Give Us Water: Decolonizing Inquiry and Restorative Curriculum Praxis for Critically Conscious Citizenship

• In Event: 16.010 - Stop Killing Us! The Praxis of Morally Engaged Research Advancing Equal Educational Opportunity and Human Freedom

Abstract

Not all violence is equal. . . A civilian killing another civilian is a crime. A member of the police killing a civilian is an entirely different question, legally and morally.
--Myrna Santiago, “It is Human Rights.”
This paper examines curriculum violence in decolonizing alternatives to mainstream citizenship education curricula and nihilating school knowledge that miseducate White students to believe they are universe creators and world conquerors while teaching Black students their history begins with slavery (Epstein, 2009). Since the days of Jefferson, Madison and Washington, citizenship has been the aim and expected outcome of education (Parker, 2014). However, knowledge of democracy is disconnected from action for democratic freedom in citizenship education that undemocratically promotes assimilation and demonizes difference (Banks, 2006; Gellner, 1983; Lefrancois, 2007). This curriculum (epistemological) violence in classrooms mirrors the violence of “citizens on patrol” (police officers) toward citizens of color. From a Black Studies theoretical perspective on epistemological nihilation and Afrophobia, “a ceremony must be found” (Wynter, 1984) to wed decolonizing knowledge to democratic action for human freedom (Author, 2015).

Part 1 of this paper describes such a ceremony as a decolonizing Blues Methodology investigation of belonging in an historically marginalized southern Black community (Author, 2016). The study found that the belonging people experience in this community functions as critically conscious citizenship praxis. It revealed and valorized culturally indigenous ways of knowing, which was like giving the people restorative water to live despite forces threatening to dispossess them of their land and cultural heritage.

In Part 2 a co-auto-ethnographic analysis of restorative curriculum praxis, which the authors developed and implemented, the Songhoy Club (boys/girls) and the Songhoy Princess Club (for African American girls), presents examples of decolonized thinking (diaspora literacy and critically conscious citizenship awareness) this curriculum approach grounded in African epistemology aims to facilitate (Author, 2006).

Examples of morally engaged youth inquiry in Part 3 delineate rigor and research needed to document/measure outcomes of decolonizing education for critically conscious citizenship, a human right beyond dominant conceptualizations of “equal opportunity”.

Authors

• Joyce E. King, Georgia State University

• Melissa Speight Vaughn, North-West University