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History tells a story that informs the future. It shapes our understanding, inspires our path forward, and builds our faith in the face of adversity. At the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity & Opportunity, we believe that stories matter. We show that #HistoryCounts when we honor and learn from the experiences of those who've come before us. History helps us to create new opportunities for hope, resilience, and change.
As we prepare to "Take A Walk Through History" at the 2022 Color of Education Summit we will show that #HistoryCounts by highlighting important people and events over the next few months. We hope that you will find these moments of history both informative and inspiring.
Follow the hashtag #HistoryCounts on Twitter to learn more and engage in conversation with others.
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James Baldwin on Education |
Last week's #HistoryCounts moment discussed the impact of black teachers during segregation. School desegregation and integration continues to impact teacher diversity, recruitment, and retainment. As a result of the lack of diversity in the teaching profession, students suffer. Research shows that "minority students often perform better on standardized tests, have improved attendance, and are suspended less frequently (which may suggest either different degrees of behavior or different treatment, or both) when they have at least one same-race teacher." When students do not have educators who look like them, access to learning materials that represent their identities, or lessons that incorporate their cultural identities and experiences, it interferes with their potential for academic success.
Addressing the teacher pipeline and diversity issues in NC Public Schools with programs such as the Flood Center's Jeanes Fellows program is one way to support students and teachers of color. Other ways include; implementing culturally responsive teaching and culturally sustaining pedagogy and advocating against censorship through book-banning to ensure that students' identities and lived experiences are represented in the classroom. Below is an excerpt of the speech delivered to teachers by James Baldwin in 1963, which outlines the importance of educators and their role in teaching the generations to come.
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James Baldwin 'A Talk to Teachers' |
(Delivered October 16, 1963, as “The Negro Child – His Self-Image”; originally published in The Saturday Review, December 21, 1963, reprinted in The Price of the Ticket, Collected Non-Fiction 1948-1985, Saint Martins 1985.)
Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time. Everyone in this room is in one way or another aware of that. We are in a revolutionary situation, no matter how unpopular that word has become in this country. The society in which we live is desperately menaced, not by Khrushchev, but from within. To any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible – and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people – must be prepared to “go for broke.” Or to put it another way, you must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but in society, you will meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most determined resistance. There is no point in pretending that this won’t happen.
Since I am talking to schoolteachers and I am not a teacher myself, and in some ways am fairly easily intimidated, I beg you to let me leave that and go back to what I think to be the entire purpose of education in the first place. It would seem to me that when a child is born, if I’m the child’s parent, it is my obligation and my high duty to civilize that child. Man is a social animal. He cannot exist without a society. A society, in turn, depends on certain things which everyone within that society takes for granted. Now the crucial paradox which confronts us here is that the whole process of education occurs within a social framework and is designed to perpetuate the aims of society. Thus, for example, the boys and girls who were born during the era of the Third Reich, when educated to the purposes of the Third Reich, became barbarians. The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish. The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it – at no matter what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change.
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Censorship Through Book-Banning |
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CBS Morning
Ta-Nehisi Coates on Banned Books Week
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"Between the World and Me" author Ta-Nehisi Coates joins “CBS Mornings” to discuss Banned Books Week and the dangers of censoring books. Plus, he shares his reaction to one of his own books being banned. |
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After a speech at UMass Amherst on February 28, 1984, James Baldwin was asked by a student: "You said that the liberal façade and being a liberal is not enough. Well, what is? What is necessary?" Baldwin responded, "Commitment. That is what is necessary. You mean it or you don't."
Taking up that challenge and drawing from Baldwin's fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and interviews, You Mean It or You Don't will spur today's progressives from conviction to action. It is not enough, authors Hollowell and McGhee urge us, to hold progressive views on racial justice, LGBTQ+ identity, and economic inequality. True and lasting change demands a response to Baldwin's radical challenge for moral commitment. Called to move from dreams of justice to living it out in communities, churches, and neighborhoods, we can show that we truly mean it.
Welcome to life with James Baldwin. It is raw and challenging, inspired and embodied, passionate and fully awake.
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TWITTER
Get ready to use the following hashtags and handles on Twitter to follow this year’s hybrid event @DudleyFloodCtr, @NCForum, #HistoryCounts, #FloodEquity, and #ColorOfEducation on Twitter.
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FACEBOOK
Share our event with your friends and family on Facebook. Let them know that you are planning to attend and invite them to join. All are welcome!
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