Emancipatory Narratives: Rewriting the Master Script in the School Curriculum

Abstract

The current debate in public schools over curricular knowledge pits the constructed supremacy of Western cultural knowledge against the inherent primacy of the multiple and collective origins of knowledge. Fundamentally, this debate over the centrality or marginality of race, class, and gender groups in the production of knowledge (hooks, 1991; Wallace, 1989; West, 1989; Wynter, 1990a) is not over the relative importance of historical figures and events, nor is it over the potential impact of the curricular experience on self-esteem or the modeling of race, gender, and class heroes and heroines. Rather, it is a debate over emancipatory versus hegemonic scholarship and the maintenance or disruption of the Eurocentrically bound that public schools currently impart to their students. In education, the master script refers to classroom practices, pedagogy, and instructional materials-as well as to the theoretical paradigms from which these aspects are constructed-that are grounded in Eurocentric and White supremacist ideologies. Master scripting silences multiple voices and perspectives, primarily by legitimizing dominant, White, upper-class, male voicings as the standard knowledge students need to know. All other accounts and perspectives are omitted from the master script unless they can be disempowered through misrepresentation. Thus, content that does not reflect the dominant voice must be brought under control, mastered, and then reshaped before it can become part of the master script. Master scripts exist in all disciplines. For example, through the denigration and later appropriation of Kemetic history and culture by Europeans, disciplines such as science, mathematics, and medicine as well as literature, history, the arts, and philosophy have been and are denied their African origins (Bernal, 1987, 1989, 1991; Diop, 1974, 1987; James, 1954/1988). This denial results in the excision of African-informed epistemology from historical thought and current practices of these disciplines. Since master scripts are monovocal expressions, the few inclusions of African content are usually misrepresentations. This appropriation and distortion violates basic standards of academic scholarship; yet, before