Afrocentric education

Afrocentric education is designed to empower peoples of the African diaspora. A central premise behind it is that many Africans have been subjugated by limiting their awareness of themselves and indoctrinating them with ideas that work against them. Like educational leaders of other cultures, proponents assert that what educates one group of people does not necessarily educate and empower another group, so they assert educational priorities distinctly for the Africans in a given context.

Afrocentric education has, as one of its tenets, the decolonization of the African mind. The central objective in decolonizing the African mind is to overthrow the authority that alien traditions may exercise.

Education was understood to be a process of harnessing the inner potential, and thus it is imperative to equip the youth with an awareness of their identity. The term "miseducation" was coined by Dr. Carter G. Woodson to describe the process of systematically depriving African Americans of their knowledge of self. Dr. Woodson believed that miseducation was the root of the problems of the masses of the African-American community and that if the masses of the African-American community were given the correct knowledge and education from the beginning, they would not be in the situation that they find themselves in today. Dr. Woodson argues in his book The Mis-Education of the Negro that African Americans often valorize European culture to the detriment of their own culture.

The problem concerning formal education is seen by Afrocentrists to be that African students are taught to perceive the world through the eyes of another culture, and unconsciously learn to see themselves as an insignificant part of their world. An Afrocentric education does not necessarily wish to isolate Africans from a Eurocentric education system but wishes to assert the autonomy of Africans and encompass the cultural uniqueness of all learners.

A school based on African values, it is believed, would eliminate the patterns of rejection and alienation that engulf so many African-American school children, especially males. The movement for African-centered education is based on the assumption that a school immersed in African traditions, rituals, values, and symbols will provide a learning environment that is more congruent with the lifestyles and values of African-American families.

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