ACS ITHACA COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

An Alternative Speech for an Alternative School

M.A.Jamal

Ona Move!

        I thank you all at the Alternative Community School (ACS),  the graduating class, teachers, parents, family and administrators,  for your gracious invitation. It seems fitting for an alternative  speaker to share some thoughts with an alternative school, like ACS.

        From what I’ve read about it, ACS is most remarkable; it must  be so when they use Howard Zinn’s classic work "A People’s History of  the United States" as a main text! Just imagine if this excellent  text was used in mainstream schools, instead of in “alternative”  schools! How many millions of American kids would have a real  grounding in history? How many would know about why there was a  U.S. Civil War?

        Quite recently, the U.S. Dept. of Education released a report  on the abilities of American students to understand history. If the  report is correct, millions of junior and senior high school kids, an  estimated 89% of those tested, could not handle history at their own  grade level! One member of the test’s governing board, historian  Diane Ravitch, was quoted in published reports, describing this lack  of historical knowledge as “truly abysmal.” Again, according to this  report, which tested some 29,000 kids in 4th, 8th and 12th grades,  only 10% of American school students performed at grade level, and  only 1% performed at advanced levels.

        Now, I have no way of knowing, but I’d dare to bet that very  few of those in the 89 percentile used Zinn’s "A People’s History of  the United States" as a required text.

        For these millions of kids represented as failing even grade  level history, the subject probably filled them with dread, or worse,  drudgery. They were required to remember mounds of meaningless  data, dates, names and places of great men, great wars, and great  empires. For most of them, history was as remote as the moon.

        Zinn’s People’s History, however, deals with the lives and  struggles of real people, working people, people of color, women,  and how they tried to make democracy a reality, not just words.  Sometimes, many times, they failed, because of the powerful  confluence of government and business, yet, they persevered,  as many people do today; like many of your parents, many of  your teachers, and many of you.

        For Zinn, and historians like him, history is the study of  popular and social movements, to transform their societies. It is  not the story, from the top, but dozens, no hundreds of stories,  from the broad bottom, where most of us are. It is bringing in  the histories of African-Americans, Mexican-Americans,  female Americans, Japanese-Americans, poor folks, soldiers,  students -- all of us -- to tell us all, American history.

        The teachers and administrators at ACS are to be  commended for their vision, and this broad, alternative example  should be expanded, to strengthen, enrich and refresh the  American educational mainstream.

        How can it be, in the richest nation on earth, that almost  90% of its students cannot perform at grade level?

        What does this say about the government’s commitment to  education? About how most of the nation’s students have a “totally  abysmal” grasp of the history of the nation that they will soon  inherit?

        The government does not prize its schools; nor does it  privilege the learning of its young people.

        For, while higher learning is about the best in the world,  and competitive with that of other nations, primary education is  left to languish on the vine.

        A society determines the worth of people in its society by  rewarding their labor with pay. If that is so, why are prison guards  paid more than school teachers, and in some cases, more than  college professors?

        School teachers receive virtually all of the criticism of the  failures of the public schools, while the system gets a bare  portion of necessary resources.

        While Zinn’s People’s History may be required in some  classes at ACS, I wonder if I might suggest another? The writer,  Jonathan Kozol, has written many remarkable works, but his recent  "Savage Inequalities" tells a story of schools, in today’s America,  which are windowless, or with human waste running like a river  down the hallways.

        Isn’t this the kind of system that is badly in need of  alternatives?

        ACS is an important beginning.

        Perhaps it can light a way for others to follow.

        I congratulate the graduates, and all of you, for your time  

                                        May your futures be fruitful;

                                                Thank you! Ona Move!

                                                Long live John Africa

Mumia Abu-Jamal

© copyright 2002 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

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