Let's Break Free: Framing an Education for Liberation

• In Event: Seize the Time: Foregrounding Liberation in Social Justice Education

Abstract

According to Stic Man of the Dead Prez (2000) rap duo, “Until we have [an education]... where it’ll reflect how we gonna solve our own problems then [dispossessed youth] ain’t gonna relate to school… if education ain’t elevatin’ me… it ain’t taking me where I need to go out [of this oppression], then [forget] education. At least [theirs]….” Stic Man’s scathing critique of U.S. schools is a sentiment felt largely by a generation of dispossessed youth in urban communities. Throughout dispossessed communities across the country, students often resist and reject American schooling ideologies because its “official” curricula does not value the voices, sentiments, and histories of urban youth of color. Instead, schools promote the interests of dominant cultures (Apple, 1990; McLaren, 2003). While students act against the various forms of social control in schools, they often resist in ways that lead them deeper into forms of domination and oppression (Solorzano & Delgado-Bernal, 2001). In these cases, academic disinvestment is even internalized, rationalized, and reproduced as the only viable forms of agency to act against a schooling culture set against the validation of urban youth (Kohl, 1994). Research suggests, however, that educational success for marginalized students of color might best be connected to transformative resistance (Akom, 2003), rather than conformity, and that teaching practices which utilize the realities, ideologies and attitudes of youth of color in urban schools can shift perceptions of cultural deficits in students, into potential cultural and academic strengths while allowing them to engage in the process to lead revolutionary transformation in their actual communities.

Using critical qualitative ethnography (Kincheloe & McLaren, 1998) and decolonizing methodology (Smith, 1999) to interpret existing classroom data, I will draw on years of work as a critical teacher researcher in California urban schools to propose a developing decolonizing educational framework – or, education for liberation. In the Fanonian (1963) spirit of understanding the psychological effect of colonization on the consciousness of dispossessed people, in addition to its broader implications for a liberatory education in urban schools, this presentation will discuss pedagogical tenets to provide a basis for understanding the educational experiences of colonized people in the United States and, more importantly, consider ways in which the problems facing historically subjugated youth can be more effectively remedied in our classrooms. The colonial condition on students of color is clear: a substantial amount of youth in urban communities 1) internalize varying levels of cultural self-hate, 2) are conditioned to participate in divide and conquer, and 3) are immobilized by collective false consciousness. This paper will analyze these contradictions and discuss ways to effectively confront them by teaching students 1) self-love, 2) solidarity, and 3) self-determination in and beyond designated grade levels and subject areas. Together, these tenets fulfill decolonizing theory (Cesaire, 1972; Smith, 1999) and critical pedagogy’s (Darder, Baltadano, & Torres, 2008; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008) call to better provide holistic learning opportunities for dispossessed youth of color to respond to the dehumanizing conditions imposed on their communities.

Author

• Patrick Camangian, University of San Francisco