Does your education treat you as a problem to be resolved or an unconditionally regarded soul

to grow?

Kris Nystrom, Ed.D.

Introductory Remarks to Berekum College of Education Faculty

Berekum, Ghana

July 5, 2023

W.E.B. DuBois’s double consciousness can be detected in many of the institutionally

embedded curricula and pedagogic programs where certain identities are privileged and others

are remanded for assimilation. DuBois defined double consciousness in response to African

Americans, facing discrimination and prejudice, forced to consider their own selves as owning a

Black culture while simultaneously conforming to the dominant white culture. In particular I am

interested in DuBois’s notion of twoness, where African Americans could “only see [themselves]

through the revelation of the other world.” That other world, of course, is the dominant white

culture, which dehumanized and erased, as much as possible, the possibility of Black culture

taking up a position alongside it. Can we not have two, three, five…cultures operating

cooperatively and simultaneously? It is a rhetorical question. We are marching in that direction

as a global society, albeit not without significant challenges.

Curricula has a role here. Of course it does, for it is the pathway that leads our students

to the being we imagine for them at the end of eight, twelve, twenty years. Start with the end

before you begin, my teachers always taught me. First identify what you want to accomplish

with your curriculum, the outcomes—what a student will know and be able to do at the end of

this period of learning—and then begin planning the path to get them there. What is that

outcome? I leave this to you. It is no small project.

It is no small project in part because it is political. All curricula represents choices about what to

include, and what to bypass. Those have political implications.

Most of the curricula in America is based on choices made over a hundred years ago, when

racism was rampant. We have removed the overt prejudice, but the institutional remnants

remain. Institutional racism, the bias and prejudice that ensures certain folks are privileged over

others, is a nasty and challenging force to contend. Let me give you an example: in my own

school, where about 10-12% of the population is Black and Brown, our National Honor Society

inductees for 2023 included 0 Black and Brown students. Nobody overtly expressed racialization

as a reason to withhold membership; the system and criteria is simply designed to privilege kids

who are White.

So, too, is our curriculum. It expresses certain characteristics that ensure success of

some students and gives the message to others that you either don’t belong here or you must

assimilate.

Ghana, I am learning, may be facing similar challenges in its national curriculum.

There is great pressure to join the global first world economic society, and maybe the

fastest way to the party is divesting individual and collective cultural identity in favor of a

westernized suit and tie. They can mask only so long before tensions erupt and challenge one at

their core. Suppressing cultural heritage can last only so long. It is akin to accepting the second

of a double consciousness, accepting that one is a problem to correct. I am no psychologist, but

I suspect this is a dark path that leads to many years of psychotherapy. The good thing, I

suppose, is you can pay for it.

But what of your ancestors? One of the chieftain’s stools in the W.E.B. DuBois center is

the Adinkra symbol of a goose looking back over its shoulder. It is a proverbial reminder from

generations past that it is okay to look back. ---it is okay to fix your mistakes—Look to the past

for guidance, wisdom, heritage, and identity. You are the culmination of centuries of culture. My

tour guide at the museum also told me it means it is an opportunity to fix your mistakes.

And there it is: the essence of learning. We stumble and err and fix our mistakes. And learn.

That is the learning process.

I will not trip twice on that stick in my path. (Okay, I will not trip three times!) I know now how

to go around it.

A friend of mine who works in Australia told me about a pejorative phrase used there to

describe schooling in rural areas—

"White man education,” “White man culture.” In rural villages

where indigenous Aboriginal populations continue to thrive, the educational program for the

nation is applied with little notice of the students’ cultural heritage and identity. Kids who are

used to running, playing, hunting, fishing, farming, and supporting the village in various ways

are forced into classrooms, to desks, where they are required to sit and learn for long periods. It

is the antithesis to the life they come from. Of course, it is a challenge.

All learning begins with the educational culture of the student. It is not as if they were

not learning before. Indeed, they were—and probably more than they ever will again (ages 3-5

mark the greatest period of brain development in our lifetimes). This is the context in which

they are acquiring knowledge and skills. We all know and watch with adoration the young child

so eager to learn.

Look at these villagers I witnessed bringing in a fishing boat last week. SLIDE FISHING

One of the children was so eager to participate he was literally dragged by the rope pulling the

boat in—but he hung on, hoping to be one of the members of that collective, that society. What

are you doing in your curriculum and instruction to meet the kids where they are when they

enter the classroom? Because to bypass this critical step equates to a political and moral claim

that their cultural heritage does not have worth. It says you are a problem. SLIDE CANNONS

You are not a problem to resolve. SLIDE KIDS You are a soul that grows. Your educational

program—curriculum and pedagogy—must project this authenticity. Education must begin and

end with unconditional positive regard for your individual and cultural identity as a learner.

And so here is where we need to turn to the underlying framework for this approach to

educational programming: what it means to be human.