Critical Review of Educating the Black Child in the Black Independent School

Essay by karlrUniversity, Bachelor'sA-, September 2004

download word file, 12 pages 4.2

As part of our politics and multiculturalism class we had to do a critical review of a book. This book is entitled "Educating the Black Child in the Black Independent School" written by Seth N. Asumah and Valencia C. Perkins. As a whole this book covers the many inadequacies that the inner-city school system has in educating black children and problems that black children have to deal with while seeking an education in America. It also emphasizes important figures of black history such as W. E. B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington and issues involved with the slavery and the abolishment of slavery. The analysis will however be on two chapters selected from this book which are chapters two and three. These chapters emphasize the historical perspectives of Black Independent schools before and after the Plessy vs. Ferguson and The post Brown vs. The Board of Education era.

Chapter two is entitled "Some Historical Perspectives of Black Independent Schools Before and After Plessy vs. Ferguson. This time period consisted of many large and important changes for Africans Americans both in their entire life style and education opportunities. A very large misconception of many whites is that blacks are lazy and they don't care about their education as much as whites. "Self-education is one of the oldest and strongest traditions in the African American community, evident since the later 1700s" (Asumah 5). This quote states the old conception that whites had for blacks involving their education couldn't be farther from the truth. Blacks wanted to educate themselves but the white slave owners never allowed them to freely. That's one of the key points that the authors Asumah and Perkins were trying to make in the early parts of this chapter. The fight for education brought forward great black leaders such...