[By: Ellee Rogers] In a rapidly changing education system, it can often be difficult to pinpoint if society is progressing or deteriorating. Behind institutionalized racism lies long-term consequences that studies show adolescents may carry with them for the rest of their lives. One of the most prevailing of these includes the school-to-prison-pipeline, which is the process in which children are pushed out of schools and […]
[by Jerry W. Ward, Jr.] Teaching graduate students in the School of Foreign Languages at Central China Normal University is rewarding. They are less jaded and more receptive than their American peers, more conscious that a university education is a privilege rather than an entitlement dispensed by a secular god. Lacking familiarity with our democratic hypocrisies and noteworthy disdain for humanistic inquiry, most Chinese students […]
[By: Dr. Maryemma Graham] What are we to do with Disneyfication? It’s here to stay. I may be succumbing to the mass media hype, but I am no longer ashamed to admit that I have hope in Oprah. Admittedly, Oprah caught my attention when she reassessed the impact of her book club and brought it back after a one-year hiatus in 2002. As a teacher […]
[By: Dr. Maryemma Graham] Diversity has become a vexed issue in the 21st century. Once it was a priority in our corporate and education sectors, with accountability for its implementation built in. Today, it has become that carefully crafted phrase one sees on websites, usually so watered down we pay scarce attention. Even when we were not guided by a principle but by underlying marketing […]
[By Kenton Rambsy] The overall importance of RichardWright in African American literary and intellectual history makes it vital to consider his background and educational development in order to fully appreciate how he became such a significant figure. Wright’s move to Mississippi as a adolescent and his enrollment at Jim Hill Primary School were key factors in the expansion of his life chances and opportunities. Hazel […]
[By Kenton Rambsy] A consideration of Richard Wright’s childhood provides an opportunity for continuing to unpack the often hidden baggage associated with “self-taught” education. Wright’s maternal grandmother and mother were likely key and early contributors to the young Wright’s intellectual development. Hazel Rowley writes in Richard Wright: The Life and Times that Wright’s mother Ella Wilson Wright was a significant figure in his educational […]
[By Kenton Rambsy] Continuing our conversations of linking education to freedom Sutton E. Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio (1899) and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977). Griggs’s principle characters Bernard Belgrave and Belton Piedmont and Morrison’s secondary character Guitar Baines both illustrate how black people subvert educational practices as a means to produce alternative political societies in America. Echoing the sentiments of Frederick Douglass’s narrative the […]