JULY 2007

Venue for an Artist
Eurocentric Curricula Damage Black Students
By Carl Noldon



What I have to say is designed for the enlightenment of those who suffer
from a school system that hypocritically manipulates black history in a
way that causes a disconnection from black students and their history. If
you try to make a black child co-exist with a racist school system or a
Eurocentric school system, then you are basically putting that child back
into slavery, perhaps mental slavery…. There is something wrong with the
educational system and the country. I believe the parents should take an
active role in challenging the school system and even the curriculum of
this school so that any residue of Eurocentrism is gone.



All the history teachers I ever had were white and from every last one of
them I never received the link to the genius of Africa. Those teachers
always taught European history with a much stronger emphasis. The result
was I was brainwashed. I was brainwashed because I thought genius equated
to white people because the teachers talked about how much a genius a
person like Einstein was or the Greeks.



Later on I had to realize that those people that the white history
teachers talked so greatly about were used as devices to implant a slave
mentality in me and an inferiority complex. But, what the textbooks never
taught me was how Europe took a lot from Africa and how Africa precedes
Europe with thousands of years of philosophical, religious, mathematical,
scientific, artistic, and medicinal knowledge. The African represented a
genius so powerful that advanced civilizations flourished even before the
concept of Europe was thought of.



In the world history textbook in this school, it doesn't directly say that
the Egyptians were black people. The Egyptians were just as black and
diverse as the black people in this country. In that world history
textbook, it is quick to point out how the Greeks called their own
thinkers 'lovers of wisdom' because they used observation and reason. But
isn't that a characteristic of the Africans? I realize that a lot of
parents are just concerned about their child or children learning as much
as they can. But I think the parents have to examine the psychological
impact that the textbooks in the school system [has on] black students as
well as students of other nationalities and cultures.



History has been twisted to brainwash the genius of the black child. These
students are learning that African thought is primitive while European
thought laid the foundation for civilization… The parents have to take a
stand and challenge the school system, the teachers, and those that
misinterpret black history because the mis-interpretation of one's history
will lead to a mis-interpretation of the knowledge of who you are.




About Me: Noldon is a senior honor roll student at the Bronx High School
for the Visual Arts, which has a student body that is 45 percent black, 50
percent Hispanic and two percent white. The above excerpts come from a
speech he wrote, but never delivered, for a Black History Month program.
According to Noldon, who contacted NNPA News Service, the school's white
principal gave him two options. "The first one was to omit what I was
saying in my speech, the other option was to not read my speech at all."








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