A Radical Doctrine: Abolitionist Education in Hard Times. Issue 3 (4th May 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dunn, Damaris C.; Chisholm, Alex; Spaulding, Elizabeth; Love, Bettina L.
• Is Part Of: Educational studies. Volume 57:Issue 3(2021)
• Page Start: 211
• Page End: 223
• Publication Date: 2021-05-04
• Subjects: Education -- Book reviews -- Periodicals; Education -- Periodicals; Éducation -- Recensions de livres -- Périodiques; Éducation -- Périodiques; Electronic journals; 370
• DOI: 10.1080/00131946.2021.1892684
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0013-1946

Abstract

Abstract: In the United States of America, the year 2020 will be remembered as a year of sorrow, infection, greed, violence, loss, devastation, protest, resistance, and death. The tragedies of this year were made possible by America's long history and obsession with anti-Blackness, racism, white supremacy, violence, and capitalism. America's schools, populated by Black, Brown, and Indigenous children for centuries, have ensured the wrath of this rage. With this amount and scale of oppression, we argue that there is no need to (re)imagine or reform schools; instead, we need to abolish schools with a radical doctrine. We use the word radical as civil rights and community organizer icon Ella Baker defined it: "[R]adical in its original meaning—getting down to and understanding the root cause. It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you change that system." A Radical Doctrine: Abolitionist Education in Hard Times establishes a set of principles needed to abolish schools based on radical joy, radical trust, radical imagination, and radical disruption.