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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5451
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 08, 2007 - 06:26 pm: | 
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Honor Student: 'Eurocentric' Curricula Damage Black Students in America's Public Schools
by Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Washington Correspondent
Originally posted 5/8/2007
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Millions of students who attend America’s public schools are being indoctrinated with “Eurocentric” curricula that diminish their history and cause them to feel less than their White counterparts.
That is the contention of Carl Noldon, a senior honor roll student at the Bronx High School for the Visual Arts, in a speech written for a Black History Month program, which, amidst controversy, was never presented.
“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,” Noldon writes in the speech. “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.”
Noldon continues, “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.”
Noldon, set to graduate June 27, wrote the speech for a Black History Month assembly held Feb. 27. Instead, he ended up calling the NNPA News Service, pleading, “I want my voice heard.”
Noldon said in an interview that he never got to do the speech – for one main reason: “The principal was basically talking about how he wanted me to change what I was saying in the speech… There were certain things in my speech, the content, you know, he wanted me to change to make it appeal to everybody. The principal gave me 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.”
Contacted by NNPA, the principal, George York, who is White, praised Noldon, calling him “one of our brightest and best.” But, York declined to discuss specific details of why Noldon did not do the speech.
“We offered Carl every opportunity to share his article with our entire student community. We wanted him to go into classes, faculty meetings, assemblies, etcetera. We even spoke to Carl on several occasions, myself and my assistant principal [Ms. Debra Logan], about finding a scholarly venue to publish his fine work… Carl demonstrates the excellent education that he received at the Bronx High School for the visual arts, that he was able to do this research on his own on a topic that he is so passionate about,” says York. “He is really on to something that’s so important. It was really Carl’s decision not to present.”
Though the speech hasn’t been presented, the message is riveting, says Ron Walters after reading excerpts of it, shared with him by NNPA. Walters is director of the African-American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland and author of “White Nationalism, Black Interests” and
“Freedom Is Not Enough”.
“The first thing I want to say is ‘wow,’” Walters says after reading excerpts of the speech.
Walters says Noldon “points out the major contradiction of any student expecting an objective education - that the institutionalization of racism within the American system of education causes African descendant students to adjust to a one-way pattern of socialization … in a manner that devalues their own humanity, history and culture.”
Walters adds, “He quite rightly calls for a new paradigm of American education that respects all cultures…The problem here is that his perspective, a Black perspective, has been sacrificed by Black leaders, parents and others in order to position Black students into a framework of viability with the American economic system as the primary function of education.”
Noldon’s mother, Anna Noldon, says she was not surprised at her son’s views.
“All he does is comes home and studies,” she says. She says he was getting failing grades through elementary school until his uncle, Vincent Noldon, began teaching him about Black heritage and middle school teachers took an interest in him.
On the day of the Black History Month program, “He called me at work and he was very, very upset,” she recalls. ''He said they were not allowing him to do his speech.''
Ultimately, she said she met with York and told him, “I wanted everything to be resolved. I told the principal that I felt that him not letting Carl do his speech was really wrong,” she says.
The principal offered a special assembly for his speech to be heard, she says.
But, by then, it was too late. He said he felt violated at being disallowed to state his views to the body of 45 percent Black, 50 percent Hispanic, and 2 percent White students at the Black History Month assembly. He contacted the NNPA News Service within a week after the program, asking that NNPA help his views be communicated.
Noldon ticks off a list of authors, speakers and mentors who have influenced his thinking, including Dick Gregory, Michael Erik Dyson, Cornell West and Cheikh Anta Diop, author of “The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality.” He credits his Uncle Vincent, a videographer, for introducing him to tapes of orators like Dick Gregory.
The speech, which is 2,700 words, also quotes from “The Myth of Black Progress”, a book by Alphonso Pinkney, and “Solutions For Black America” by Jawanza Kunjufu.
Based on his personal studies, Noldon - in his speech - questions the credibility of some public school textbooks.
“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?” he quizzes.
“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.”
National Urban League President Marc Morial, in NUL’s 2007 State of Black America report, describes the underachievement of Black males as being among America’s greatest crisis.
Noldon declines to cast all the blame on public schools for the conditions of Black students. But the 17-year-old, who says he will major in film and metaphysics at Manhattan’s City College in the fall, attributes part of the problem to ignorance about their roots and schools that offer little cultural enlightenment.
“I don’t think schools should use Black History Month as the only time to talk about the historical genius of Black people,” the speech stated.
Noldon’s speech concludes:
“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 mis-interpret Black history because the mis-interpretation of one’s history will lead to a mis-interpretation of the knowledge of who you are.”
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http://www.amsterdamnews.com/news/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=13108&sID=3 |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4360
Registered: 03-2004
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 09, 2007 - 11:15 am: |
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That is what it is supposed to do.
Our black churches and institutions should be countering this.
But they too busy into the shoutin and moanin an talkin in tongues and restin and dressin |
Renata
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 2148
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 09, 2007 - 11:51 am: |
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If I had a niece who was about his age, I would SO be getting in contact with this dude. Hey, wait, she's 14....if he's still single in a few years....OK...remember, CARL NOLDON of New York.
Anyways, I remember WORLD History in Jr. and Sr. High...apparently, the WORLD only consists of Spain, Portugal, England, France, Austria, Germany, and Italy. Ain't it them edumucated foks who write us them school books? |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4364
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 09, 2007 - 12:12 pm: |
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Ain't it them edumucated foks who write us them school books?
(They are not being ignorant and it isn't because they don't know. These people are repositories of and formers of a culture that is hundreds--thousands of years old.
It has been engaged in an attempt to dominate the globe for the last 500 years.
The rulers of this culture want their culture glorified, everyone else's belittled. They are not the only ones in history who have done this.
The Chinese. The Greeks. The Romans. The Egyptions. They all did this.
The most extreme example of this was during the Nazi era in GErmany and the Stalinist era in Russia. But the Anglo Americans have done their own thang, too. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5454
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 09, 2007 - 01:27 pm: |
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"They are not being ignorant and it isn't because they don't know."
Say it again Brotha. They know exactly what they're doing and the shit is so effective I can't even get mad at ‘im; in fact, gotta give whitey his propers:
When you can fuk a mofo up the ass and make that nigga act like it’s good, 'cause you’ve done told him he BETTAH be patriotic...when even though it's downright painful you gotta nigga too afraid to remove your dick from his ass for fear it might expose the perception you gave him of his own image...that there is some power!, as potent as every star, every planet...it's out of this fucking world.
(What's more powerful tho is the type of Black man that this young brotha is.) |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4368
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 09, 2007 - 02:12 pm: |
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This is it. The Romans did it to them and they never forgot. Germans, Austrians and Russians did it to the Pole while they had them down.
Outlawed the language and the history.
Culture is another tool of war. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 9357
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 11, 2007 - 01:14 am: |
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How Eurocentrically damaging to Black kids are math and science studies? |
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