Book review and commentary from an African perspective The Mis-education of the Negro by Dr Carter G. Woodson

Abstract

Carter Godwin Woodson’s, The Mis-education of the Negro, is a treatise that addresses the deeply entrenched structural and institutional forms of racism that were characteristic (and in some ways still are) of the United States education system, and thus miseducated, rather than educated Black people. The present work does not exactly fit the mould of a book review, but aims to draw lessons from the book that are still relevant to Black people around the world, and to those in Africa in particular. The goal of this article is to demonstrate how, albeit in a somewhat different but no less significant way, the African scholar of today is likewise profoundly miseducated, and to suggest that African scholars need a concrete, well-executed programme to reshape their educational systems so that they become more relevant to Black people.