The Education System Sucks.
Our education system is designed to make us obey. It does not want us to become critical thinkers. They want to create a leaderless population. Why? So you never question the system in place. So you never find out that it is possible to stand up against it. So you will think that no one like you has ever made a real change in history so chances are you never will. How do they do it?
They hide your history. They tell you a watered down version of history that favors the white narrative. You are told of peaceful protests like the ones MLK led and of a compliant government that favors the people. You are told that revolutionaries like Malcolm X are violent and should be remembered as such. You are fed the fantasy that all the work that needed to be done has been done. All this to make you believe that you live in a perfect society that is just to all. When this is far from the truth.
I have come to understand through conversations with people around my age, 20-25, that we are only taught of Rosa Parks and MLK when it comes to black civil rights activists. When conversing about the Black Lives Matter movement, I was shocked to find my friends confused when I referenced Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Maya Angelou, Huey P Newton, The Black Panthers, etc. They didn’t know who they were. They didn’t know the full story behind the abolishment of slavery and how Latin America was involved. They also didn’t know that blacks and browns have a long history of uniting and fighting alongside each other in order to make a change for both of their communities.
They said: “I don’t remember being taught this at school” and I was confused. I decided to ask more friends and no one remembers being taught about these black and brown historical figures and movements in school. I realized, the history I learned, I learned by myself, through research, and this reminded me of how that came to be. How I lost the blindfold in my 11th grade US History class.
I don’t remember exactly how I heard about Malcolm X, the first time. I just remember that I wanted to learn more about him. So I did my research and as I learned about him, I became more enthusiastic about the civil rights movement in my US History class. When we got to that section, I was ready to learn it from the professionals, my teacher at the time. I was disappointed to see only one paragraph of about 5 sentences dedicated to Malcolm X in my history book. My teacher breezed through it only reading those few sentences on how his methods were not favorable and then moving on to the next topic.
I was left utterly confused. I knew this man’s life was more than 5 sentences. Why are we not going to learn more about him? My blindfold had come off. At that moment I had begun to lose hope in the education system, I realized that they are only teaching what they want us to learn. This is not to help us, this is to help them. They are afraid of another revolution. Think of what would happen if my majority black and brown school learned about these historical figures and connected their oppressor’s actions to our current oppressor’s actions. Trust me, not much has changed, it only became less visible.
All of this to say, it is not enough to be educated by the education system in place. Think of who created it and for what purpose. Don’t be afraid to question it. We need to learn to think for ourselves before you become conditioned to blindly follow the larger oppressive system that comes after high school graduation.
