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By Molly Thompson
If you wait for people to really want to hear you say something, you won't say much, said award-winning poet and author Nikki Giovanni during her keynote address to educators at the opening session of the 2005 WEAC Convention in Milwaukee Thursday (October 27).
Giovanni, whose parents were both teachers, has made a successful career – earning countless awards and honors, such as a Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry and two NAACP Image Awards – from following her own advice to speak up and out often. She used some of her experiences as an advocate for civil rights and quality education to encourage state educators to do the same and speak out against injustices in the state education system, such as inadequate funding.
"I am amazed at how much money they'll spend on Ritalin, but they won't pay for a pot of beans to feed hungry kids at lunch," she said. "Instead, they sell the schools out to Pepsi and Sprite, and then they wonder why kids have problems."
Giovanni took several stabs at Republicans and the so-called "No Child Left Behind" act, calling it "Every Child Left Behind," which elicited cheers from teachers.
"Education is not just what happens in the classroom," she said. "Kids who paint and dance are being left out. One of the things that's wrong with education is we have withdrawn everything that makes kids want to go to school."
Giovanni urged educators to keep history at the forefront of their lesson plans. "History is how we begin to look at who we are," Giovanni said.
But she also warned educators to look at who is doing the re-telling of history. "Historians said the Africans agreed to go to America. They said the Africans just didn't know what they were getting in to."
Today, black children need to be encouraged in the fields of math and science, Giovanni said, referring to historic notables such as Benjamin Banneker who is often recognized as the first African American mathematician, and Edward Bouchet, one of the first African Americans to receive a doctorate in the United States.
"We're the people who invented the number zero," she said. "Can you imagine doing math with Roman numerals?" Giovanni also used her platform to talk about her friend and mentor, civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, who refused to move out of her bus seat to make room for white passengers, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott, in 1955.
"Human beings do better with a challenge," said Giovanni, who was the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award in 2002. "I was privileged to know her -- she always called me 'baby.' People say that she was tired, that's why she sat down. But we know better."
Parks, who died earlier in the week, is also the namesake of Giovanni's newest book, "Rosa." The children's picture book honors Parks' legacy - and Giovanni's reputation – of fearlessness in taking a stand.
Posted October 31, 2005