Beyond Ideological Distortion: Teaching the African Heritage "From the Nile to the Niger to the Neighborhood" Transformatively in the Songhoy Club and Parents' Reflections

• In Event: Using Research-Based Pan-African Heritage Knowledge in Critical Educational Alternatives to 21st-Century Digital Plantations

Abstract

This four-part co-authored paper critically analyzes two examples of Pan-African content and global perspectives used in the Songhoy Club, a US afterschool program, to go beyond ideological distortion in teaching the African heritage and African American parents’ assessments of the program. One such distortion is starting the African American “story” with slavery rather than placing the African heritage in its proper context that begins in Africa (King, 1991). The paper demonstrates this contextualization in the Songhoy Club’s global pedagogical framework: From the Nile (River) to the Niger (River) to the Neighborhood. Part I presents a comparative content analysis and use of African-focused animated children’s cartoons produced in Nigeria and the US (Robinson, 1990). This analysis is situated within a Black Studies theoretical framework that draws analytical criteria from African philosophical concepts: the Nguzo Saaba (Seven Principles of Kwanzaa) and Ma’at (ancient Kemetian/Egyptian principles) (Carruthers, 1995; King, Akua & Russell, 2014). Part II presents the findings of a qualitative assessment of parents’ views regarding how such content benefitted their children. Four years later parents report that their children’s engagement in this program has had long-lasting impacts on their self-image, racial identity and consciousness and their engagement in school. Part III, is a model lesson that builds on the parents’ views and presents an aspect of slavery that is omitted in textbook accounts and two digital games focused on slavery produced in the US and Denmark. Recent scholarship on domestic (US) aspects and international implications of the “slave breeding industry” inform this lesson (Sublette & Sublette, 2014). This lesson is designed to prepare young people as public scholars to engage community members in examining this aspect of slavery that is omitted from what is taught about slavery. This component of the paper is ignited by curriculum debate and textbook policy in Texas. This model lesson is based on the Songhoy pedagogical lab experience where parents want to know what their children are learning and the urgency of literature suggesting that negative images and cultural misrepresentations affect student learning and engagement (King, Goss & McArthur, 2014). Finally, Part IV is demonstrates the need for a systematic comparative analysis of the content-focus of programs like the Songhoy Club and the community-based supplementary education tradition the African-descent community in London, England has organized.

Research shows that children of African ancestry in the US and England experience similar problems of racial inequality, depressed academic achievement and distorted curriculum (Coard, 1971; Strand, 2012). A recent BBC film, for example, documents Britain’s “forgotten slave owners” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b063jzdw), an indication of the failure to teach and distorted knowledge that is taught about Britain’s massive role in the Atlantic slave trade—not just the selective, celebratory focus on ending the trade.

Authors

• Joyce E. King, Georgia State University

• Melissa Speight Vaughn, Georgia State University

• Chike Akua, Georgia State University