PROMOTING POSITIVE ROLE MODELS TO YOUNG BLACK MALES IN EDUCATION
We need a massive teacher recruitment campaign
Lee Jasper in his conference speech to London Schools and the Black Child IV said:
It will take over fifty years to achieve an appropriate level of BME [black and minority ethnic] teachers within London’s schools. That is unacceptable. And that’s why we need a massive teacher recruitment campaign to bring about radical change.
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It was Malcolm X who said that ‘education is the passport to the future. For tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today’. There is no doubt in my mind that the crisis that we are facing today and for the years to come is only the tip of the iceberg. It is the opening chapter for a much greater tragedy for generations to come for which our children and their children’s children will be ill-equipped and ill-prepared.
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We need a higher discourse and strategy for action. One which clearly articulates this political economy and which is underpinned by a need to pursue the social, cultural, political and educational development of our children – by any means necessary. Currently, the system sees our children as young, gifted, but black. We cannot allow London’s schools to become the feeder centres for Her Majesty’s Prisons, the mental health system, pupil referral units, some of the most deprived inner city areas and housing estates. We need a radical shift in our policy and our practice.
