The Mis-Education of the Negro was originally published in 1933 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson. According to his thesis explained in the book, African-Americans were being culturally indoctrinated, rather than taught, in American schools.
Dr. Woodson showed how the weakness of Euro-centric based curriculums has failed to include African American history and culture. This system mis-educates African American students, failing to prepare them for success and to give them an adequate sense of who they are within the system that they must live. Woodson provides many strong solutions to the problems he identifies. A must-read for anyone working in the education field.
“When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his “proper place” and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.” –Dr. Carter G. Woodson
An Excerpt: Chapter 1, “The Seat of the Trouble”
The “educated Negroes” have the attitude of contempt toward their own people because in their own as well as in their mixed schools Negroes are taught to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton and to despise the African. Of the hundreds Negro high schools recently examined by an expert in the United States Bureau of Education only eighteen offer a course taking up the history of the Negro, and in most of the Negro colleges and universities where the Negro is thought of, the race is studied only as a problem or dismissed as of little consequence.”
A Teacher’s Guide is available here.