Posted August 22, 2008 to Education News | Section Home | Print

Reading is Revolution

By Julianne Malveaux

Students need cheerleaders! They need grown folks to say that the act of learning is affirmative, important, and, especially revolutionary.

As young people return to school, whether at the K-12 level or in higher education, they need to understand that their search for knowledge is embraced and supported by a community that not only wants them to succeed, but that is also prepared to invest in their success. I write from the cutting experience of seeing young women get discouraged because of the loan load they must shoulder to matriculate, and because of the challenges they face searching for knowledge.

I wish that I could raise enough scholarship money for every one of my Bennett students to attend our college and emerge debt-free, but I've not been able to do that just yet. I implore my friends, colleagues, and partners in the educational endeavor to help make matriculation affordable, and I also encourage friends to deal with the higher education policy that makes it so daunting for students to attend college.

Reading is revolution. North Carolina was one of several southern states that made it illegal to teach slaves to read. The General Assembly of the State of North Carolina passed a law, in the 1830-31 session that reads, in part, "Whereas the teaching of slaves to read and write has a tendency to excite dissatisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion, to the manifest injury of the citizens of the state: Therefore,(1) Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, that any free person who shall hereafter teach or attempt to teach, any slave within this State to read or write, the use of figures excepted, or shall give to or sell to such slave any books or pamphlets, shall be liable to indictment in any court of record in this state having jurisdiction thereof, and upon conviction shall, at the discretion of the court, if a white man or women, be fined not less than one hundred dollars, not more than two hundred dollars or imprisonment; and if a free person of color, shall be fined, imprisoned, or whipped at the discretion of the court, not exceeding thirty nine lashes, nor less than twenty lashes." In some states, slaves who learned to read were blinded. Those who taught them to read risked whipping or worse. Why were slaveholders so afraid of reading slaves? Think of the words, "to excite dissatisfaction" and what they mean.

Let them roll over your tongue. It's a nice way of saying that ignorance is bliss. It's a way of saying if you read the Constitution ("all men are created equal") in your slave state, you'll start asking questions.

It means that if words make you want to soar while your feet (or your mind) are shackled in chains, you aren't going to be a happy slave.Knowledge is power. That was true during slavery and it is also true now.

Knowledge is power, and there are those who count on our not knowing to empower themselves at our detriment. It's why we tell folks to "read the fine print". It's why the mortgage lending and foreclosure crisis has hit the African-American community harder than almost any other.

There is power in the written word, and whenever the written word is eschewed, power is forfeited.When the repressive North Carolina law was passed, reading, learning to read, teaching someone to read was a revolutionary action, an act designed, in the words of the law to "excite dissatisfaction". This excitement of dissatisfaction, the will to read, to break the law to read, were the very seeds harvested when former slaves sat in the unpaved basement of St. Matthews church and planned the development of Bennett College for Women and for so many historically black colleges and universities.

This excitement of dissatisfaction must be the foundation of our embrace of excellence and equality. It ought to touch us in our bones. I want someone to touch every young person who is returning to school to tell them that reading is revolution, that exciting dissatisfaction is honorable work, and that we rise when we embrace our space and our place. Our students need cheerleaders!

We need to excite dissatisfaction in a nation that has not yet embraced the possibility of positive learning for everyone.

Dr. Julianne Malveaux is president of Bennett College for Women. She can be reached at presoffice@bennett.edu.