[Note: immediately after I presented a public comment at the 2/7/23 Duval County Public School Board Meeting, a DCPS staff member approached me to ask if I was aware of the Black history offerings in Duval Schools. Afterwards, I was heartened to discover about the County’s African American History Initiative, which provides an opportunity for students to study about and help generate course material for the school system.]
In this article, I express my concern about the current trajectory of education in Florida in terms of Black history, as well as some ideas on how to correct course. The Governor recently blocked an Advanced Placement Course in African American studies which was subsequently reintroduced with major topics and people deleted from the course. In addition, new Florida laws are compelling teachers to cover up or remove books until content specialists can review them, but this has created a huge backlog due to understaffing. One book presently not cleared to be shared, at least at the first grade level, is The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. While this situation cannot be turned around overnight, the great historian Arnold Toynbee, urges us “not to be taken in by the superficial aspects of history, but rather to look to the “slower, impalpable, imponderable movements that work below the surface and penetrate to the depths.” [1]
The Florida Legislature and Governor’s effort to rigidly control educational content is misguided. One of the greatest qualities of human beings is the ability to be self-critical, to continually take a fresh look at our thoughts, words and actions, and evaluate how they are steering our life. Being a professional musician I note that just as dissonance in music, a kind of harmonic tension, leads to a desire for consonance or resolution, so can the discomfort that arises when we encounter perspectives different from ours and when others experience our familiar perspective as being foreign to them awaken a mutual desire to grow and appreciate our diversity.
In that regard, I am reminded of the parable of the elephant and the blind men. [2]
A group of blind men hear that a strange animal called an elephant has arrived in town, and rush to encounter it. Curious, each inspects it with his hands. The person who touches the trunk thinks it is like a thick snake, another who touches an ear concludes it is like a fan, a third who touches its leg concludes it is a pillar like a tree-trunk, another places his hand upon its side and perceives that it “is a wall”, yet another who feels its tail, describes it as a rope, and the last man, who feels its tusk, believes it is hard and smooth like a spear.
Later, in conversation, the blind men learn of each other’s various perspectives, and realize that each is in possession of only a part of the truth.. Each person’s experience is limited, but by remaining respectful of and open to the experiences of their colleagues, they all acquire a much fuller grasp of the truth.
I fear that in its actions, the Florida legislature is ignoring “the elephant in the room,” the gross disparities that plague our state. As we are in the midst of Black History Month, it is important to acknowledge these disparities, such as the fact reported by the ACLU in 2020 that “racism and discrimination are prevalent in Florida’s criminal justice system and the disparities in Florida are greater than those across the nation,”[3] and that in 2021, researcher found that “Florida’s health care system performs much better for whites and Asian Americans than it does for Black, Latinx, and Native American residents.”[4]
The philosopher David Norton described liberality as “the cultivated disposition to recognize and appreciate truths and values other than one’s own.” Reminiscent of the parable of the elephant and the blind men, Norton argues that “ Nonexclusivity means that [having] good reasons for [embracing our own] beliefs and patterns of conduct …[does] not preclude the possibility that alternative beliefs and patterns of conduct are likewise supportable by [other] good reasons….“ The ultimate truth about anything is the composite of alternative aspects of truth about that thing, as disclosed in complementary alternative valid perspectives upon that thing.” (pp. 83-4)[5]
While enrolled in a course offered by Depaul University’s Value Creating Education for Global Citizenship program, I learned that a vigorous debate exists in academia on whether or not to teach contentious historical events. Scholars sharing the view held by our legislature generally believe that we should let bygones be bygones. They maintain that we should avoid studying such events or the individuals associated with them so we do not reignite old wounds and thereby interfere with the need to move past them. Instead, they hold, we should simply learn about and appreciate the unique contributions of the various cultures.
Scholar Marianna Papastephanou is a champion of the opposing perspective. She holds[6] that we need to find the middle ground between “excessive and obsessive memory of the past, on the one hand, and loss of historical memory,” on the other. She notes that “History …nourishes many of our misconceptions, expectations, feelings and opinions about others,” [and] she argues that sidestepping difficult events neglects the truth that “the I and the Other have never really been disengaged… [because such] entanglement of histories and cultures manifest in the…[presently unfolding] dimension of cultural encounters,” They include “[not only] an exchange of cultural material but also violence, aggression and pain…. point[ing] to… responsibilities and obligations, of one culture towards the other.” Conflicts “do not belong only to the past so long as the debt they created remains still unpaid.”
She is confident that [borrowing from Paul Ricoeur], thoughtfully taught, history enables the past to be constructively revised by the opposing parties as they become aware of one another’s “narrative identities and [thereby] enable “promises of [reconciliation from] the past which have not been kept’ to finally be realized. (Ricoeur, 1996, p. 9).
Forgiveness [helps ease] pent up emotions and unleashes “the positive potentialities of [day to day] encounters. It promises a better future.”
I am convinced that we need to create a world in which liberality is widely honored, and bequeath it to our children.
[1] Civilization 213).Toynbee, Arnold J. Civilization on Trial. New York: Oxford UP, 1948
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant?wprov=sfla1
[3] https://www.aclufl.org/en/news/racial-disparities-floridas-criminal-justice-system-are-shameful
[4] https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2021-11-19/a-report-from-the-commonwealth-fund-highlights-racial-inequities-in-floridas-health-care-system
[5] Norton, D. (1996). Imagination, Understanding, and the Virtue of Liberality. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
[6] Papastephanou, M. (2002). Arrows not yet fired: Cultivating fosmopolitanism through education.Journal of Philosophy of Education, 36(1), 69-86.