The Worldbuilders: Pedagogy, Practice, and Politics in Black Power-era Independent Schools

Abstract

Many scholars of social movements have examined the role that educational spaces may play in starting or sustaining social activism (Sang and Simpson 2019, Hult 2022, Heidemann 2020, Isaac et al. 2020). Despite this research, few scholars have considered the processes by which pedagogy and practices within those spaces are influenced by and can influence the politics or strategies of social movements. In this dissertation, I closely examine two historically important cases of schools founded and run by Black Power activists in the 1970’s and 1980’s: the Oakland Community School (OCS), run by the Black Panther Party, and the New Concept Development Center (NCDC), run by the Institute of Positive Education in Chicago. Guided by the question, “Why did these schools develop the pedagogies and the practices they chose?” I find the founders, leaders, and teachers at both schools engaged a process of enacting social change through an educational space which I call worldbuilding. I draw on an analysis of over 600 archival documents, photos, and other material, as well as 11 interviews with former teachers, students, and parents of the OCS and the NCDC. Worldbuilding as a process has three stages: first, a movement activist or leader makes an accurate assessment of the challenges that they or members of their group face in society. Second, one imagines and creates new practices and approaches to better equip themselves to face those challenges. Third, one reflects on what endured from implementing those new approaches, in both the short- and long-term. This theory of worldbuilding both expands how scholars of social movements analyze the role of educational spaces in social movements and offers insight for educators and community activists in classrooms today.