This summer, I am putting myself back in the classroom but not as a teacher, as a student. It's been a few years since I've been on that side of the podium. I have always wanted to have a better understanding of American higher education to improve my own teaching and connectedness to today's college students.
Luckily for me, my first course is a special topics class called "Race and Ethnicity in the Formation of American Higher Education" being taught by Dr. Rodney Cohen. He is a visiting associate professor and President of the Association for Black Culture Centers (ABCC). NIU became the national headquarters of ABCC in November 2015. We are reading the book "The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935".
The course begins with a discussion of how African Americans were educated in the south. I have never studied this before so I am soaking up all of this rich heritage but also questioning our current climate in higher education.
Early attempts at higher education for blacks was simply meant to keep them in their place, to teach them basic skills like working with their hands but not to open up their minds to possibilities lest they set their sites on influencing the world around them. They may have called it higher education in name, but in reality was simply to maintain the status quo of significant discrimination and disenfranchisement.
Dr. Cohen reminded our class what Dr. John Henrik Clarke said "all history is a current event". With the lack of leadership to support public access to higher education, we are leaving a wake of disenfranchised students behind again. This time, those individuals will be from all races, ethnicities, and backgrounds but certainly lower-income. Higher education should be about pursuing your dreams and your goals, working hard to create a life beyond maybe where your parents did, contributing to strong and healthy communities. It should not be restricted to the rich and influential or we will fail at this experiment called democracy. I worry that a lack of government leadership and public funding will negatively all of us for generations.
We may have been taught that the fight for American democracy was fought on a battlefield of the Revolutionary War. But today, the fight for democracy needs to be won through equal access to quality education.
Luckily for me, my first course is a special topics class called "Race and Ethnicity in the Formation of American Higher Education" being taught by Dr. Rodney Cohen. He is a visiting associate professor and President of the Association for Black Culture Centers (ABCC). NIU became the national headquarters of ABCC in November 2015. We are reading the book "The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935".
Early attempts at higher education for blacks was simply meant to keep them in their place, to teach them basic skills like working with their hands but not to open up their minds to possibilities lest they set their sites on influencing the world around them. They may have called it higher education in name, but in reality was simply to maintain the status quo of significant discrimination and disenfranchisement.
Dr. Cohen reminded our class what Dr. John Henrik Clarke said "all history is a current event". With the lack of leadership to support public access to higher education, we are leaving a wake of disenfranchised students behind again. This time, those individuals will be from all races, ethnicities, and backgrounds but certainly lower-income. Higher education should be about pursuing your dreams and your goals, working hard to create a life beyond maybe where your parents did, contributing to strong and healthy communities. It should not be restricted to the rich and influential or we will fail at this experiment called democracy. I worry that a lack of government leadership and public funding will negatively all of us for generations.
We may have been taught that the fight for American democracy was fought on a battlefield of the Revolutionary War. But today, the fight for democracy needs to be won through equal access to quality education.
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