C.A.R.E.

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Society has sold us a bill of goods when it comes to understanding intelligence and education.  This need to label someone as smart or dumb, as well as quantify a person’s intelligence based on a quotient, has been a misguided adventure in psychological warfare, and has its origin in the irrational construct of racism.  

In the early 1900’s, dozens of intelligence tests were developed in Europe and America in an effort to develop unbiased ways to measure a person’s cognitive ability.  

Created by French Psychologist Alfred Binet, intelligence tests were first used to identify students who would face the most difficulty in school.  

Ethnocentrics and Eugenicists used IQ tests to legitimize their belief in white supremacy.  Intelligence test results were used to provide evidence that socio-economic and racial groups were genetically inferior and that systematic inequalities were the byproduct of the evolutionary process.  

Education comes from the Latin, “educar”, which means to bring forth.   Horace Mann, in 1837, worked to create a statewide system of professional teachers, based on the Prussian model of “common schools.”  The purpose of school was to achieve moral and socioeconomic uplift of all Americans.  

In an attempt to create a citizenry to sustain the American political institutions, an educated workforce was required to expand the American economy, and to forestall the social disorders common in American cities before the Civil War.  

Schools were created to train, achieve morality, and provide a means of upliftment.  No where in its charter or origins do schools speak to the creation, or assessment, of student’s intelligence. 

From Horace Mann’s creation of the formalized school system to Alfred Binet’s intelligence quotients, American education broader goals began to change.  

As early as 1922, John Dewey recognized the failure of our changing educational system stating that education was being subordinated for concern with averages and percents.  He also recognized these averages and percents were nothing more than a social arrangement for gross inferiorities and superiorities.

Therefore, before we can adequately discuss educational success, we have to first come to an agreement of how education is defined.  Once defined, this education must become available to every eligible school-aged child.  It should be a public education that prepares your child for the future; including but not limited to further education, employment, and independent living.   

Education is the antidote for ignorance, poverty, and war.  Education empowers the disenfranchised through literacy; the ability to read, through higher wages; the more you know the more you are paid, through survival; the more you know the longer you live.  

Dreams become visions with education.  Life skills and vocational training become feasible with education.  Construction projects and inventions become realities with education.  Education provides a knowledge of the world around us and develops a perspective on life that values the experience and gives us knowledge of our place within it.  

Education is the experience of life.  TheBlackTeacher.com cares about your child's educational experience.  C.A.R.E. is a concientious, accountability, regarding, education.