Editor’s note: It’s Black History Month – or African History month as Minister Faust prefers – and there is no better time to revisit the exclusive series he published last summer on the importance of Africentric education for children in Canada.
Why we need Africentric education
In his first piece in the three-part series, Minister Faust calls attention to how very little quality content there is in Canadian school books concerning African history – and when it is mentioned, you can count on a white savior narrative or “slavery, or colonialism porn.”
And white, liberal, anti-racism education, he warns, is not the answer:
“To unlock the potential of hundreds of thousands of students today, don’t use “anti-racism” to “decolonize” their minds. Instead, Africanize them…
Africanizing them means offering social studies exploring five millennia of African architectures, sciences, philosophies, governance, and more from Ancient Egypt, Kush (Sudan), and Axum (Ethiopia), to the Kingdom of Kongo, the Mali Empire, the Moorish civilization that shone for centuries in Europe after Rome fell, and countries across the continent today.
It means offering English language arts with Nigerian novels (other than Things Fall Apart, already!), South African plays, Jamaican poetry, Guyanese memoir, and African-American graphic novels. In physics, biology, chemistry, and computer studies, teach all the usual phenomena and formulae, but with stunning examples by global African neuro-scientists, computer engineers, city designers, and space technologists.”
And more, they will even pay for it. As Minister Faust writes, “How many otherwise bored, overlooked, or alienated African-Canadian kids could teachers inspire if they taught a “Wakanda” curriculum connecting the fictional content to its real-world inspiration?”
How to slash high school drop-out rates in one easy step
In the second piece of the series Minister Faust shares “This one weird trick that prevents ruined lives and unlocks massive productivity for society”. But first he explores the depth of discrimination African-Canadian children face in Canadian schools. He writes, “In North America, non-Africans frequently regard African children as older than they are, more sexual than they are, guiltier than they are, and in the case of girls, needing ‘less nurturing, protection, support, and comfort’ than Euro-Canadian or Euro-American girls.” In the face of all this hate, some Black students feel the need to drop out.
In fact, in Toronto, the African-Canadian drop-out rate reached a stunning 40 per cent in 2008.This led the Toronto District School Board to order it be reduced to 15 percent. Across Canada in 2020, the drop-out rate for African-Canadian students was 23 per cent, compared with 12 per cent for European settler children.
So what’s the easy way to make sure this issue is not overlooked? Hire Black teachers.
It may be a tough battle. As Minister Faust writes, currently only 1.8 per cent of teachers in our country are African – and of those teachers, many report racist attitudes among staff and administration, making education an undesirable occupation to continue in. Having said this, Black teachers are essential in providing Black children with the education they deserve.
Still, Minister Faust says the solutions are obvious, and you can help:
“If you’re a principal, hire African teachers, and hire African consultants to train willing teachers (no point in trying to train unwilling ones) Africentrically.
If you’re a member of a teacher union, find like-minded people and run for positions to defend teachers facing racism and make the union more Africentric.
If you’re a parent, join your school council to advocate hiring more African teachers and using Africentric content to educate and inspire students of all backgrounds…
If you’re a voter, contact candidates for school boards in the upcoming elections.”
If schools care about African-Canadian students, they need to prove it
“Want to know if educational and political leaders care about African-Canadian students? Just check their budgets.”
Minister Faust’s concluding piece reflects on how the abysmal African history education he received as a youth has not changed much for students in school now. He spoke to several students about how they felt about the education they received on African history.
One student, Shermarke Mohamed, now in his mid-20s and studying in Egypt, “never learned much about African culture in school … The content they presented to me about Africa and Africans made me feel lower than the rest of the world’s cultures, and feel like Africa is just a lot of open space for safaris, animals, and a huge amount of poverty.”
And it’s not a financial budget that is required – although it could be helpful if deployed intelligently – Minister Faust argues it’s a budget of time.
“The budgeting of time shows how curricula, principals, and teachers directly state not only what matters to them, but what should matter to everyone else. Our settler-focused Eurocentric curriculum is an extremely powerful tool for creating devotion to global European cultural-political values and aesthetics…
“…Euro-Canadian students receive the incalculable socio-psychological benefit of countless images of people who look like they do, achieving greatness in the ancient and modern worlds. The silence on ancient and modern African brilliance leads students — and teachers — of all backgrounds to conclude there is no brilliance to be examined in the first place.”
Minister Faust concludes that by working together, we can improve the educational system “so that instead of destroying morale and crushing dreams, schools can amplify students’ innate energy to launch them towards whatever stars are twinkling in their imaginations”.
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