Book Review #6

I began writing this review after deciding Robert P. Robinson’s book deserves only one star. But I have modified my opinion, and now I’ll explain why.

 

But first of all, the book. Education for the Revolution puts forth a history of the Oakland Community School (OCS) that was established in 1970 and operated until 1982, and Robinson claims it to be “The first comprehensive historical narrative of OCS.” The school was imagined and administered by the Black Panther Party (BPP), populated mostly by Black children, many of whom were the children of BPP members, and run mostly by Black teachers and staff. The ostensible aim of the school was to create and teach a curriculum that was in line with BPP pedagogy, which boils down to what Robinson sums up in the term “educate to liberate.”

 

The school took an earlier form known in various chapters as Intercommunal Youth Institute (IYI), which any self-respecting historian would call a BPP boot camp for children.

 

 

However, one of the big lies regarding the ITY and OCS was this idea of “not teaching what to think but teaching how to think.” In reading Robinson’s history of the OCA, I could not find a single hint of there having been any attempt to open the children’s minds to actual critical thinking in a meaningfully “holistic” way.

 

I’ve actually experienced a good many critical thinking exercises in a university setting. Well, it seems apropos to mention one of these in particular, one which placed the writings of W.E.B. Dubois against those of Booker T. Washington. In the first case, you have the argument that the freed slaves should let their educated leaders wield whatever influences they have to give them the right to sit in a theatre (as an example), while in the second case, you have Washington who argues no, that the best way for Black folk to liberate themselves from oppression is to pursue economic opportunities through vocational schools, learn to produce works of value, and over time empower themselves with money. In this way, as Booker T. insisted, they would free themselves through the power of money.

 

Isn’t that exactly what the poor Irish immigrants did? Or the Italians? Or the Germans?  Oh, and let’s not forget the Asians? More on them in a moment.

 

But Booker T. and his Tuskegee School for the Empowerment of Blacks was never mentioned by Robinson. Which is strange, since it was diametrically opposed to the OCS and the BPP and actually does in fact have a legacy of educating and liberating Black people.  

 

Robinson’s history affirms what I’m saying, but not because he says it. The truth is right there between his lines of research and facts. Anyone can see that the OCS was not a school designed for the benefit of the children and their long-term prospects for living good, productive, and prosperous lives; it was rather a project for the betterment and enhancement and future survival of the Black Panther Party (BPP), which specifically set about to disrupt the American Capitalist System. In Robinson’s own words, “Panthers created a school primarily for Black and brown children to disrupt the limitations of the state.” In other words, the BPP considered the state to be inherently racist and therefore a repressive force worthy of disruption.

 

Robinson says, “Oakland Community School staff carried on a tradition of stealin’ the meetin’ that was embedded in a tactical approach of building freedom dreams. The teachers born from that experience have worked and continue to work to build on those dreams.”

 

Excuse me, but communism isn’t freedom. Since Robinson uses the Sankofa bird, as a symbol of learning from the past to build a better future, I would be as remiss as he is if I did not mention that there is nothing in the history of communism that points toward “liberation” as an equivalent to “FREEDOM” as Black slaves would have imagined it and dreamed it. What exactly does Robinson (or the BPP) see in communism that leads him to the non sequitur that it’s a liberating ideology? In fact, it isn’t. In fact, one could make a pretty good argument that communism is just another form of slavery and perhaps even a much worse one. 

 

Excuse me, but I feel like the kid pointing to the naked emperor asking why he’s naked! When will academia begin to wake up to the lie that’s been told generationally to poor Blacks? And how long will it take before poor Blacks and poor Anyone finally realize they’ve been lied to by their welfare-state politicians and start to vote them effing out of office?

 

Robinson writes that when school founder Ericka Huggins defended her master’s thesis about OCS, her review chair said to her: “But you know it failed. It didn’t live.” But Robinson says Huggins later asserted, “I never ever think of it like that.” 

 

Of course. Isn’t that the typical response of any good communist? When challenged with the facts, they counter with denial. Robinson goes on to say, “Despite the ways the school asked the staff to do and imagine the impossible, even as the funds were rapidly depleting, I also believe that the school was not a failure.”

 

Of course, Robinson would say this. He’s brought with him to the research project a host of Black Power, Black Panther Party, and communist values (biases).

 

And what about that? The state which the BPP was working to dismantle was providing funds for their school. I just changed my mind. I will give Robinson two whole and complete stars out of five. His “research,” which is just a rehash of BPP and its communist pedagogy, has served to open my eyes once again to the abject vacuum of logic, dishonesty, and denial that forms the infrastructure of the communist/BPP/Black Power mind. 

 

All Robinson would have had to do to earn a 3-star rating from me was to add 4 simple words to his book’s subtitle. The words would be: “From the Communist Perspective.” 

 

To earn the other two stars (out of the five-star rating), he would have needed to actually do some serious and honest research and tell the truth about the real and very pathetic legacy of the communist ideology and the corrosive effect of Black Power pedagogy on the minds of young Black children. As a teacher himself, I should think he would know the powerful (detrimental) effect (on any child’s chances of prospering) of the radical indoctrination that was the curriculum of the Oakland Community School. As a researcher focussed on the literature and pedagogy of “liberatory spaces,” I should think at the very least he might have mentioned the name of Booker T. Washington and the effects of the Tuskegee School and perhaps have said a word or two about its legacy.

 

While his demographic charts show that the Blacks of Oakland fell far behind the Whites in income, he seems not to have noticed that Asians’ income surpassed that of Whites. Hmmmm. Mr. Robinson, do you think perhaps that might have something to do with the fact that Asians found prosperity in embracing the capitalist system in America and that they placed a great deal of emphasis on educating their children within American public schools (not to mention how affirmatively they instilled in their children the need to ignore their petty gripes of cultural hostility (racism) they faced, move on from past injustices that afflicted their ancestors, and work hard to seek opportunities and to prosper in spite of it? Just maybe the prosperity of the Asians had something also to do with the fact that they actually did see America as a land of golden opportunity and they didn’t grow up in the corrosive environment of schools like OCS that were run and taught by people who hated America, put uniforms on their students, grilled them in the economically nihilistic stealin’ the meetin’ pedagogy that ironically and historically destines them to a future of permanent, generational enslavement; and that is and will always be the liberatory legacy of the Black Panthers and all iterations of Black Power ideology that follow them.  My actual reading recommendation for this review is the Booker T. Washington Classics Collection, which can be found on any bookstore’s webpage.

 

In conclusion, I will give Mr. Robinson some advice. What you just read in this review is actual critical thinking as it’s taught by actual university professors. I never wrote a research paper wherein I was trying to please my professor by saying what they wanted to hear. I have never written a single word where I had in mind to please my readers. But every word of your book drips with your wish to please. It’s unbecoming.

 

As for the OCS, if only someone could do a research project who will honestly tell the sad story of why it failed, the sad story of the intellectual bankruptcy of the Black Panther (America-hating) ideology that was the inspiration for the school, and what such a school might have done to really liberate its students and to really be the best school in America for all children to learn to think critically, be tough, honest, and learn how to be successful and prosperous in a very imperfect world.