Who Controls the Education?

I recently watched a program about Canada’s residential school system, and it left me thinking about a much larger question: Who controls the education of a people, and what happens when children are taught a history that disconnects them from their own identity? For more than 150 years, the Canadian government and churches operated residential schools where more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children were forcibly removed from their families. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation describes these institutions as tools of assimilation in which children experienced widespread physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.

The Canadian residential-school system was particularly devastating because Indigenous children were separated from their families and communities and placed into institutions designed to assimilate them. Their languages, traditions, cultures, and identities were attacked rather than respected. The purpose was not simply to provide children with an education; education became part of a larger effort to transform Indigenous children into something the government and churches believed they should become. That history demonstrates the enormous power an institution can have when it controls what children are taught about themselves and their people.

But there is another part of this story that deserves attention: Indigenous history did not begin when Europeans arrived in North America. Native peoples had been living throughout these lands for thousands of years before the creation of the United States or Canada. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian maintains collections representing more than 12,000 years of Indigenous history and more than 1,200 Indigenous cultures throughout the Americas. The Wampanoag, for example, have archaeological evidence of living in their northeastern homelands for at least 12,000 years.

That means the history of this land cannot honestly begin with Columbus, the Pilgrims, or the founding of the United States. Long before those events, Indigenous societies had developed sophisticated systems of government, agriculture, trade, diplomacy, spirituality, environmental knowledge, art, architecture, and technology. In the Eastern Woodlands, for example, extensive trade networks existed thousands of years ago, while complex societies later constructed monumental earthworks and large settlements. On the Northwest Coast, Native peoples developed sophisticated economies, extensive trade networks, social systems, ceremonial traditions, and artistic practices over thousands of years.

The same issue exists when we discuss African history. African history did not begin with slavery. Africa is the continent on which humanity’s deepest evolutionary history is found, and African societies developed complex cultures and civilizations thousands of years before the modern Atlantic slave trade. The Smithsonian’s collections and scholarship document African history stretching from societies before agriculture through the development of technology, commerce, ironworking, and major civilizations. Ancient Nubia and Kush, Egypt, Ethiopia, Carthage, Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Great Zimbabwe, and numerous other societies demonstrate that Africa was never simply a continent waiting for Europe to arrive and give it civilization.

Consider the intellectual and cultural accomplishments of these societies. The history of Africa includes sophisticated systems of government, mathematics, architecture, agriculture, metallurgy, medicine, philosophy, literature, religion, scholarship, and international commerce. The Mali Empire became a major center of trade and learning, while cities such as Timbuktu became associated with scholarship and manuscript traditions. Yet many African-American students encounter African history primarily in connection with slavery, colonialism, or the civil-rights struggle. Those subjects are essential, but they represent only a fraction of a much larger story.

This becomes particularly important when discussing African-American children. An African-American child should learn about slavery and racism because those realities are fundamental parts of American history. But that child should also learn that their ancestral continent contained civilizations, scholars, artists, engineers, farmers, merchants, rulers, warriors, philosophers, and intellectual traditions long before Europeans arrived in the Americas. Likewise, Indigenous children should not have to encounter their history primarily through the lens of European exploration, conquest, treaties, removal, or residential schools. They deserve to see thousands of years of their peoples’ accomplishments and cultural survival.

This is where the comparison with Malcolm X becomes powerful. A statement widely attributed to Malcolm X says, “Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children.” I would present that wording as an attribution rather than an unquestionable verbatim quotation because the exact sourcing of the popular version is difficult to establish. Nevertheless, Malcolm X repeatedly emphasized the importance of Black people knowing their history and developing an educational system that did not leave them ignorant of their African heritage. His larger argument was that education could either strengthen a people’s understanding of themselves or contribute to their alienation from their own history.

That idea does not mean African-American children should reject American education, nor does it mean every teacher is an enemy. In fact, many teachers work extremely hard to provide students with a broad and honest education. The deeper issue is what the curriculum chooses to emphasize. A public-school education can teach American history while still giving students a fuller understanding of Indigenous civilizations, African civilizations, African-American accomplishments, and the contributions of other peoples who helped create the country.

There is an important distinction between the Canadian residential-school system and American public schools. They were not the same institution, and it would be historically inaccurate to suggest that contemporary American public schools are equivalent to Canada’s residential schools. The Canadian system involved the forced removal of Indigenous children and a deliberate government-and-church assimilation policy. The comparison is instead about the power of education to shape identity and determine whose history receives authority and visibility.

The answer should not be to replace one narrow historical narrative with another. A truly educated child should learn the history of Europe, Africa, Indigenous America, Asia, the Caribbean, and the many peoples who contributed to the United States. Children should learn about slavery but also African civilizations before slavery. They should learn about colonization but also Indigenous civilizations before colonization. They should learn about American presidents and wars while also learning about the ordinary people and communities whose labor, creativity, resistance, and ideas helped build the nation.

Ultimately, the lesson from Canada’s residential-school history is that education is never simply about textbooks and classrooms; it is also about identity, power, memory, and whose story gets remembered. Indigenous peoples had thousands of years of history on this continent before Europeans arrived, and African peoples had thousands of years of history and civilization before the Atlantic slave trade. Those histories should not be treated as footnotes to European history. Malcolm X’s message about knowing one’s history remains relevant because a people who understand where they came from can approach the present with a much stronger sense of who they are and what they are capable of becoming. The goal should not be to keep children from learning someone else’s history—it should be to make sure they never learn someone else’s history at the expense of their own.