Education is in our hands. Let us hold hands
Chi Creations Black History Month Experience 2008
My son is in year two. One October morning, after getting dressed he came to me and explained how people came to be here. The conversation went a little like this:
Chukwu: Mum I know how we got here!
I am wondering if they had some sex education lesson I was unaware of. It is the time when those kind of questions are asked.
Chi: How do you know?
Chukwu: They told us at school.
Chi: Really, please tell me.
Chukwu: Well there was the spirit mother and the spirit father and they came down to earth.
Not sex education, storytelling. Okay! This sounds amazing the school is talking about African spirituality.
Chukwu: They wanted children, so they decided to make children from clay. The ones that were in the fire for a little bit came out white, the ones in for a bit longer were brown and those in too long were black!
In that moment many feeling ran through my veins. I could hear the playground jibes. my ancestors possessed me, I jumped up, my strong Igbo (Nigerian) accent bellowing from my lungs, filled all corners of the house as I expressed myself.
Chi: What are these people teaching my son. These foolish ignorant people. Can they not see their nonsense. Hhhaaaaaaaaaaayyyyiii!!!
I marched around the house at critical level. I saw my son’s face he tought he had done something wrong. I calmed down and explained how proud I am that he tells me these things. Now I would have to do something about it.
We marched to school. I looked for the teacher concerned to confront her but she was nowhere to be found. It was only a matter of time. Coincidently I had previously arranged to have a meeting with her later concerning my son’s progress at school. In the meantime I told everyone and anyone why I was looking to speak to the teacher concerned.
By the time the meeting came around she knew. She was sat with a student teacher who had received my wrath earlier on in the day. We spoke about Chukwu’s work and how he was doing calmly. She praised him, saying how advance he was. Compared him to his sister who had also had the same teacher. I complained that the work was not challenging for him. She then decided that he did need to work harder in certain areas. I just looked at her hard. Then she said she had heard I was not happy about the book they had chosen to do assembly on that year for black history month. She told me she liked the story.
Chi: Who wrote the story?
She proudly showed me the book.
Teacher: It is a West African folktale
I looked at the title – The fire children - I looked at the name of the author.
Chi: Eric Maddern is not a West African name.
Teacher: It has been retold
Chi: It has been retold wrong.
Teacher: It is a creation story
Chi: There were no white people at the dawning of creation.
The book is now off the reading list. Be careful what our children read
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