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When Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Florida’s Department of Education make headlines for banning the new Advanced Placement African American Studies course from being taught in the state’s schools, saying the class “significantly lacks educational value,” we need to pay very close attention.
Florida’s move is the latest front in an ongoing war against teaching children the truth about our shared history.
When Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the son of former slaves, a pioneering Harvard-trained historian, and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, created the precursor to Black History Month in 1926 he did so because he was alarmed how few people, white or Black, knew anything at all about Black people’s achievements.
Dr. Woodson believed it was critical to claim our rightful place in the history books and teach future generations about the great thinkers and role models who came before us. As he said, “Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.”
But Dr. Woodson also understood that this was much more than just an academic discussion. He saw the connection between erasing Black history and assaulting Black bodies, and said the crusade to teach the truth about Black history was even “much more important than the anti-lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom. Why not exploit, enslave, or exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior?”
Read the Full Column: https://www.childrensdefense.org/child-watch-columns/health/2023/new-dan...
Marian Wright Edelman is Founder and President Emerita of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.
For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org
Milton, are you denying or finding it insignificant that the TPLF attacked a federal army base...
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