This historic interview of Professor William H. Watkins, produced by The League of Revolutionaries for a New America, reveals the classic problems associated with educating an historically oppressed people—when the educators descend intellectually (and sometimes physically) from the very dominator culture that produced these oppressed.

Much of this radio discussion, offered here in the kinté space as a streaming audio presentation, comes from the book (with a forward by Robin D. G. Kelley), The White Architects of Black Education. Dr. Watkins makes it perfectly clear that the No Child Left Behind Act is indeed an act, a performance staged by circus freaks endowed with the Byzantine authority to punish any federally-funded, K-12 education institution for failing standardized tests. This effectively encourages students to learn how to pass these tests and leaves these young people little time to develop the basic tools of consciousness.

Homegrown common sense (often urbanized as “street knowledge”) is indeed very powerful but street knowledge and academic discipline developed on a massive scale is utterly terrifying to our Byzantine rulers who depend on Wizard-of-Oz smoke and mirrors to scare the “barbarian” masses into submission. The matter-of-fact courage and calm demeanor of Dr. William Watkins is a resounding formal protest against this classic imperial tradition—it is quite something to hear… for yourself…