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DILEMMA OF AFRO-AMERICAN EDUCATION     MOORE

nation have not been simply protesting the "primacy of the teachers in the learning process." Theirs is a rebellion against society, exploitative industry and war.

Darwin Turner considers with acumen some of the ways the Afro-American college can minimize its limitations and maximize its unique possibilities. His suggestions include an "expanded use of materials related to Afro-American life, culture and history," "orientation to the black community," pooling resources with other educational institutions, closer relations between students and faculty, experimentation with innovations and new practices. These are useful directions but rather lack meat around the bone in Turner's exposition. One reference here would be the plan submitted by W. E. B. Du Bois to the annual conference of the presidents of Negro land-grant colleges in 1941.7 DuBois' model, if implemented, would set every student, faculty member and administrator at every black college in motion. Embarked on scientific study of the needs of the community, the black college could attain a relevance that the great universities could grow to envy. One thing needs be said, however, and it is well said by Carter G. Woodson in his book The Mis-Education of the Negro. He recommended that "the Negro, whether in Africa or America must be directed toward a serious examination of the fundamentals of education, religion, literature and philosophy as they have been expounded to him. He must be sufficiently enlightened to determine for himself whether these forces have come into his life to bless him or to bless his oppressor."8 A thorough political education and a vivid conception of the traditions, culture and aspirations of the folk will be a basic prerequisite to the kind of program Du Bois envisioned and Turner suggests.

Andrew Billingsley, author of the book Black Families in White America, contributes the article, "The Black Presence in American Higher Education," a survey of current trends of demand and supply of that profitable commodity called Black Studies. As an analysis of the movement to establish Afro-American Higher Studies as a legitimate academic area, this article falls short. Billingsley does not establish a theoretical framework from which a basic perspective and conception can be defined. Without a criterion with which to evaluate the different structural and academic approaches to Black Studies by


7 The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois (International Publishers, New York, 1968), pp. 311-321.
8 Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro (Associate Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1933, 1969), p. 194.

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