Cultural Loss and the Miseducation of the African: Education & Africentricity as a Counter Strike

Prior to my participation in our recent class, I had some knowledge of the shared ancestor between primates and humans. It floated somewhere in my brain in the general trivia section, unexamined and branded as useless. The subject was of little interest to me and of little relevance. I was wrong.

The class content on Kwanzaa, the Black Candle and the related readings of  Tomasello and Wenger on cognitive evolution, culture and communities of practice and learning have an obvious connectivity. I can’t help but think I have been lead deliberately to this conclusion. The connection between the subjects incites deeper thought and provides me with a fundamental understanding of learning.

The materials require a critical element of thought that must come from the learner with each of us adapting the information to our positioning and through the blogs sharing the added value within the learning community. In effect, we are experiencing the very subject that we are studying. We are members in a community of practice in which we affect the learning by sharing our interpretations of the subject matter, changing the knowledge by our interaction with it.

Tomasello asserts that the characteristic of human cognition is unique. In summary, he theorizes that the evolution of human culture and the complexities of human social groupings surpass the commonality in the cognitive abilities of mammalian and primate species ( Tomasello at 510). The organization of human social processes is complex and an integral part of human cognition. It is humanities most distinctive characteristic. Human cognition (mental processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning) is established by human social groupings.

These cultural and social practices are evolutionary and have an accumulative effect. Humans pass knowledge to other members of the conspecies (belonging to the same species) accumulatively. Social practice and process is adapted and modified with each member of the group, embellished and shared across time through generations(the ratchet effect) (Tomasello at 511). The majority of learning within the conspecies takes place in early childhood. Children develop an “ontogentic niche” or specific preference or appeal for the social culture they are members of( Tomasello at 512).

The reproduction of group process/ practice is not just behavioral parroting but a means to an intentional end requiring adaptation and social cognition ( Tomasello at 512). The result of participating in social and communicative interactions with others, understood intentionally, situates human children cognitively, conscious and intellectually active in the world in uniquely powerful ways embodying individual and group empowerment (Tomasello at 513).

If the development of culture is accumulative, I suspect that this very cultural connection and empowerment gained through collective adaptation and ratcheting has been interrupted for African people. As persons of the African diaspora forcibly displaced from our originating country, people and culture; we have suffered a disconnect from our traditions, social values and collective understanding.

Colonization and supremacist discourse has denied us membership in the operating social groups and situated us as property, designated less, as 1/5 of human value, disconnecting us from our historical social groupings and denyed us membership in the others. The deliberate denial of education, language and social connection has deeply interfered with our collective development and the historical accumulation of wisdom of our social grouping. Tomasello confirms that absent the social group a human child would not develop social complexity (Tomasello at 512). Colonization sought to eradicate our collective memory of self and propagated historical inaccuracies undermining our abilities and value.

        The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
            Albert Einstein

The Africentric Cohort is a community response to that disconnect. We have been strategically chosen in implementation of the Africentric Learning Institute goal to correct the Miseducation of the Negro through re-education in created communities of learning.

To understand how humans learn and develop culture, Wenger  introduces the concept of learning through communities of practice. Communities of practice are not new enterprises. The term refers to the social groupings in which we learn (our families, our work groups, our friendships or associations). These groups may be formal or informal; regardless they develop terms of membership, shared values and a common discourse. Humans develop, gain knowledge and learn to apply that knowledge through the interactions within the learning group. Individuals may hold memberships in more than one group at any given time and the membership may change over time (Wenger at 6). We learn by social participation. We learn from within our families, our broader communities and or formal institutions.

Wenger extracts a general set of principles with the goal to enable a better understanding of the learning process and the learner. Our class discussions summarized these principles: Communities of learning shape and influence our practice (behaviours, processes and reasoning). They influence our identity formation. They are exclusionary, sometimes denying membership. They assign value and create behavioural norms.

Identifying these general sets of principles can enable us to better understand the effect communities of practice have on learning and strategically apply countermeasures in our role as educators. Although we learn throughout our lifetime, Tomasello reminds us that the fundamental cultural norms and identity are formed in early childhood (at 511).

In my opinion, the film, the Black Candle accurately describes the cultural disconnect of African peoples as a cultural crisis. Living the realities of a light skinned African Canadian woman, raising 4 sons, I have struggled with the experiential and statistical inequalities that define my people in Canadian society. Stereotyped as criminals, uneducated and unruly we are over represented in our justice system and an underrepresented in our universities. My sons face a society that seeks to devalue them and define them as futureless.

Racism has a powerful and damaging effect on the quality of life of African Canadians. It affects access to and the quality of education and employment, opportunities for advancement, the number and type of interactions we have with the police, access to good quality housing, health and wellbeing (James, Este, Bernard, Benjamin, Lloyd & Turner, 2010 at 19) James, Est, Bernard, Benjamin, Lolyd & Turner, 2010 at 19.

I wanted to do more to help my sons develop a secure sense of self and cultural identity. I wanted to counter the supremacist discourse and reconnect my sons to their cultural roots. My family having been in Canada in excess of 400 years had no tangible connection to Africa except our genetic legacy. I wanted to shed the propaganda of savagery associated with Africa. I wanted my children to have pride in their identity. I wanted to write my own story and tell it to my children. I wanted to celebrate who we are.

The Kwanzaa celebration is a deliberately reconnect to the values we strive to practice as a family and the connection we wish to make to our community. Kwanzaa supplied the general principles and symbolic ritual without dictating the confines of our personalized practice. I recognized  the seven principles as universal wisdom and wanted to develop them with our family. I acted deliberately and introduce them as values to live by, revisiting our commitment to them yearly. I recognize the wisdom in setting goals, renewing commitments and practicing behaviour. I also recognize the value in celebration, custom and tradition. Yearly Kwanzaa practice gave us all of this.

The practice of Kwanzaa is a formal community of practice that I used teach my children and myself. I first practiced Kwanza motivated by the love for my children and a sense of loss for my culture. It was difficult to establish the habit and tradition. I now practice Kwanzaa with a love for the tradition because it has enriched my life and strengthened our family and cultural connection.

My greatest joy as a mother is my witness of the strength of the seven principles as they are demonstrated in the lives of my now grown, children. I watch them define themselves within a cultural context, teaching their children, valuing their connection to their African roots.

Darlene M. Lamey