Culturally Relevant Teaching || Cultural Self Meets Cultural Other in the African American Experience: Teachers' Responses to a Curriculum Content Reform

Cultural Self Meets Cultural Other in the African American Experience: Teachers' Responsesto a Curriculum Content ReformAuthor(s): Mwalimu J. ShujaaSource: Theory into Practice, Vol. 34, No. 3, Culturally Relevant Teaching (Summer, 1995), pp.194-201Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1476639 .

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Mwalimu J. Shujaa

Cultural Self Meets Cultural Other in the

African American Experience: Teachers'

Responses to a Curriculum Content Reform

UT CAN YOU EXPECT teachers to revolutionize the social order for the good of the community?

Indeed we must expect this very thing. The educational system of a country is worthless unless it accomplishes this task. (Woodson, 1933, p. 145)

Woodson's lofty expectations are as yet unreal- ized and schooling is virtually worthless for many students of African descent in U.S. schools. Public school districts in many areas of the United States are involved in curricular content reforms generated by demands from local African American community members for changes in the quantity and quality of information that is taught about the African experience. In theory, if not in actual practice, these demands for change are also demands for culturally relevant teaching.

School districts in Portland, Oregon, and Buf- falo have instituted reforms that call for the infusion of African and African American content in all areas and at all levels of their curricula. These school districts have established African and African Ameri- can curriculum components that are or will be part of district-wide multicultural education programs constructed by building and linking similar components focusing on other cultures (Ratteray, 1990).

Detroit and Milwaukee (Leake & Faltz, 1993) are among the cities whose school districts have in- troduced African-themed cultural immersion schools.

Mwalimu J. Shujaa is associate professor of education at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

The intent of these schools is to provide holistic African-centered learning environments that are supported by the introduction of values derived from traditional African cultures (e.g., the Nguzo Saba, see Karenga, 1980), dress codes, rituals, and village- like social relations. African American teachers and activists in Philadelphia created the Village at Harri- ty-an African-centered school-within-a-school-to introduce African and African American curriculum content. In this model, 90 children in first through third grade are taught a culturally relevant and af- firming curriculum by three teachers who have inte- grated their self-contained classrooms to form the "village."

The approaches to curriculum content reform described above are often initiated by community- based movements whose aims are also to expose and challenge anti-African racism and Western-centrist orientations in public school curricula. In such in- stances, African and African American curriculum content reforms are products of the counter-hegemonic intentions of their initiators. These reforms have the potential to provide teachers with a broader knowledge base from which to expose students of all cultures to alternate interpretations of the world and assumptions about social reality. Such change, however, must begin in the realities of the present. These realities include the cultural dynamics of race, gender, and class in the existing social order and the different ways that people relate to them.

THEORY INTO PRACTICE, Volume 34, Number 3, Summer 1995

Copyright 1995 College of Education, The Ohio State University 0040-5841/95$1.25



Shujaa Curriculum Content Reform

If these reforms prove successful in effecting culturally relevant teaching in some U.S. public schools, how will the pioneers of these changes pre- pare new teachers to carry the work forward? For example, in Philadelphia, where teachers at The Vil-

lage at Harrity sometimes work 12-hour days, pros- pects for replication of this innovative program are dim. "The Village" is the vision of the teachers who created it; finding others willing to take on such a mission has, unfortunately, proved to be a very diffi- cult task. The fundamental challenge that community activists and school district teachers and administrators face when planning and implementing Afri- can and African American curriculum content reform is to facilitate personal transformation among teachers to accommodate new ways of framing knowledge about self and others and commitment to making change happen.

In this article I discuss some of the complexi- ties of personal transformation among people involved in the implementation of an African and Af- rican American curriculum content reform. I focus on individual teachers' understandings of and responses to the reform. My analyses are based on more than 5 years of research and evaluation related to the professional development activities of teachers participating in the Buffalo Public Schools' Afri- can and African American Curriculum Program.

Teachers and Curriculum Reform School teachers ultimately shape how curricu-

lum content is taught. This is a point that has been made for quite some time (see, for example, Fullan with Stiegelbauer, 1991; Murnane, 1981; Sarason, 1971). African and African American curriculum content reforms are not exceptions-teachers are critical to their effectiveness. Often, when introducing new African and African American curriculum content reforms, school district leaders attempt to de- flect community pressure with bold pronouncements and fanfare. Yet, because everyone knows that teachers will ultimately determine what happens, the question that remains when the ceremonies are over, is "What if the teachers won't teach this?" In Buffalo, the superintendent told a group of principals that although they could not control teachers' attitudes, they could and must use their authority to control teachers' behavior in order to ensure that African and African American curriculum content was taught

in the Buffalo public schools. This exhortation was

responded to with enthusiastic applause. Can culturally relevant teaching be mandated-

as the superintendent in Buffalo seems to think it can? The same considerations that apply to the im-

plementation of other forms of educational policy that affect teaching are applicable to African and African American curriculum content reforms. One important lesson learned from policy studies is that mandates as policy instruments are generally inef- fective because "policymakers can't mandate what matters" to people (McLaughlin, 1987, p. 172). Indi- vidual teachers are more likely to be motivated to support planned change when the change does not (a) intrude upon what they perceive to be "sacred" norms (Rossman, Corbett, & Firestone, 1988); and (b) undermine their professional identities (Shujaa, 1989).

It must be understood, however, that among individual teachers the professional identity is not the only identity involved in the way they define and carry out their roles as teachers. Individual teachers' cultural identities and ideological commitments also have to be taken into account in any undertaking of planned change (see, for example, Britzman, 1986; Foster, 1994; King, 1991; Ladson-Billings, 1992).

Teachers, like all individuals, are products of the societies in which they live. Thus, they assume multiple roles in society and correspondingly construct multiple identities (e.g., professional, cultural, racial, gender, religious) in relationship to those roles that potentially foster different interpretations of social phenomena and educational reforms related to them (see Stryker, 1980, pp. 61-78). African and African American curriculum content reforms strike at assumptions about race, culture, and society that have been part of the curricula taught and learned in U.S. schools by many of us for generations (see, for example, Apple, 1979; Woodson, 1933). These assumptions have helped to form most of our perceptions about who we are and, as importantly, who belongs in the category of "other."

Therefore, we must consider individuals' cultural as well as professional identities and belief systems to understand the dynamics of their responses to planned educational change. This consideration becomes critically important when an individual's primary cultural assumptions conflict with the public school curriculum content.

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My contention is that teaching African and Af- rican American content in culturally relevant ways is impossible for individuals whose belief systems and notions of personal identity are narrowly framed by racially hegemonic influences on knowledge. Thus, who is teaching is as critical as what is taught. When we are comfortable, most of us are typically unaware of our cultural patterns and of the existence of the normative frame boundaries that encompass them. Hilliard (1989) points out that cultural patterns are experienced "as normal or natural ways of acting, feeling and being" (p. 66). It is only when we are confronted with concepts that seem unnatural to us and different from our own that our frame boundaries become known to us.

Noffke (1992) discusses the comfort we feel with our existing ways of viewing the world in terms of being "at home." She addresses the need to examine home as an aspect of "individual self-knowledge that could help us to recognize our own complicity in oppression" (p. 75). It is important to recognize that many of the understandings that we are comfortable or at home with have been constructed in conformity with hegemonic patterns of White supremacist ideology and racialized social relations. African and African American curriculum content challenges the cultural patterning that underlies these understandings. Individual teachers, faced with changing the ways they think about the African experience, often choose to simply deal with African and African American curriculum content in ways that are congruent with their existing beliefs.

Teachers' Responses: The Buffalo Case The impetus for the African and African Amer-

ican Curriculum Program in Buffalo can be traced to the 1986-87 school year. The Buffalo public school district had gained national prominence because of the success of its magnet school program, which was lauded as a model for voluntary desegregation. The district's superintendent appointed two special task forces to address issues he deemed critical to the district's continued progress. One, the task force on handicapping conditions, focused on the dispropor- tionate number of African American students referred for special education placement. The other, the task force on suspensions, addressed the disproportion- ately high rate of formal school suspension among African American males. In their final reports, both

task forces independently recommended that Afri- can and African American curriculum content be taught in all subject areas and at all grade levels.

I began my study during the 1989-90 school year when the school district piloted the program in two elementary (K-8) schools. I had an opportunity to observe how teachers, some of whom were actually working with African and African American content for the first time, handled the challenges that teaching this content presented to their own orientations to knowledge. The teachers at the two pilot schools were the first teachers, with the exception of the building liaisons, to participate in systematic professional development related to the African and African American Curriculum Program. I interviewed 21 (about one-fourth) of those teachers and both principals from the two schools. African American and White teachers were represented in equal numbers; the sample also included one Asian American teacher.

Perceptions of the reform's intent A pervasive view among both White and Afri-

can American teachers was that the creation of the African and African American Curriculum Program was linked to low self-esteem among African Amer- ican students. They reasoned that adding African and African American content to the curriculum would raise these students' self-esteem. Thus, the program was primarily perceived to be a corrective. Second- arily, however, some of the teachers believed that the program was intended for all students while others viewed it as intended specifically for African American students. The following comments by two African American teachers illustrate how the program was viewed both as a corrective for the perceived low self-esteem of African American students and also as a means of raising general awareness among all students. The first remarks are from a woman who had taught in Buffalo for 13 years:

I believe that one of the specific goals is to raise the self-esteem of the African-American students and also to sort of raise everybody's conscience and awareness of geographical and cultural centers that have been overlooked or misrepresented. (Shujaa, 1990)

The next excerpt is also from a veteran teacher: The goal from my viewpoint is to ... bring in the African, African-American aspect and ... to build up the self-confidence of the children and let them know the contributions that we as a race have made and just

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let them know how far back their history would go. I think basically [the program] is to enlighten not just the Black student but everybody so that White students get a better understanding of us also. (Shujaa, 1990)

Not all of the teachers envisioned the creation of opportunities for all children in the district to learn about Africa and African Americans to be an intended outcome of this reform. Some shared a belief that the program was created to correct what they perceived to be low self-esteem among African Ameri- can students. For instance, a White teacher with 15 years experience saw the aim of the program as follows:

... to give the Black-American child a form of self- esteem and in doing that learn that he's not actually just a slave brought over but that he is someone of importance. And . . . in doing so . . . learning more about themselves and their backgrounds and the good things that they have done ... just as we know some of our background [italics added]. (Shujaa, 1990)

A White teacher with 5 years in the classroom believed that the entire African American community was in need of a corrective for low self-esteem. In her view the program was intended "to build a sense of roots for the Afro American population in the city . . to show that there are important contributions

that were made by Afro-American individuals" (Shu- jaa, 1990).

Clearly, these teachers are observing things in the cognitive, affective, and behavioral expressions of African American students that compel them to believe these students do not feel good about who they are. They believe African American students are referred for school suspension or evaluation for special education placement because of inappropri- ate or abnormal behaviors. They then reason that these behaviors are manifestations of low self-esteem and that the African and African American Curriculum Program is a corrective because it will teach an African American child that, as one teacher put it, "he's not actually just a slave."

Maureen Stone, in The Education of the Black Child: The Myth of Multiracial Education (1981), insists that arguments that suggest the schooling problems of children of African descent are "due to poor self-concept and self-esteem, and if this is treated they will achieve better in school," are "false and dangerous" (p. 8). The very nature of African people's experiences in U.S. society suggests that the

process of schooling has to be brought into question. African American students' behaviors in schools are responses to schooling as a process of formal socialization that aims to shape their understandings of the world in accordance with the interests of the elite within the social hierarchy (Shujaa, 1994). Behav- iors that are attributed to low levels of self-esteem may also be viewed as indications of the failure of this socialization process.

I believe the pervasiveness of the view that Af- rican Americans have low self-esteem makes culturally relevant teaching impossible for many of these teachers. If their teaching is focused on correcting whatever it is they believe is wrong with African American children, it must be asked, what do these teachers expect these children to become as a result of their teaching? When self-esteem is understood as a racialized concept, it is also possible to recognize how teachers' diagnosing of low self-esteem among African American children reflects the racialization of what is supposed to be normal behavior.

Wilson (1993) argues that diagnosis is political and, therefore, the diagnosing of African people's behavior within societal institutions must involve "an analysis not only of the behavior of our people, but of the behavior of the society as whole" (p. 87). Wilson also contends that "through diagnosis, the ruling society applies its ideological measures to the recalcitrant members of that society."

In this sense, the diagnosis of low self-esteem among African American students is an evaluation of African American behavior compared to the behavior that is deemed appropriate by their teachers. The crucial issue becomes one of understanding the criteria these teachers use to determine what is normal and what is not. Thus, teachers' socialization and notions of individual and group identity are matters of great importance for the well-being of Afri- can American students.

Kambon (1992) argues that the level of self- esteem is "one of the most unpredictable personal characteristics" to determine among African Ameri- can children because of the cultural repression of Africanness in U.S. society. Self-esteem is "frag- mented" into many dimensions-personal, cultural, racial, academic, athletic, social-and, according to Kambon, each of these dimensions is dependent on "one's individual circumstances in life, both devel- opmentally and situationally" (p. 114).

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Kambon adds that the level of self-esteem will reflect "how easily the African child accommodates to the European supremacy reality by accepting it as her/his reality" (p. 114). It follows that, given the nature of socialization within the unequal and anti- African power relations of the U.S. social order, the roots of African American students' racial and cultural self-esteem exist somewhere between two tendencies. In one, the African American students' Af- ricanness is repressed by Eurocentric socialization. In the other, the African American students' Euro- centric socialization fosters within them the desire to escape their Africanness.

In relationship to these tendencies, what manifestations of self-esteem have teachers seen in the behaviors of their African American students? More importantly, how do these teachers understand their own participation in the social order and the manner in which power relations within the social order con- textualize self-esteem differently among members of the society? These are significant questions to consider as this discussion moves to the analysis of the teachers' perceptions of the value of teaching Afri- can and African American curriculum content.

Perceptions of the reform's value The teachers' ideas about the nature of self-

esteem differ greatly. Some perceive low self-esteem to be a virtually inherent group trait among all Afri- can American students, while others view it as an outcome of social relations. When low self-esteem was viewed as an African American personality trait, the policy's benefit was more likely to be interpreted in terms of its value as a corrective for perceived student deficits. One White teacher, for example, considered the African and African American Cur- riculum Program to be potentially beneficial because she believed African American students needed to develop an appreciation for achievement.

They [African-American students] don't have any pride in themselves. They don't value people who lived to make an effort, in any form . . . they don't seem to have any value of achievement. It [the African and African American Curriculum Program] is a chance to say, "Look! Look what you can accomplish." (Shujaa, 1990)

This teacher's remarks are consistent with what by now may be recognized as a familiar pattern. They suggest that the curriculum content reform will be

beneficial as a corrective measure for the students, not as a means to improve the curriculum. There is no indication that she attributes any responsibility for the perceived lack of "pride in themselves" and "value in achievement" among her African Ameri- can students to their schooling or social experiences-including the ways in which they are taught.

A contrasting point of view that illustrates a very different perception of the role of school and society with regard to African American students' self-perceptions is presented by one of the few Afri- can American male teachers in the two schools. This teacher also felt that curriculum content reform would be beneficial for African American students. He did not, however, see low self-esteem as an inherent char- acteristic of African American students; instead, he viewed it as a learned response to the society, their schooling, and their teachers.

I think one of the reasons that there are so many neg- ative images is because of the lack of pride that has been taught.... We as teachers have not been able to reach the boys and girls in this area and I think with the infusion of [African and African-American curriculum content], it will help them become aware of their heritage and maybe this will help bring back some of this pride. (Shujaa, 1990)

While both these teachers expressed different notions about where the responsibility belonged for the students' circumstances, they share the perception that the African and African American Curriculum Program is intended exclusively for African American students. Neither of them discuss the benefits that might be derived by non-African American students.

The Racialization of Self-Esteem: Implications for Teaching

These teachers' perceptions of their school district's African and African American curriculum content policy were mediated by their general beliefs that African American students are persons with low levels of self-esteem. The persistence of these beliefs defies the accumulating research that points to above average levels of self-esteem among African American youth, including those in lower socioeco- nomic strata. Much of this research suggests that African American students develop coping strategies related to self-efficacy. When these strategies are inconsistent with politically dominant cultural norms, the students' behavioral or affective responses to the

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social environment are misinterpreted as indicators of low self-esteem (Madhere, 1991).

Although I did not construct this study as a racial inquiry, the racial grouping of the teachers is significant. I believe the frame boundaries between the existing belief systems of the African American teachers in this study and their perceptions of the curriculum content reforms are more flexible than those of their White counterparts. This is not to suggest that African Americans have not been exposed to the same omissions, misinterpretations, and mis- representations of the African experience in U.S. schools as Whites. They have. But, as a group, Afri- can Americans have historically had a very different relationship to White supremacist ideology and racialized social relations than Whites. Theoretically, therefore, African Americans should be more easily able to integrate knowledge conveyed through curriculum reforms that affirm the African cultural experience and delegitimize notions of White supremacy and African inferiority.

Even though both the White and African Amer- ican teachers believed that African American students display low levels of self-esteem, they see the humanness of these students differently. Generally, the commentaries of White teachers project a view of African American students as deficient human beings-people who have little or no self-esteem or who lack knowledge of themselves. The general view projected by the commentaries of African American teachers is that African American students are de- valued human beings-people whose self-esteem is affected because their cultural history has been omit- ted from school knowledge or distorted by it. These notions reflect the fact that the teachers, like the students they teach, exist in a social environment that affirms and privileges people on the basis of a racialized hierarchy.

I am concerned, however, that, in general, these teachers understand self-esteem to be unitary rather than multi-dimensional. This results in a distorted view of these students as persons and places the bur- den of responsibility for change upon them. Such a viewpoint can in no way support culturally relevant teaching. Moreover, as Irvine (1990) points out, teachers' perceptions of African American male and female students have been linked to the treatment these students receive in schools and to implications that threaten their life chances.

Nobles (1991), Stone (1981), Kambon (1992), Wilson (1993), and others have consistently addressed the problems that Western orientations to human value and "normalcy" pose for people of African descent. Stone (1981), in discussing the tendency to diagnose African Caribbean students in the United Kingdom as having deficiencies in self-esteem, de- scribes the predicament in this way:

All American and British theories which seek to ex- plain the development of self-concept in human beings are grounded in a Western philosophical tradition which ignores the explanations derived from other cultures and in particular African culture. (p. 71)

Thus, the failure of schools to socialize African American children into acceptance of school knowledge that inflates the White ego as it deflates the African ego (see Wilson, 1993) is not a mark of deficiency for the African American student. Stone turns such thinking on its head by arguing first that self-esteem is in no way as powerful a determinant as the "social structure prevailing in a given society." She adds that the self-concept of "black children (and adults) is therefore best understood in terms of the development of a culture which acts to protect and sustain the individual and the group" (pp. 234-235).

Another conclusion is that African and African American curriculum content was perceived in ways that were both ahistorical and apolitical. One example of this is the failure of anyone we interviewed, teachers or administrators, to address racism as a phenomenon whose history and methods would have to be studied and understood in order to make sense of the need for curriculum content reform. I believe this is the primary reason that the infusion of Afri- can and African American curriculum content is so widely perceived to be a remedy for low self-esteem among African American students.

This view was clearly evident in the perceptions of the teachers who believed they were implementing a curriculum reform whose only beneficiaries would be African American students. We see a problem that affects the whole of U.S. society being interpreted as an African American problem. Learning and teaching about racism and how to dismantle the structural conditions that support and perpetuate racist social relations have to be regarded as essential aspects of this curriculum reform if it is to be meaningful to anyone.

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The teachers who participated in this study described a range of teaching activities that only rarely extended beyond practices intended to infuse facts disconnected from their cultural, historical and political contexts. Moreover, the professional development provided for these teachers overemphasized curriculum content without devoting sufficient at- tention to the thinking that directs the practice of

teaching. In order to support culturally relevant teach-

ing, professional development must be directed toward enabling teachers to focus on their conceptions of themselves and others, their cultural knowledge, and their classrooms' social structure (Ladson-Bill- ings, 1990).

The goals of professional development for cul-

turally relevant teaching in public schools should not be focused on building African American self- esteem. Instead, as Lee (1994) asserts, what teachers in public schools can effectively do is as follows:

1. Foster the development of the skills in literacy, nu- meracy, the humanities, and technologies that are necessary to negotiate economic self-sufficiency in the society;

2. Instill citizenship skills based on a realistic and thorough understanding of the political system and support such citizenship by promoting questioning and critical thinking skills, and teaching democratic values;

3. Provide an historical overview of the U.S. nation- state, the continent, and the world-which accu- rately represents the contributions of all ethnic groups to the storehouse of human knowledge. (p. 308)

Lee argues that the conditions "necessary for Afri- can Americans to achieve ethnic pride, self-sufficiency, equity, wealth, and power" cannot be met in public schools (p. 308). My argument that teachers should not focus their teaching on correcting what they perceive to be low self-esteem among African American students is an argument for professional development that prepares teachers to focus instead on achieving Lee's goals. These goals represent what public schools can and should do for every student because they are essential to the quality of life of all people.

Conclusion The experiences I have described here hold valu-

able lessons for community activists, school administrators, teachers, parents, and students who seek to

effect changes in the manner in which public school curricula incorporate the African experience. In Buf- falo, the demand from the African American com-

munity was for a school board mandate to infuse African and African American history into the curriculum, and it can be argued that this is what was done. However, a closer look reveals that what is more important for culturally relevant teaching are the ways in which teachers understand who they are

racially and culturally as human beings and how they have learned to view human beings who are racially and culturally different from themselves.

Ladson-Billings (1990, 1992), Foster (1994), and others have described teachers, some African American and some White, who have been able to effectively practice culturally relevant pedagogy without a school district mandate to do so. Rethinking teaching along the lines suggested by the experiences of teachers who have been successful with culturally relevant teaching is a necessary condition for changing children's experiences in schools. Such change is, in actuality, dependent upon individual teachers' processes of personal transformation. It re- quires opportunities for individual teachers to work in settings that allow them to examine their own thinking and reflect on their teaching practice as a political, rather than neutral, aspect of their being. This is a painful and unsettling process for teachers, but no moreso than the cultural assaults from curricula and teachers that African American children must repel, reject, or resist each and every day in U.S. public schools.

Note: The author acknowledges and is grateful to Nah Dove and Illana Lewis for their comments and sugges- tions on earlier drafts of this work. The research on which this work is based was supported in part by the New York African American Institute and the MetLife Foun- dation.

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Culturally Relevant Teaching || Cultural Self Meets Cultural Other in the African American Experience: Teachers' Responses to a Curriculum Content Reform