One World Archives is small fries compared to individuals, and organizations that want to help Morris Brown College. We wanted to make our on-line course management system available to the college--no charge--and to train a cadre of instructors (again at no charge). We developed a proposal with timetables and cash-flow projections. After a flurry of rhetorical good will chats with school administrators, our offer was allowed to fall through the cracks. That was three years ago.
Because we are singularly "Hard-Headed Negroes," we made our proposal to a new group of academics at the school. A slightly embellished proposal, cash flow projections, an elaboration on how training would work were presented. And, again, nothing came of our efforts. That was a year ago.
It needs to be said, that everyone we dealt with truly and dearly loves Morris Brown College and wants to see it succeed. But what was and is also true is that those in charge display a remarkable absence of educational vision. Educational vision? What's that? Vision concerns purpose, need and methods. And from what we can tell, those in charge of Morris Brown's educational mission are determined to return to the good old days. That's never explicitly stated--indeed, nothing is educationally explicitly stated. We were shown a ragged collection of ideas that diminished the outstanding academic rigor and innovation that has historically been part of Morris Brown's mission. We volunteered to help develop a curriculum--no charge and, ultimately, no response.
Certainly, Morris Brown College has had to historically contend with all ranges of economic challenges, and uneven support from institutional and governmental agencies. But that history does not explain the current vision lacuna.
Since losing its accreditation, MBC has lurched from one fund-raiser to the next without putting forward an educational vision that takes advantage of a very clear set of educational needs among the marginalized communities it has historically served. And none of this would have cost great sums of money: a mixture of public access software, social networks, and technology partnerships could have been paired with a problem-based educational model that built its curriculum around concrete issues facing various communities. With imagination, that curriculum could be fashioned to meet the needs of the SACS accreditation agency. The outcome of such an education would be products (papers, discussions, "inventions," etc.) that would go directly to solving problems. Collaboration, the ability to create and navigate learning communities, improvisation, are all part of a knowledge ecology that is consistent with what we were proposing and what many forward thinkers have intimated as needed for American education to be competitive. Instead of grabbing this opportunity, MBC has sought a return to the past.
The kind of educational vision OWA proposed is alluded to in Tom Friedman's "The World is Flat," and, most profoundly, it is a kind of education that is consistent with the best traditions of African World history. Obviously this is a nascent educational vision (and clearly not the only one) but it is a vision that might still resuscitate, heal, nurture and grow the MBC patient.
The absence of an articulated educational vision is softened by the loving sincerity of its supporters, but sincerity without vision is more of the same, and more of the same (because the "world do move") is actually a slow march into the past and into darkness.
Perhaps it is not too late for change.....
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