The MIS-Education of the Negro (an African American Heritage Book)

by Carter G Woodson

Overview

The Mis-Education of the Negro is one of the most important books on education ever written. Carter G. Woodson shows us the weakness of Euro-centric based curriculums that fail to include African American history and culture. This system mis-educates the African American student, failing to prepare them for success and to give them an adequate sense of who they are within the system that they must live. Woodson provides many strong solutions to the problems he identifies. A must-read for anyone working in the education field.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781604592276
Publisher:	Wilder Publications
Publication date:	01/21/2008
Series:	An African American Heritage Book
Pages:	108
Sales rank:	541,321
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.38(d)

About the Author

Carter G. Woodson was the founder of Black History Week. He wrote The Negro in Our History, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, A Century of Negro Migration, and The African Background Outlined. He died in 1950. Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu is the author of Lessons from History and Restoring the Village. He lives in Chicago.

Editorial Reviews

Carter G. Woodson has been called the Father of Modern Black History. He was a central, commanding figure in the study, writing, and teaching of African American history and the first historian to successfully use sound scholarship to refute the prevailing myths and racist views about black Americans and their history. Among his contributions to American life is Black History Month (originally dubbed Negro History Week), which Woodson established to promote the study of African American history.

Woodson's 205-page monograph, The Mis-education of tbe Negro, reflects his profound concern for setting the record straight. His thesis, as outlined in his Preface, could well apply today: "The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker people." He was concerned with the way African American identity had been warped by racist approaches to history and education; he foresaw the ways that such a warped history would be internalized by black students who would never know of the achievements of their forebears, only of their humiliations and sufferings.

In the book's eighteen chapters, Woodson presents a systematic critique of the education system and offers a plan for change that would create a system that informs black students about their own history and addresses their unique challenges. The

current proliferation of African American studies programs, Afrocentric schools, and multicultural curricula all bear Woodson's stamp. Still, Mis-education remains a biting indictment of a public school system whose promise of education of the masses has still been left sadly unfulfilled.

Sacred Fire