Election Blues: How Educators Will Overcome Trump's Agenda for Public Education

Election Blues: How Educators Will Overcome Trump’s Agenda for Public Education

After the election, many begrudgingly came to grips with the Colt 45 being marketed and sold by the alt-right as the new Orange Crush 47. They did not improve the brand, leaving many of us with bitter “B@tch” faces.

This America is our truth. This home of the free and the brave is who we are. We make ourselves miserable trying to change what we cannot control. The election is over. Kamala did not win. But she still inspires us.

True freedom for most humankind is an illusion—a magic trick at the bottom of a box of Lucky Charms.

 Many educators are experiencing a sense of disappointment and hopelessness. Rightfully so, we are returning to an administration that deems public education as “Public Enemy Number 1 (1, 1, 1).

As a rebel educator, in my Joker’s voice, I calmly say, “Why so serious?!”

Ever since Brown vs. the Board of Education, all melanated children felt Mike Tyson’s gut punch from an education system that measures their worth by how easily Black and Brown kids assimilate and view their culture through imperialist eyes.

They banned us from reading.

Then they banned us from going to their schools.

They banned us from reading the books that told these stories.

Were you expecting progress? Did we believe our education system is bridging the achievement gap?

Our education has culturally and academically defunded the poor and marginalized for decades.

Yet, we, rebel educators, will make something out of nothing, especially those of us who learned to make lemons out of lemonade and music from two turntables and a microphone.

Let us see this challenge as an opportunity. We must blow the dust off of the vinyl and remember “How We Got Over.” (Can’t you hear the sweet moans of Mahalia Jackson)

Allow me to press rewind. I recall the first Africans surviving the Middle Passage with only faint memories of drum and song. Across shark-invested waters, they reminisced of the melodies of call and response. Sadly, the so-called Elites shackled them in ignorance, especially when they stepped foot in the New World, a world that bound them in chains.

However, the flying African spirit is not earthbound. It remembers the call-and-response and applies this knowledge to education. The concept is EACH ONE, TEACH ONE. It means that if I know, I teach you, and you teach someone else. The dominant culture used this concept to form its ideas about the learning pyramid, but that is another story.

We must use EACH ONE, TEACH ONE, and apply it to HIP-HOP THERAPEUTIC WRITING CYPHERS, creating holistic learning to heal and build.

Here is my call to action as a rebel educator, regardless of race, creed, or color.

Let us think about teaching outside the oppressive four walls of education. We can access the internet and social media to create our schools of thought. Let us continue our tradition of teaching in homes, churches, spoken-word spots, and hip-hop cyphers to supplement a dying public education system.

I look forward to building with any REBEL EDUCATOR through DadCypher Edutainment. Join my email list at DadCypherEdutainment.com. Let us focus on building liberated workshops to educate our youth.

Best,

The XL Professor

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