Cultural Genocide by Western Education Revisited: Would Creative Transdisciplinarity be an effective solution? (dissertation proposal)

Culture and cultural “language largely determines the way in which we understand our reality” (Stewart/Bennett, 1972, p. 46). There are innumerable scarcely traveled paths present to seek the understanding of reality. Yet, we are only familiar with the narrow and worn. Disregarding broader educational patterns leads society to a bitter predicament.

Western reality and, therefore, education is based on socio-cultural ideologies without seeking distinctions of culture. Western society is not aware that our assimilated truth may be misinterpreted. Through generational living, African Americans have embodied truth according to cultural knowing, non-spoken language and paradoxical realities. For some Westerners, the lack of awareness is a conscious choice.

Would African American students experience an effective impact if they were taught and evaluated by a pedagogy reflecting a culturally relevant, creative transdisciplinary framework? Johnston (2008) found the following:

The essence of transdisciplinary thinking is that it is flexible and dynamic; like the arts, it continuously creates new stages, new characters, new ‘ language – ings’ …It aims to encourage a unifying but not restricted perspective [way of knowing] across knowledge (Rosemary Ross Johnston, On Connection and Community Transdisciplinarity and the Disiciplines, Transdisciplinarity Theory and Practice, chap. 22, Basarab Nicolescu, ed., 2008, p. 229).
This study is an exploration of educational leadership theories, cultural distinction, and paradoxical realities (i.e. double consciousness, DuBois, 1903).

Principally, this dissertation focuses on the neglect of cultural knowing and transdisciplinary relations for African American students in western education.