Waiting For Culturally Relevant Education, Not Superman
As a recent documentary film suggests, many parents and educators have been “Waiting for Superman” to fix our broken public education system. He simply isn’t coming. Imhotep, however, has landed in Philly.
A public charter high school that graduated its first class in 2000, Imhotep is hard to miss if you live in Philadelphia. It’s based in a $10 million educational complex. It produces championship athletic teams. The student population of 558 is overwhelmingly black. No Imhotep student is left behind — they all go onto college. And every day, there’s an Imhotep wardrobe riot going on as many teachers and students don colorful African clothing.
For all its success in using “culturally relevant teaching,” the school hasn’t emitted so much as a dull bleep on the radar screens of education cognoscenti seeking replicable school reforms, leaving one to question whether the school is just “too African” for America.
However, culturally relevant teaching as practiced there might be worth another look as a method capable of reaching the nation’s students.
Named for the legendary ancient Egyptian genius from the third dynasty who is credited with inventing papyrus, designing pyramids and founding medicine, Imhotep is the kind of school where the principles of Kwanzaa are called upon every day, where self-determination is an article of faith, and where students learn to “take responsibility for yourself, your brothers and your sisters.”“When I started Imhotep, I did a graphic that put the student in the middle and made sure everything was designed to meet the needs of the child, not the teachers’ or the administration’s or the institution’s,” said CEO and founder Christine Wiggins, who is called Mama Wiggins. “And I continually try to do that.”
This meant designing a curriculum that “centers” Imhotep students by valuing Africa as the birthplace of humanity and learning. Mama Higgins and her staff of 60 call the students “Nubians” and approach teaching as if academics originated in the motherland.
“Developmentally, children need to know they are descendants of great thinkers,” Wiggins said. “When you never show them anybody that looks like them and that hasn’t achieved anything, then they don’t believe that they can achieve anything.”
She added: “It’s not advantageous to put a child in the classroom and give him a textbook where the only pictures of people that look like him are people on their knees in chains and being whipped. We’re going to show them images of their great African fathers and mothers as leaders in math and science, so everything that I do is centered around that basic premise.”
The Imhotep formula appears to get results: for nine years straight, 100% of Imhotep students have gotten into college, Wiggins said, adding, “The average in the country is running about 30%.” Her students win entrance to between 5 and 20 colleges, giving them a wide choice of colleges to attend.
Incoming Imhotep students are not filtered. “The children who come to us are the ones who have not been ‘saved’ in traditional schools,” she said. “I do a dance if I get a child in grade nine who is reading on a sixth grade level. Usually they are reading on a fourth and fifth grade level.”
Imhotep offers an advanced placement program, senior internships requiring students to work in a business, government or community based organization. It also organizes small student learning communities and puts students through cultural rites of passage.
In addition, Imhotep has college partnerships with Arcadia University, Community College, Cornell University, Drexel University, Florida A&M, Howard University, Cheyney University, Lincoln University and Temple University.
Gloria Ladson-Billings, author of “The Dreamkeepers” and a leader in educating African-American children
“I think most people don’t really understand [culturally relevant teaching]. I think they don’t recognize that it is essentially not an attempt to have kids fit into an already unequal system. It’s really an attempt to help them develop the kind of critical skills that will allow them to challenge the system.”
"White teachers are perfectly capable of conducting culturally relevant teaching."
"As for Afrocentric schools, there’s nothing wrong with them so long as they do right by students. “People get all upset when [someone says] they’re going to [build] something Afrocentric,” she said. “[People] say, ‘Well where are they going to live, in an Afrocentric world?’ Well every major city in this country has a French lyceum where the wealthiest kids go to school.”
Molefi Asante, founder of the first doctoral program in African American studies at Temple University.
A major problem in education today is the educators, Asante said. “When you come out of a school of education, you know how to do time sheets and lesson plans. But in terms of actually dealing with children and grounding them in their cultural experiences and exciting them to go further and deeper and longer in their tradition, it is rare.”
Meanwhile, African American children “sit in the classrooms on the margins,” he said. “They are never given the subject position, and never seen as actors or agents or creators of knowledge. They’re always going to get somebody else’s knowledge.”
He said Afrocentricity works because it engenders self-worth. “What’s working are those Afrocentric schools that have deliberately, consciously decided that the way to educate African American children is to ground them in their cultural experiences so that they like not only themselves, but that they like African culture. The problem with black children is they hate Africa, and if you hate Africa you won’t learn. That is the fundamental dictum that seems to be the problem. They have negative attitudes toward their history, their culture, and their people.”
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5 comments:
This particular charter school looks interesting and could be modeled elsewhere..but then non-minorities who think their children should be in this school would also want 'cultural relevant teaching' for their kids, or bring up reverse discrimination' when it comes to culture issues.
But I like the idea of teaching the Kwanzaa lessons, especially in taking responsibility. We just had 2 fantastic A-A men on an upcoming CAPtions addressing responsibility and accountability, especially those younger Black men who are causing problems with violence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fbSB7TIrtM
Unfortunately, the best role models are always parents and other important family members (and I might add church)--all others are just second best, primarily because the role models have to be present from birth until time to go to school--school is too late for the most effective results. However, that doesn't mean that schools shouldn't do all they can.
This post is correct because black kids, in general, do look down on Africa--still have those images of savages in their heads. That's why I was so pleased to have Paul Kasimbera visit Manual (in charge of student teachers from Bradley). He is from Zimbabwe and has quite a story to tell. He visited my class once as a guest speaker. My students spontaneously stood up to applauded him when he was finished talking.
I clearly remember--and I think it was during the Nixon presidential campaign--that my black students asked me if it were true that black people would be sent back to Africa if Nixon won the election. I always have to remember that the parents and grandparents of today's students were the ones who were plagued with these rumors--from where I don't know, but they were real to these kids, and they have probably passed on those perceptions to today's children.
I am just so unwilling to believe that segregated education is the only way to take away these negative images that keep black young people from wanting to know about their African heritage. Black history was introduced into District 150's curriculum in the 70s as an attempt to deal with this problem. Like all other efforts, it probably worked for some, but not for others.
I have always believed--as a white teacher--I could help dispel these perceptions by being willing to talk openly and not to mitigate the feelings and fears of students.
In the 60s there was a TV show about all the myths about black people (such as that black blood was different than white blood, etc.) At least two of my students who called me while the show was on had missed the "myth" part and thought the show was imparting truths. They were upset by what they heard.
I know that we white people would like to believe that all these perceptions have disappeared or been lessened--but too much residue still plays a role in negative self-images.
Guess how many books by African-American authors are on District 150's official book list. Last time I checked: ONE. Some might argue TWO, not realizing that Uncle Tom's Cabin was written by a middle-class white lady.
A-D
Probably in the 80s, I put the book Five Smooth Stones on my book list. I was afraid that some white parents would object. The book is one of the best I ever read about the dangers faced by those who fought for change during the Civil Rights Movement. One parent came to open house and wanted to discuss my choice of that book--all he was concerned about was the length of the book.
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