Afrocentric Schools

In Afrocentric schools, the curriculum and all student activities are designed with the intent to instill knowledge of, and to foster understanding, respect, and pride in, African and Black traditions, history, culture, and language. Educators who embrace the Afrocentric concept are dedicated to improving Black students' level of self-esteem and to encouraging them to see themselves as sociopolitically relevant on both the local and the global level. This entry outlines some of the major characteristics of Afrocentricity and describes the educational, cultural, social, and political activities that form the academic curriculum and customs of Afrocentric schools. It discusses how politics, culture, power, and economics are critically engaged throughout the Afrocentric school curriculum and explains how Afrocentricity represents a cultural, social, and political initiative in the context of schooling in a way that encourages students to critically engage the world they live in.

The Afrocentric concept is geared toward examining how the previously mentioned elements work independently and interdependently to impact the lives of people of African descent. Afrocentricity has developed into a highly useful means for many African Americans and other peoples of African descent to better understand themselves culturally and socially from a historical and contemporary perspective, along with how they coexist with other people and institutions.

For those who seek to understand the purpose, mission, and goals of the Afrocentric school concept, one individual is generally singled out for having framed the comprehensive critical and educational perspective of the Afrocentric school movement. Carter G. Woodson, in his landmark 1933 work, The Mis-Education of the Negro, eloquently, adamantly, and unapologetically articulated the need for people of African descent to engage in educational experiences (i.e., pedagogy and the curriculum) that place their social and political liberation at the center of learning.

Throughout his work, Woodson explained in detail the significance of Blacks taking serious interest in engaging in schooling and educational processes that fostered the learning of “ones-self.” Thus, it was important that Blacks learn about their rich and vast history rather than simply romanticize about previous achievements. An examination of Woodson's work shows his advocacy for critical engagement with the complete spectrum of the Black historical experience—its successes, trials, tribulations, and failures. Such critical engagement by Blacks with the Black historical experience would enable them to appropriately and effectively juxtapose that history with contemporary realities and begin to learn how to address specific contemporary challenges by lessons learned from past successes and failures. Furthermore, such simultaneous historical and contemporary critical engagement would enable them to transcend the sociopolitical position of subjects who have been oppressed and exploited by others—and who have sometimes failed to acknowledge their own inherent worth as human beings—to that of a conscious people who are empowered to take their rightful place on the global stage as architects of their individual and collective destinies. By functioning from the position of “critical consciousness,” Blacks would begin to both understand and assert themselves individually and collectively as a people who understand their sociopolitical realities in relation to the other peoples of the world. This requires the understanding that Blacks must learn and commit to practices that will allow them to peacefully coexist globally without being treated as a “permanent or situational underclass” people.

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