children not only get fewer resources -- which was arguably part of the reason for the Brown case -- but they don’t have the community resources that they had before.”

“The argument still is, yes it should be integrated into the curriculum but it’s not enough. In some cases it’s just segregating us further, that we have to have separate classes on this ... It’s going to be marginalized in the mainstream courses.”

Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor Dept. of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach

“ African American history has not been seriously or successfully integrated into the public school history curriculum in that it is still being introduced often as a pro forma ‘topic’ at specific times rather than a ‘subject’ which is substantive and sustained throughout U.S. history lessons.

“Problems of teaching Black history include ... an almost total lack of attention to intellectual history, i.e., the ideas, thoughts of African people and the failure to discuss critically the fundamental role of African American thought, work and struggle in expanding the realm of freedom and justice in the U.S. and transforming it into its current form.”

Keene Walker, History TeacherAtlanta Public Schools, High School

“If you’re talking to the kids, a lot of them come from a background where their parents just want them to graduate, and I don’t blame them. They say, ‘Why do we need to learn this if it’s not in the test?’

“We have a few of the people that everybody mentions, you know the regular Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.

“My kids ask me who is Emmett Till ... I don’t have time really to talk about Emmett Till because I have to get through the standards. It’s a real fine line to straddle.”

Dr. Joel Freeman, President/CEOFreeman Institute Black History Collection, www.black101.com

“I think in the past it’s been virtually non-existent. I think there are some gains in recent decades.

“But I have talked to history teachers and there’s this constant struggle with policing the classroom, keeping students’ interest and also the need to get through certain pieces of curricula that aren’t specifically about African American history.

“All these other types of things come in the way sometimes, teachers say ‘I’ve got so much to plow through’ ... I can feel the angst, especially someone who’s very interested in teaching this aspect of history and feel like they’re handcuffed and can’t pull it in as much as possible.”

Kevin Cottrell, Public HistorianMotherland Connextions Inc., www.motherlandconnextions.com

“In my experience, Black history is only taught during Black history month, it’s a seasonal thing.

“I’ve never been happy with the way it’s taught.

“When you’re looking at curriculum and especially the standards, a lot of teachers will tell you with No Child Left Behind, they have to teach to the test. So as much as they would like to teach Black History Month, they can’t really cover what they want to because the students won’t be tested on that stuff.

“It just doesn’t work in the scheme of things because it’s not on the test.”