Womanist Activist Perspectives on Curriculum

• In Event: Womanist Curriculum Perspectives and Possibilities

Abstract

Raised in a segregated rural community that valued education and schooled in a system which subverted or downplayed the Black accomplishments to the U. S. history, Cynthia Mikell has been working in an urban school which was forced to split into two schools and to change its name due to its failure to meet the Annual Yearly Progress set up by the state and federal mandates with the intent to forgo reorganization under the direction of the state.

Cynthia uses activist womanist ideas to explore her experience of navigating in-between two worlds: one as a Black teacher who understands the struggles of her ancestors, and has witnessed or experienced suppressions, repressions, and oppressions; and one who teaches younger generations of Black children who know little about Black struggles, history, and heritages. This in-betweenness is further complicated as she witnesses changes within the district by the superintendant and school board and as she became the school testing coordinator who is supposed to execute the state and federal mandated standard tests. She sees the evidence of depriving the Black children about their race, gender, class, history, and heritages from the history textbooks catering to the standardized testing mandated by the Georgia Performance Standards Committee or the lies told by some history teachers, the majority of which are white, who gloss over rather than address the issues of slavery and race in the South. She witnessed Black history being removed from a curriculum with less information about Blacks, perhaps a few projects and discussions about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and a few other easily recognized names during Black History Month. Lack of Black cultural identities which do not really exist in the U.S. and Black consciousness often imprison Black children into negative images and stereotypes unknowingly internalized and brutally imposed by schools and societies. They are considered to be rude, loud, promiscuous, lazy, violent, lower achiever, youth-at-risk, etc. Their curriculum is either watered down or downright untrue; they are no longer encouraged to think or explore but mandated to test well. When they fail to measure up to mandated benchmarks, the systems in place do not directly address fixing the problem; instead they continue to perpetuate systemic problems by starting something new instead of allowing what works.

Cynthia sees herself move from silence to action (Lorde, 1984). She can no longer sit idly by and do nothing to change the system. She, however, treads carefully on differing levels – teacher/student, teacher/parent, and teacher/administration relationships since alienation or damage to any of the three will have repercussions. Although she does not think that she is a martyr who thinks that one grand gesture will change centuries of thinking, she starts with controlling her bit of the system--her classrooms and all those who enter her world. Then she seeks to build allies to cultivate a curriculum of opportunities (Tate, 2006) for all.

Author

• Cynthia M. Mikell, Georgia Southern University