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A Paradigm Shift in our Concept of Education By Grace Lee Boggs An Educational Summit on the
Urban Crisis State Theatre, Detroit, August 20, 2002
More than thirty years ago, after having been heavily involved in the struggle for community control of schools, I made a speech on Education here in Detroit that has been widely reprinted in journals, including the Harvard Educational Review, and also as a pamphlet entitled Education to Govern which went through three printings. In that speech I warned that in the light of the urban rebellions which have brought black youth on to the historical stage, we need to go beyond community control and begin grappling with fundamental questions about the purpose of education and how children learn in order to transform our children from angry rebels into positive change agents.. The time had come, I said, to go beyond the top down factory model of education which was created at the beginning of the century to supply industry with a disciplined work force..
Our children , I said, need to be given a sense of the unique capacity of human beings to shape and create reality in accordance with conscious purposes and plans. Learning must be related to the daily lives of children. Ii is not something you can make people do in their heads with the perspective that, eventually, they will get a good job and make a lot of money, or as the saying goes, “get somewhere.” Our schools, I said, need to be transformed to provide children with ongoing opportunities to exercise “their resourcefulness to solve the real problems of their communities.” Children will be motivated to learn and their cognitive juices will begin to flow because their hearts, heads and hands are engaged in improving their daily lives and their surroundings. In the decades that have elapsed since 1969, our schools and communities have deteriorated far beyond anything that I could have imagined. As corporations have exported jobs out of our communities and the information revolution has brought us to the threshold of a post-industrial society, our schools have continued to operate on the factory model. So 35-50% of inner city youth drop out, many of them becoming trapped in the drug economy and ending up in prison, because they are no longer willing to sit passively in classrooms for twelve or more years, receiving and regurgitating information, when all around them the need for change and for creative thinking is so obvious. During Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964 civil rights activists created Freedom Schools because black schools in the South had been organized to produce subjects, not active citizens. Black children were encouraged to see themselves as part of a social movement. That is the kind of schooling we need today.
Instead what we are being given are endless tests, vouchers, privatization and school superintendents who are CEOs or military generals (as in Seattle) or former federal prosecutors (as in San Diego) That is why
we urgently need a paradigm shift in our concept of the purposes and practices
of education. We need to leave behind
the concept of education as a passport to more money and higher status in the
future and replace it with a concept of education as an ongoing process
that enlists the tremendous energies and creativity of schoolchildren in rebuilding and respiriting our communities
and our cities now, in the present. Just think of how much safer, healthier and livelier our communities would become almost overnight if as a natural and normal part of the curriculum from K-12, school children were taking responsibility for maintaining neightorhood streets, planting community gardens, recycling waste, creating healthier school lunches, organizing neighborhood festivals. This is the fastest way to motivate all our children to learn and at the same time turn our communities into lively neighborhoods where crime is going down because hope is going up.
This is not an idle dream. In 1992, recalling how Martin Luther King Jr., in response to the urban rebellions, had proposed self-transforming and structure-transforming projects for Negro youth in “our dying cities,” we founded Detroit Summer as a multicultural intergenerational program to involve young people in community projects to rebuild, redefine and respirit Detroit from the ground up. Every summer, for the last eleven years, teams of middle and high school youth have organized themselves to turn vacant lots into community gardens and parks, paint public murals, rehab houses, and at the same time explore new ideas about economics, transportation, education and social change. Every year Detroit Summer is attracting more college students preparing to become teachers and looking for new ways to break down the walls between the classroom and the community. The beauty of Detroit Summer is that it is creating a fluid model that can be adopted and adapted by all kinds of community groups and also by schools. Another community-building model is being created by public schools in the de-industrialized cities of New England through a program calling itself KIDS, Kids Involved in Doing Service. Students at the Moretown Elementary School in Vermont, for example, researched the feasibility of planting trees along the banks of the Mad River to decrease thermal impact on the river, absorb runoff and enhance animal habitats. Middle School students in Bath, Maine, mapped a historical walking tour of downtown Bath for distribution by the chamber of commerce, local restaurants and information centers. Lewiston Middle School students restored the interior and exterior appearance of their historic building. You can find out more about KIDS at www.kidsconsortium.org There may be similar models in other parts of the country. But the importance of programs like Detroit Summer and KIDS is that by enlisting the energies and creativity of schoolchildren in addressing the urban crisis, they provide children and young people with opportunities to take ownership of problems or issues affecting their school and their town. Thereby they give meaning to the lives of our children in the present while preparing them to become active citizens in a democratic society. At the same time they foster the culture of hope and change in the community which is something we all need, whether we live in the inner city or the suburbs. *** P.S. “What else
can I say about the forum? Well, to tell the truth, I'm not sure I heard
anything that I hadn't heard before except for a statement from Detroit
activist Grace Lee Boggs. Boggs talked about the need to move beyond the
top-down model of school administration and develop community-based cleanup and
gardening programs that allow children to ‘transform themselves and our
communities,’ creating a culture of hope and change.” (Betty DeRamus, Detroit
News, August 21, 2002) Q&A I am saying that education can be used to empower our young people, to help them overcome their anger and frustration because they need to become change agents for their sakes and ours. I have seen the anger and frustration and disempowerment and hopelessness and anger among our young people. Which will empower young people more? Which will give themhope? Which will transform them from rebels into change agents - a struggle for reparations or a change in the curriculum to enlist them in the struggle to rebuild our communitiies, which will link the school crisis to the urban crisis. Dr. Ivery: Commitment, Dedication and cooperation.to change themselves and this country. We have the responsibility as educators to use our educational system to engage them in the process to transform themselves The black church is one of the most substantial institution in our communities. DuBois; The black church will become engaged in the community, build coops, or become irrelevant. Until we face that we’re not going any place. Let’s hear some Amens on that. Nell Painter; I really appreciate Mrs. B concrete suggetions, I think there are some really good one. Our isolation. get them to see throughour eyes and we see through theirs. Omi: We have to continue to point out the national consequences. |