The study of controversies about the legitimacy and historical groundedness of assertions about African civilization is used to support an Afrocological teaching approach to African civilization, exploring the content of the American college curriculum. There is a historically factual basis for a holistic pedagogical approach to African…

The attempt by many urban school districts to develop African curricula creates a dilemma, because it usually places an African-centered program in a multicultural curriculum that is centered in the European-American educational tradition. Currently, some elements of an African and African-centered curriculum may be found in the multicultural…

The essays in this collection place the current Afrocentric movement in its historical context and offer alternative suggestions about how to teach African American students about their history. The first section deals with the roots of Afrocentrism, analyzes the content of Afrocentric books and curricula, and discusses the impact of Afrocentrism…

A model for a proposed African-American studies discipline is based on the assumptions that African-American experiences are worth studying, historical experiences of peoples of African descent can inform others about human issues, and distinctive historic and cultural African-American experiences exist. Five steps in a African-American studies…

Analyzes the history of the development of African-American studies as a social science and humanities discipline, and contends that the field is so new it has no history of its own. The inception of the Temple University (Pennsylvania) School of Afrocentric Scholarship marks the discipline's real birth. (SLD)

Presents examples of Afrocentrism that encourage African and African-American inclusion in the curriculum. Examines work by three Afrocentrist educators who discuss capitalist, democratic, and liberationist Afrocentrism. Each asserts the need for the connection of Afrocentrism or African and African-American history to fight racism and promote…

This essay offers reflections on Black consciousness and Afrocentrism in the United States, especially as movements in education. The paper opens by recalling the history of oppression and rejection that influences the African American heritage. Next, the essay traces some highlights in the development of ideas of race consciousness from the early…

This paper reports on the third year of a longitudinal evaluation of the Visions for Children preschool program. An early childhood education demonstration program, the Visions program aims to facilitate the intellectual development and academic achievement of African American preschool children while strengthening their self-esteem and identity…

Argues that Africana Studies can play a leadership role in the future by integrating its "scope of inquiry" with the full range of human endeavor. It explains why the field of Africana Studies needs to include science and technology, global political economy, and educational theory and praxis as areas of inquiry and intervention. (GR)

Examines questions arising from concern for Africentric and multicultural education, including the nature of diversity and the relationships among cultural hegemony, cultural diversity, and cultural pluralism. Changing conceptions of intelligence, knowledge, and education are considered in relation to the treatment of cultural and ethnic…

Discusses the maintenance and future of African-American studies within the context of contemporary intellectual ideas. The institutionalization of African-American studies and the creation of the first doctoral program in African-American studies at Temple University in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) marked the flowering of the discipline. (SLD)

Argues against using American-style multicultural education in South African higher education and suggests that transitory nation-states would first need to adopt Africentric reformism in order to recapture their value system before incorporating multiculturalism into the curriculum. The relevance of the multicultural model to South Africa and why…

Traces the historical origins of the controversy surrounding Afrocentric education versus education based on the traditional canon of the Western world to W. H. Ferris' work and his 1913 study "The African abroad or His Evolution in Western Civilization, Tracing His Development under Caucasian Milieu," which has relevance today. (SLD)

The Afrocentric curriculum in many schools tends to oversimplify history in general and African history in particular. Although Afrocentrists want a curriculum that informs and strengthens African-American students, they forget the real need to teach that Western Civilization is a truly multicultural body of knowledge, ideas, and values. (SLD)

Examined the interaction of social class and racial identity in urban school reform. Presents a case study of reform at one urban California high school which used an Afrocentric curriculum to help improve academic performance, arguing that the effort was ineffective because it failed to consider ways in which poverty influenced the identities of…