African Centered Pedagogy

In his book, Nationbuliding: Theory and Practice in Afrikan Centered Education,

Akoto speaks to the issue of Afrikan Centered pedagogy as a corrective to
enhance the learning and life chances of African children. He writes: The
relationship of the mwanafunzi to the mwalimu is like that of the drummer to the
dancer (Akoto, 1992, p. 109). This passage speaks to the notion of teacher and
student being in concert with each other on cultural as well as pedagological
terms. This writer agrees with Akoto when he says: Education stands in the
same relationship to the national culture as childbearing stands to the human
species; that is, it assures the perpetuation or permanence and continuity of the
species (Akoto, 1992, p. 94).

It is in this spirit that African people must look at the education of African
children. In the book: Black Children Their Roots, Culture, and Learning Styles,
there are mentioned three components of a curriculum for Black children, they
are:

Political/cultural (ideology)
Pedagogical relevance (method)
Academic rigor (content) (Hale-Benson, 1987, p. 152)
The historical record helps us to understand that there is no place on earth
where African people are not involved in some form of a colonial relationship with
white people. It is because of this that African-American children must have a
foundational curriculum based on an accurate historical and political analysis of
the situation of Black people in the world.
According to Janice Hale-Benson: In a system of colonialism, the colonizer has a
dual purpose for educating the colonized. The first is socialization into accepting
the value system, history, and culture of the dominant society. The second is
education for economic productivity (Hale-Benson, 1987, p. 154).

If in fact the first agent of socialization is the home, and the second is the
schooling environment then it only makes sense that African children be
schooled and socialized to the realities of institution, structural and systemic

Anglo Saxon Nationalism. It now becomes clear that Black children must be
taught more than reading, writing and arithmetic. Their education must have a
political component at the basic level.
In the book: Black Authenticity A Psychology for Liberating People of African
Descent, Haki R. Madhubuti states:

Our position on Black education is very clear and simple. Either a people prepare
their youth to be responsible and responsive to their own needs as a people or
somebody else will teach them to be responsible and responsive to somebody
elses needs at the expense and detriment to themselves and their people
(Sutherland, 1997, forward).

This statement gives weight to the idea of political education being included in
the curriculum for African children. It is clear and common knowledge that forces
exist in the real world that are on a constant mission through public policy, to
limit, control and destabilize the life chances and opportunities for Black children;
therefore it makes sense to help them at a young age to understand these
structural forces so they can prepare themselves to fight.

Education for Struggle

Education for African children must have a component for consciousness raising
included. Hale-Benson (1987) identifies five realities for Black people that must
be understood through their education.

Who they are.

Who the enemy is.
What the enemy is doing to them.
What to struggle for.
What form the struggle must take.

If the African child understands the meanings and realities of Structural,

Institutional and systemic Anglo Saxon Nationalism and they begin to order their
world around these truths, then a new way of being can be forged for African
people. Early racial socialization must be an essential component of early
African education. It is through this education that a new way of life can be
realized for African people. The early colonizers knew that not only did they need
the resources of Africa, but the mind as well. The colonists knew that if they
could control the African mind they could control the African behind.
What is the major question of the twenty first century for African people? If
W.E.B. Dubois felt that the major issue for Black people in the twentieth century
was the problem of the color line then this writer posits, that the problem of
the twenty first century is the control of the African mind. Social and behavioral
scientists have long understood that all behavior has an origin and that all
humans are products of their exposures, environments and experiences and that
shapes their values and how humans view and interact in the world. African
education must contain the important and necessary structures to insure that
African children understand and can interpret the realities that they all must
face, in a world that has never had their best interests at its core.