Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

of education's obvious weaknesses and move to do something about
them . Continuation of programs and techniques that do not work is
wrong and a breach of public trust . The Black people of America deserve
the best that education can produce, not the worst. Essentially,
therefore, it is to the thausands of Black youths and disenchanted adult
poor to which a community college in an urban ghetto must address
itself . The following statement of philosophy, representing the raison
d'etre of Malcolm X College, should make it abundantly clear how this
can be done . Limits of space will not permit a full discussion of proposals
for each educational level . Thus, the present paper must be
limited to a delineation of a relatively new kind of institution, the community
college, that is serving as a reclamation center far the human
problems created by callously inefficient public schools. Yet, many of
the principles and philosophies are basic to contemporary education at
any level .
Malcolm X College is a concept of the future whose past is rooted
in the enslavement of Black people . So pervasive is the heritage of
slavery in this society that we must constantly struggle to keep from
unconsciously allowing to develop at this institution situations which
serve to enslave and to exploit rather than to develop and actualize
human potential . The processes by which "ideal" slaves are made have
been described as follows :
Step 1= ` . . . establish and maintain strict discipline . . ."
Step 2-" . . . implant in the bondsmen themselves a consciousness
of personal inferiority . . ."
Step 3= ` . . . awe them with a sense of their master's enormous
power . . ."
Step 4-" . . . persuade the bondsmen to take an interest in their
master's enterprise and to accept his standards of good
conduct . . ."
Step 5= ` . . . impress them with their helplessness, to create in
them a habit of perfect dependence upon their masters ."
Clearly, if we do not wish to perpetuate the systematic psychological and
social enslavement of Black people, we must develop, articulate, and
practice counter mechanisms which will serve to liberate ourselves and
our students . Such mechanisms as the following have been instituted at
Malcolm X College :
Step 1-Discipline follows from a precise understanding of what
must be done and why : it generates from within the individual
and the group and is enforced by each individual
in the group ;
NEGRO DIGEST March 1970 33