“We Talk Here. This Is a School for Talking.” Participatory Democracy from the Classroom out into the Community: How Discussion Was Used in the Mississippi Freedom Schools

Abstract

In early 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a civil rights group comprised mostly of young black college students and graduates, conceived a project that would bring a number of white volunteer college students to Mississippi the following summer to participate in various civil rights projects serving poor black communities. One of those projects created “freedom schools,” an alternative elementary/secondary educational program designed to dramatize the inadequacies of the public schools and to help black students relate education to their own experiences and problems, leading to eventual community social and political action. The major curriculum centered around a citizenship approach that included Negro history, African culture, political thought, blacks’ social identity, current events, voter registration, and direct social action in the civil rights movement, particularly in the local community and the state. This curriculum was delivered through an innovative instructional program developed around discussion as a means of evoking student activity, expression, critical thinking, and community participation. This article concerns the role of discussion in the design and content of the freedom school curriculum: its uses, its results, and its implications for use in contemporary instruction.