Inside the Classroom

Arinóla Bejide

One of the defining moments where I realized a rift in thinking had been during a discussion within my English class my sophomore year of high school. My teacher had introduced us to our newest novel for the semester, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Before we were given our assigned text for the week, we had a sort of pre-huddle to brace ourselves for what was to come. We engaged in a conversation about our views of the ‘West’ and the other spheres of land surrounding us.

My peers threw out words that were synonymous with modern, ‘advanced,’ technologically ‘ahead,’ and other phrases that rang to me, as domination. It seemed as though they had been given this idea that America ranked the highest on this hierarchical chart of greatness and as I went through my high school years, I learned that this idea echoed within many other classrooms.

Earlier, we had discussed CRT (Critical Race Theory) and its importance due to its power to uncover racially oppressive power structures. With this experience, it’s easy to see those same structures materialize inside of the classroom and inside of the peers around me. America floats around our heads as the pinnacle of civilization: great in our several forms of infrastructure, great in our cultural imprint. But while America has a huge footing in economic and social spheres, moralism does not.

In an article we dissected in class, The Purpose of Education, King states that ‘the function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.’ Why is it that our systems of education have designed us to believe that our nation is free of sin? Why have legal barriers been placed to bury the very reasons we have become so great?

Colonialism is the glaring theme we are given in Things Fall Apart. And while British colonialism had its greatest influence in Nigeria. American Imperialism has taken effect in many other countries and is an example that should be pulled to question this country’s true foundation. The concept of race and discrimination based on ‘biological differences’ is modern in itself and has survived in this nation by embedding itself into our institutions.

Similar to postcolonial theories, CRT highlights how oppression is able to breathe because of structures that are bigger than one individual. The classroom should serve as the first arena to combat disjointed ideas of our relationship between race and domination. Teachers should be granted the opportunity to pinpoint and critique falsities in our written history therefore, students are able to see how many of those falsities have existed and survived past historical periods of time.

Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from fiction. — MLK