On Objects and Voices: Material Culture and Oral History in the Case of Shule Ya Kujitambua

African Centered Education: Necessity and Results

The aim of African centered education is to best meet the needs of African American students. Pauline Lipman explains how eurocentric educational models do not serve African American students :

“The overwhelming failure of schools to develop the talents and potential of students of color is a national crisis.”


Part of the failure of eurocentric education is that white teachers look at African American students through an incongruent lens. The students have life experiences that differ too greatly from what the eurocentric model teaches and thus are not included within the educational framework. These “cultural mismatches” mean that African American students are perceived to not meet eurocentric expectations.

This is called deculturalization, “a process by which the individual is deprived of his or her culture and then conditioned to other cultural values.”

Kofi Lomotey, a key player in the debate for African Centered education, explains that Black students generally have lower levels of self esteem in non-African centered education models. This is because the curriculum is not made to support them, they do not have Black role models, and they are not respected by their teachers or peers. By centering African minds, “educators encourage African American children to look at the world through an African-centered set of lenses that provide them with vision that is more focused, has a wider periphery, and more depth.” When students learn in a model that mirrors their cultural context they see themselves in the curriculum and become more attached and excited about their education. This is important especially for young children “because they are still forming their habits, personalities, self-concepts, and understandings of the world.”

From this theory came Independent Black Institutions (IBI) and the official Council of Independent Black Institutions (CIBI). The model of Independent Black Institutions was built around the concept that  "a cultural frame of reference...has particular relevance to the students in the schools." When the educational needs of marginalized students are centered, there tends to be higher levels of achievement, engagement, identity building, and consolidation of material than marginalized students who are educated in eurocentric models.

CIBI helps students reach higher levels of self esteem, represented even in standardized tests. Lomotey suggests that while curriculum is not the only way to combat self esteem or the achievement gap, it does provide a substantial benefit for students to have supportive learning styles.

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