JABRIL.MUHAMMAD
Study the words of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, carefully. Also study the “photo” of Mother Tynetta Muhammad I took some years ago.
I did not know she was a wife of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. I came to know that fact at the very end of 1976.
Now, study Minister Farrakhan’s words/reaction to my question very carefully.
Brother Jabril: Brother Minister, one of the most vexing problems in America, and in varying degrees throughout the earth, especially in this country, is the problem of education. What were among the ideas that you presented in this book for more educators and government to ponder in order to alleviate this vexing problem?
Minister Farrakhan: Education is an evolutionary process. Since no discipline and the scholarship of that discipline, is absolute, there is much room for growth and improvement in every field of human endeavor; mathematics, biology, chemistry, science, technology, geopolitics. Everything is evolving. But the educational system is not. It is stagnant.
As a result of stagnation, and people feeling that a Ph.D. degree has ended their search for higher knowledge, or understanding, of their discipline, then the education becomes a tool for enslaving the mind, rather than freeing the mind.
We saw from the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad that this system of education has run its course. As the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us, education is the torchlight for civilization. If that torchlight is going out and you find the educational system in revolt against itself, then the civilization spawned by that educational process is on its way out as well.
The American people and Black people in particular, need a new educational experience. That new educational experience must start with the most priceless and precious of all knowledge, which is the knowledge of self and the knowledge of God.
When you deny God in the educational process, you deny the respect and honor that is due to the real Head Master or Chancellor of all education. So this disrespect of the Creator that is found in the public school education has led now to a break down in respect for teachers; in respect for parents; in respect for law and order in this society.
So now, the seeds sown by an ineffective educational system are growing now into a destructive weed that is choking the life of the civilization and the mental desire of human beings to know more and more and more and more and more.
We find the children fascinated by the growth of technology. Fascinated, and fascinating to their parents in how quickly they grasp the technology; how quickly they move in the games that they’re playing. Then they go to school and they find the slowness of the pace of learning is such that they’re active minds–created by information and technological age-becomes now destructive to the order in the classroom.
It is not that the students are bad. It’s that the teaching; the methodology, the philosophy under girding it, have run its course. It’s time for something new and better. This is why the dropout rate is terrific. You can’t get children to stay in an environment where they are not challenged. Little children stay in front of the computer with games for hours and hours. They bother nobody. They’re not involved in mischief. They’re at their game, just playing away.
Well if education were as attractive as technology is, in making computers and games for children, then the children would love school as we did, when we were young. But time has passed and the educational system must now give way to something new and better.
I believe this is why Christ comes at the end of this system of things to declare to the world, “Behold I make all things new.” It is this scrambling of those who were the architects of the old system to try to make something new that doesn’t fit the requirements of the time that causes now a total break down.
In A Torchlight for America, we talked about a new educational system.
In closing on this point, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said to me, “As in geometry, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So, it is in education.” He said, “Why don’t you start the course where you intend to finish.
You’ll be surprised how quickly the children are able to grasp the end of the course. And you are wasting valuable time leading up to something that they could grasp if you had the mind to teach.” He said that, “At six years old, we should know what we want to do with our life.”
There’s no time for foolishness, when you look at life and the requirement and purpose of life.” So he said looking at Yakub, the father of this world, “That he finished all the schools of his day at eighteen years of age.”
So the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “The children should be graduating with a Ph.D. degree at 18 years of age.” Which means waiting until a child is six to go to school is absolutely wasting the most precious years of a child’s life; and filling those six years with foolishness and untruths and cartoons that make animals speak and whatnot.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “You should deal with truth from the very day that the child can begin to think and learn; you deal with truth, not lies. Bears don’t speak. Pigs don’t speak. Tigers don’t speak. Bunny rabbits don’t speak. So let the children see humans doing what humans do. Don’t confuse them.
Well a new educational system is what is required and unfortunately, this world will not offer it. But Allah and His Christ is offering it, and will offer it continuously until the old dies and the new takes precedent over the old.
Now, I hope that all of us will make a deeper study of Minister Farrakhan’s reaction to that question.
More next issue, Allah willing
