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SELF-IMAGE
POUSSAINT

tional programs in black schools in the ghetto have already dismally failed to meet the needs of black students and the community. 
Community control therefore serves the hope of shaking the whole educational bureaucracy out of its sometimes racist and indifferent attitudes toward the education of Negro children. It also attempts to prevent the alienation and failure of black youth in schools controlled by negligent whites. Coleman found in his recent study that Negroes have a much lower sense of control over their environment that do whites. He also found that of three attitudes measured (another was self-concept), sense of control over environment showed the strongest relationship to achievement.* Community control is not "separatism" or "institutionalizing inferiority" as some have charged. 
It, therefore, appears that educational programs that stress black achievement, black participation and power-sharing in the schools are crucially important for black youth. A sense of "fate-control" that removes the overbearing feelings of helplessness is necessary in black people's search for a positive identity. 
Thus, new approaches to the education of black youth and community control of schools become inextricably linked in the black man's drive to foster a positive self-image in his children. Yet, the structural changes needed in our educational institutions are often vigorously resisted by an entrenched white, bureaucratic power structure. However as the upheavals in our cities suggest, the day has come when black Americans will no longer idly stand by and see their children become sacrificial victims of an archaic and racist school system. 
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*Coleman, J.S. et al, Equality of Educational Opportunity, U.S. Office of Education, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1966, p. 289

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