AFRICAN AMERICAN EDUCATION

African American Education

African American Education

Introduction

African Americans have always recognized the value of an education and its power for transforming lives and communities. During the earliest years of U.S. history, African Americans were prohibited from learning to read or write. These efforts were designed to ensure submission while enslaved. Revolts by the enslaved community, like that led by Nat Turner in Virginia, frightened plantation owners, who reacted by limiting information and schooling. Despite the risks, the Quaker community, other abolitionists, and educated slaves remained committed to educating more African Americans by secretly offering them tutoring and instruction.

Today African-Americans students are still challenged by the historical vestiges of discrimination as well as the barriers associated with financial and other factors. The nearly 40 million African Americans residing in the United States—representing approximately 13 percent of the total population—are three times more likely (24 percent) to live in poverty than Whites (8 percent). Further, opportunity gaps related to college enrollment and completion persist for African-American students with only 11 percent being enrolled in post-secondary education.

Discussion

In the process of building national identity and ethnic history in America, Afro- American, valuing the black ancestor remains difficult. By hiding the phenotypic and cultural history has been ignored, their present and their rights to sociocultural processes in the definition of nationality. Their exclusion has contributed to the invisibility of their role with Indians and Europeans in building the nation. Therefore, the claim of an America without blacks, expression of an ideological construct that was the stereotype "nation of white American culture and" a key element of identity in America.

With 4.5 million African Americans currently between the ages of 18-24—the traditional age range for those preparing for and attending college—this untapped student population represents a significant source of human capital in an increasingly diverse nation. Ensuring that they are able fully to take advantage of educational opportunities is critical to these individuals as well as the country as a whole.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, despite the unrestrained freedom enacted, blacks remained unable to access certain public places. They found many problems in education, as well. If they were rejected, they asked more than they charged to a white man.

Nor could they attend the same schools as whites, so they opened several schools for blacks only. These centers segregationists had a total of 155 students in 1857. The facts clearly show the difference in treatment between whites and blacks in those years. Teasing by whites to equality laws was frequent.The Afro-American presence in education

Education in its broadest sense, not only transmitting knowledge, but generating values, attitudes and ultimately behavior, is clearly essential to a proper understanding of the world. However, the American education system has not been very sensible to include the study and knowledge of Afro-American cultural and social realities and is, in general, preserving a strong elitism typical of past generations. The school as a socialization factor plays a pivotal role, and the textbooks are a sample button.

In an effort, to relate historical events, the official historians reduced to mere allusions America contributions of Afro-American ...