We must be the Change IV
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, Feb. 16-22, 2003
How do we build a movement to meet this challenge?
One place to begin is with the crisis in our schools - which is one
crisis Bush canšt blame on Saddam Hussein. That is where I began after
the Detroit Rebellion more than thirty years ago.
In l969, after having taught in the Detroit Public Schools and having
also been deeply involved in the struggle for community control of schools
as part of the Black Power movement, I made a speech on education which
has been widely reprinted.
In that speech I warned that the youth rebellions breaking out all over
the country had brought young people onto the historical stage, challenging
us to turn them from angry rebels into positive change agents. The purpose
of education, I said, cannot be mainly to increase the earning power of
the individual or to supply workers for the ever-changing slots of the
corporate machine, Children 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 and must engage their hands and hearts as well as their heads.
Especially in this age of rapid social and technical change, "it is not
something you can make people do in their heads" with the perspective that
years from now they will be able to get a good job and make a lot of money.
Some children may accept this regimen. But those who feel most acutely the
contradiction between the hopelessness of their daily lives and the
abstractness of school "subjects" will create so much turmoil inside and
outside the school that teachers canšt teach and no one can learn.
In cities all over the country politicians are now trying to resolve
this crisis by hiring more military-minded CEOs, and by stricter and more
frequentt testing. Their mindset is that of controllers and enforcers
That is why it has become so urgent that we rethink how children learn
and the purpose of education. We are not going to solve this crisis with
more money, more computers, new buildings or new CEOs. To achieve the
miracle that is now needed to transform our schools into places of learning,
we need to tap into the creative energies of our children and our teachers.
In this connection we have much to learn from the struggles in Alabama and
Mississippi in the early 1960s.
In the spring of 1963 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led
by King launched a "fill the jails" campaign to desegregate downtown
department stores and schools in Birmingham. But few local blacks were
coming forward. Black adults were afraid of losing their jobs, local black
preachers were reluctant to accept the leadership of an "outsider", and city
police commissioner Bull Conner had everyone intimidated. Facing a major
defeat, King was persuaded by his aide, James Bevel, to allow any child old
enough to belong to a church to march. So on D-Day May 2, before the eyes
of the whole nation, thousands of school children, many of them first
graders, joined the movement and were beaten, fire-hosed, attacked by
police dogs and herded off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses.
The result was what has been called "The Childrenšs Miracle." Inspired
and shamed into action, thousands of adults rushed to join the movement.
All over the country rallies were called to express outrage against Bull
Connoršs brutality. Locally the power structure was forced to desegregate
lunch counters and dressing rooms in downtown stores, hire blacks to work
downtown and begin desegregating the schools. Nationally the Kennedy
administration, which had been trying not to alienate white Dixiecrat
voters, was forced to begin drafting civil rights legislation as the only
way to forestall more Birminghams.
The next year as part of Mississippi Freedom Summer, activists
created Freedom Schools because the existing school system (like ours
today) had been organized to produce subjects, not citizens. To bring about
a "mental revolution" reading, writing and speaking skills were taught
through the discussion of black history, the power structure and the need to
build a Movement to struggle against it.
In 1963 and 1964 the main struggles were for desegregation and voting
rights. Today our struggle is to rebuild communities and cities.
What we need to do now is to begin engaging our children in
community-building activities with the same audacity with which the civil
rights movement engaged them in desegregation and voter registration
activities thirty-five years ago. Classes of school children from K-12
should be taking responsibility for maintaining neighborhood streets,
planting community gardens, recycling waste, rehabbing houses, creating
healthier school lunches, visiting and doing errands for the elderly,
organizing neighborhood festivals, painting public murals. The possibilities
are endless. This is the fastest way to motivate all our children to learn
and at the same time reverse the physical deterioration of our
neighborhoods. It is a wonderful way to nurture the desire of children to
be of service and provide opportunities for children with different talents
to make a difference and win the respect of their peers and elders. By
giving children a better reason to study than just to get a job or to
advance their individual upward mobility, it will also get their cognitive
juices flowing. Learning will come from practice which has always been the
best way to learn. And just imagine how much safer and livelier our
neighborhoods would become, almost overnight!
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