THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY AND EDUCATION, A BRIEF OVERVIEW
(Radical joy: scenes from the Oakland Community School (photographs by Bob Fitch)
The Oakland Community School arose out of a need articulated in the fifth point of the Panthers’ original Ten-Point Platform, written by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966: “We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.”
In a short TV segment on the OCS, Newton explained (in an interview with a young OCS student) how, during his time in Oakland public school system as a child, he was poorly served in all ways by his schools — forced to learn a whitewashed version of history, punished by teachers for his curiosity, and deprived of access to nutritious food.
The Children’s House, the Intercommunal Youth Institute, and the Oakland Community School sought to remedy these deficiencies of the surrounding public school system and offer a positive alternative. As Ericka Huggins underlines in her oral history, the OCS sought to give students the opportunity to gain a knowledge of themselves, their history, and their place in society through student-centered education, critical thinking, and real world learning.
It represented an evolution, or departure of sorts, from the Panthers’ earlier schools — the Children’s House and the Intercommunal Youth Institute, where the children at the schools were the children of Party members and were asked to learn about Panther ideology and wear black berets and uniforms; they were learning, in every sense, to become future Panther leaders. The OCS built upon the curriculum and approach of these earlier schools, while also taking in a wider range of students and expanding its curriculum.
Scenes from the Oakland Community School from the same TV program contrast sharply with the experience of Oakland public schools that Newton detailed. In one classroom, young students learn about settler-colonialism and Native American history. Curiosity and critical thinking are highly encouraged, not punished. And throughout the school day, students are fed three nutritious meals by teachers who care for them.
The curriculum and approach of OCS may no longer have centered on the direct inculcation of Panther ideology, but the school realized, in perhaps unexpected ways, the fifth point of the Panther’s original Ten-Point Program: the liberation of “Black and other oppressed people” through alternative forms of education.
Thus, though the curriculum and approach of OCS no longer centered on the Panthers, it still furthered the fifth point of the Panthers’ Ten Point Program: the liberation of “Black and other oppressed people” through education was the school’s driving force.
