A splendid spot by Dave Osler at Liberal Conspiracy: Malcolm X’s ideas about education in Harlem and Brooklyn aren’t so very different from those Michael Gove has in mind for Haringey or Toxteth. As Malcolm X wrote:
The Board of Education in this city [New York] has said … there are 10 percent of schools in Harlem and the Bedford-Stuyvesant community in Brooklyn that they canot improve. So what are we to do?
‘This means that the Organization of Afro-American Unity must make the Afro-American community a more potent force for educational self-improvement.
‘A first step in the program to end the existing system of racist education is to demand that the 10 percent of the schools that the Board of Education will not include in its plan be turned over to and run by the Afro-American community itself.
‘Since they say that they can’t improve these schools, why should you and I who live in the community let these fools continue to run and produce this low standard of education? No, let them turn those schools over to us.
‘Since they say they can’t handle them, nor can they correct them, let us take a whack at it.
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