THE SELLER AND THE SOLD
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[Col. Writ. 11/9/03] Copyright '03 Mumia Abu-Jamal

   They saw themselves as others had seen them. They
   had been formed by the images made of them by those
   who had the deepest necessity to despise them.
      -- James Baldwin, *Notes of a Native Son*

   Sometimes, an honest examination of the institutions of a
society tells us deep truths about the nature of that society.
Such an examination reveals raw, uncomfortable, and hidden
truths about what the unwritten rules are, and why.

   When we examine the way that public schools have
responded to the challenge of educating African-American
children, we must conclude that the education of millions of
such children are not the real priorities of this society.  Millions
of such children emerge from public schools with little notion of
their place in the world, or how to move through the society
with sanity, with life-affirming rewards, and some semblance of peace.

   They leave, far too often, early, and ungraduated.  Others may graduate, but their achievements are slighted because of the light and undemanding nature of the studies.  Whether one has graduated or not is not the mark of whether one is educated or not.  Far too often, young Blacks are taught, if anything, how to get a menial job; how to work for others; how to *sell* some meager skill.

   Meanwhile, in schools where the well-to-do live, the young
are taught critical thinking; how to ask the right questions. Indeed,to question!  They are taught, not how to sell themselves, but how to produce things to be bought by others, to secure and amass wealth.

   What the American school system is, is a class-bound structure, that reproduces itself, in the next generation.

   One generation is being trained to follow; the other generation is being taught how to lead.  In such a system, how can we wonder why things are unchanged, from generation to generation?

   As the late educator, Murray Levin, suggested in one of his
last books on the dearth of instruction in Black and Latino schools in Roxbury, 'oppression is the lesson.'

   Why shouldn't children, in a nation that claims to love liberty, be taught freedom?

   Instead, they are conditioned to obey, to follow orders, to not rock the boat, to be ... passive.

   True education awakens, it does not darken the windows of
perception.  True education enlivens, it does not dull the spirit.

   This is what the elders of every civilization on earth have
struggled to do.  They tried to build young people who could take on the tasks of defending, building, and expanding the community.

   In this new century, there are too many youngsters who are seen as expendable.  They are presumed to be ignorant.  They are left to rot on the vine of life, untaught and unproductive.

   In a truly humanistic society, no person is seen as expendable.

   In a society said to be based on 'rugged individualism', each
individual is valued, and given the materials necessary to make a valuable contribution to the whole.

   That isn't happening now, and it is truly a scandal.

   Young people should be given, *as a social duty*, the
wherewithal to grow in knowledge and understanding of the
world in which we live.  They are to be accorded a history that reflects their place in the world that is, and the world to come. To fail to do so is to commit a kind of social suicide.  It is cruel.  It is stupid.  It is wrong.

   If public schools are not functioning in this country, then it
is incumbent upon this country to provide the materials
necessary to transform the problematic present into a system
of promise.

   Anyone who questions the conditions of urban school
districts should only peruse a copy of Jonathan Kozol's
*Savage Inequalities*.  Schools shouldn't reproduce social
and class inequities, but work to eradicate them.  If it fails to
do this, then it merely reproduces the errors of the past, and
leaves serious work undone, for generations yet unborn.

Copyright 2003 Mumia Abu-Jamal
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"When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is just, yet refuse to defend it--at that moment you begin to die. And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about justice." - Mumia Abu-Jamal

Contrary to popular belief, conventional wisdom would have one believe that it is insane to resist this, the mightiest of empires.... But what history really shows is that today's empire is tomorrow's ashes, that nothing lasts forever, and that to not resist is to acquiesce in your own oppression. The greatest form of sanity that anyone can exercise is to resist that force that is trying to repress, oppress, and fight down the human spirit.
                              Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.mumia.org/freedom.now/