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GlobalEyes

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in the Mirror of the World.
Spartacus R.
The editor of Global Africa Pocket News and author of "Violation" and "The Maãt Mystery" takes another look at the world.

Recently I was reading some of the posts on a Discussion List I subscribe to on the Internet and noticed a large number of letters dealing with the education of our children. The fact that the list is restricted only to African (Black) community activists would suggest a more uniform level of consciousness than you would expect on a free-for-all list but I found the wide range of opinions and attitudes expressed quite fascinating. I agreed with those who said that we need to have total control of all aspects of our children's education including finance, curriculum, materials, policy, choice of teachers and training of teachers. But there were others who argued that we are entitled to the benefit of our tax dollars.

Many people understand that state sponsored education is essentially for the benefit of the state's controllers, not for the benefit of the people who are being (mis)educated. That said, it is mainly the naive who expect the state controllers to give us money (even if it is our own money) to educate our children as revolutionaries. If at all they give us any money or educational facilities they would want to control the curriculum and/or any other educational content which could influence the child's future behaviour.

When we couple the state education system with the prison system where increasingly more and more prisoners are being used as cheap labour and threatened with the prospect of paying for the privilege of being locked up, we can see that it is more profitable for the state to NOT educate our children while pretending to, than to pay us to (or just allow us to) educate them ourselves for our benefit.

For example there is currently a lot of noise being made by Africans in the UK for independent African schools because, just like in the USA, the state school system is failing our people. To counter the cry for greater community control of schools, the British state has increased the liability of school governors without increasing their powers while at the same time reducing the amount of money available for education and calling it community control of education. That trick has worked for a few years but now that more parents in depressed areas are realising that their children are still not getting the education they would like, the state has introduced a new scam they call Education Action Zones.

They pick certain areas where they have successfully run down the schools (mainly boroughs with large African populations), designate them Education Action Zones and lease the schools in those areas to private businesses for approximately three to five years. We are told that the companies will then use their economic wealth and management expertise to sponsor and manage those schools in order that they may become financially viable centres of educational excellence. Most parents believe that, saying: "At last something is being done about the children's education" and they continue paying taxes to politicians and bureaucrats for the promise of services they will never receive.

Lambeth, the borough where I live, has designated several of its schools as Education Action Zones and, according to reliable sources, its director of education has signed an agreement with Shell - yes, the same Shell Oil of South Africa and Nigeria infamy - to take control of its "problem" schools. This director, who, three years later, still commutes from Cambridge, even though she was paid a vast amount of money to relocate to London, has been acting as a colonial governor since day one of her appointment. She is now busy trying to put together a group of lackeys who, as "community leaders", will be required to rubber-stamp her decisions as being good for the African community.

What I expect will happen, unless the community does something about it, is that Shell and any other companies brought in on the deal, will groom specific African individuals to represent its interests in the sports and entertainment fields, isolate and neutralise any who show signs of using their brains, i.e. becoming troublemakers and stream the rest into the prison system to play their part as cheap(er) slave labour for industry.

Brothers and Sisters, I know what I am saying sounds ridiculous but it is not quite as ridiculous as it sounds. Only today I heard the news of the George Orwell school in Islington which is to be shut down and "Restarted" two months later with an "arts based curriculum" and a "selected" clientele. And who would that be? Right again, the dancing, singing, running, jumping, ....

What I am saying can only be proven ridiculous if we, the Global African community, do something about it. But first we have to accept that based on our collective historical experience, I am probably right. Then we have to do what we know we must do which is to stop paying for what we will never get, organise our own schools, pay for it ourselves and create our own revolutionary Africentric curriculum bent on self-determination. We need to turn our own minds and the minds of our children into Education Action Zones, where true education, the art of learning, can play an active part in our liberation. I know we have the power. I know we ARE the power and we can do anything we set our minds to. Our enemies know that as well, that is why they do not want us to teach ourselves.

To those who are trying to set up Africentric independent schools, to those who want better than what we are getting, to those who see a better world for all of us, may the Ancestors guide and protect you on our way.

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