We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom

Blame Game

Love writes that educators should be attentive to their students’ lived experiences. Students need guidance navigating their realities, which include poverty, police brutality, sexual violence, and foreign wars. Assigning blame for societal ills is normal. However, the conclusions teachers draw impact students and their families. According to Love, teachers must strive to understand the root of students’ problems—namely, systemic racism.

Teacher Education Gap

Abolitionist teachers must love and understand Black children and their history. Love writes that most of her students at the University of Georgia are white women who know little about Blackness and the realities of being Black in America. Like other education students, these women have preconceived notions about children of color. Teaching programs must address the teacher education gap comprehensively. Future teachers need more than a single diversity course to understand poverty, failing schools, unemployment, racism, and racial trauma. They must understand the systemic underpinnings of racial injustice and suffering, both inside and outside schools. Moreover, they should be taught positive aspects of Black culture, such as resistance, art, humanity, and joy. Courses about African, African American, Latinx, and Caribbean culture may be helpful in this regard. Emphasizing beauty and joy, alongside hardship, humanizes communities of color and helps combat racial stereotypes.