Notes on the foundation and necessity of African-Centered Education

“Every race has a soul, and the soul of that race finds expression in its institutions, and to kill those institutions is to kill the soul…No people can profit or be helped under the institutions which are not the outcome of their own character.” Edward Blyden 1903

- Khabyr Hadas

The basis of the word “education” comes from ancient Kemet and is based on the overstanding that all one needs to know is inside the self. African civilizations viewed education as the building of methods and environments to educe (bring out or draw out) the divine inner power and potential that was yet unexpressed. In African culture, the purpose of education was to help the students become more like GOD.

Our traditional educational systems reproduced and refined the mental and ethical traits--which signified the distinctive qualities of Black people, which in turn defined our purpose and maximized our hue-man functioning and potential.

Sisters and brothers, our traditional African educational methodologies and applications allowed the Black man and woman to achieve self and social sovereignty, mastery, rulership, governance, and love for self, family, and race.

The Honorable Marcus Garvey taught us that “many a man and woman was educated outside the classroom. It is something you let out, not completely take in. You are part of it, for it is natural; it is dormant simply because you will not develop it--but GOD created every man and woman with it knowingly or unknowingly to the person that possesses it – that’s the difference. Develop yours, and you become as great and full of knowledge as the other without even entering a classroom.”

Before we send our children to school this year, all Black parents must realize that the educational system of our ancestral Mother land focused on moral instruction as the essential part of learning.