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• 1 2023-11-06T08:41:25-08:00 History of Liberation Schools 16 plain 2023-11-13T17:32:52-08:00

  In June 1969 The Black Panther Party opened its first liberation school in Berkeley, California, named “The Intercommunal Youth Institute aka IYI, serving African American elementary and middle school students. The success of the Free Breakfast Programs in Oakland encouraged Black Panthers to involve children more in sponsored activities which eventually was replaced by the liberation school. The idea and motivation for the first liberation school was central around the fifth tenant of the Ten-Point Program which expressed the need for quality education to African Americans of all ages. The first reason for opening a liberation school was to provide a different style of education that was not based on systematic traditional teaching methods. Secondly, the school provided a safe place for members' daughters and sons while they were organizing the party. While some parents made the choice to enroll their children to a liberation school, some were forced due to their children being expelled from public schools. The liberation schools curriculum involved basic academic subjects like math, language arts, science, and history, but also new subjects like karate and meditation. Subjects like math and science were very similar to public schools as concepts are based on facts and evidence; however, subjects like language arts and social studies were very different. An article named Vanguards in the Classroom: History and Lessons from the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School, by the author named Abioye Akin states, “ Recovering how writing pedagogy was approached at the liberation schools is imperative as it provides a model of successful teaching in Black communities: not only did OCS win awards for its curriculum and instruction from the California Board of Education, but the school also prepared students to address social injustices and uplift their communities in ways they may or may not have considered were it not for the instruction they received at the OCS(Vanguards in the Classroom, Akin, Abioye, 2021).” The writing structure at the liberation schools encouraged students to reflect on their social situations as they were inspired to participate in many different writing exercises like poems, plays, letters to imprisoned party members, newspaper articles, journals, and other more traditional forms of academic writing. Students were also encouraged to write reports of historical or current events and analyze them. School leaders eventually realized that students needed to learn to communicate using the language of “the system” to fight their oppressor. The politically charged instructional methods decreased as the institute was renamed the Oakland Community School and led by a new school director named Ericka Huggins. Ericka Huggins was a Black Panther woman who held the leadership position as the Director of the Oakland Community school from the years of 1973 to 1981. The change in leadership influenced the expansion in curriculum as subjects like political education, physical education, art, and music were included. Despite the pedagogical shift,  racial and economic oppression never fully disappeared in the curriculum. When the school first opened pedagogy was deeply influenced by the party's ideology and beliefs, however after the change in name and leadership, pedagogy was deeply influenced by critical thinking, self-discovery, and self-mastery.