Drs. Bell and Fulani

“The Miracle of Motivation,” an invigorating three-part public interview of Dr. Lenora Fulani, co-founder of the All Stars Project, conducted by the distinguished civil rights activist-attorney and Visiting Professor of Law at New York University Law School, Derrick Bell, graced the stage of the Castillo Theatre, Tuesday, November 16, Monday, November 22, and Tuesday, November 30, 2004. The three interviews were hosted by Nathaniel Christian, Barry Mayo, and Beverly Parker, respectively.  A wine and cheese reception followed the November 16 interview, and Professor Bell was on hand after each dialogue to sign copies of his latest book, Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform.

Professor Bell kicked off “The Miracle of Motivation” with a discussion of Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Having been a young lawyer involved in the desegregation effort, Bell recalled, “The real evil was segregation, and if black folks were willing to let bygones be bygones, then white people would comply.”  That this did not follow, Bell concluded, illustrated that the real problem was white superiority, while segregation was only a symptom.

Dr. Fulani countered that the All Stars Project and its leadership training program, the Development School for Youth (DSY), picked up where the civil rights movement had failed, that the real problem was not white superiority, per se, but rather a failure to engage the experience of segregation — a necessary step if real integration was to take place.  One of the DSY’s workshops, Fulani explained, serves exactly that purpose.  Young people are encouraged to share their experience of disengagement from the mainstream, “white,” culture, and are then challenged to grow and develop beyond that sense of alienation by learning to perform in new and different ways.  By gradually integrating into the business world, DSY students discover that professionals, black and white, are, in fact, quite sensitive and empathic toward the inner city black experience, in contradistinction to conventional wisdom.

Dr. Fulani challenged the conventional educational approach toward inner-city youth, which has tended toward consciousness-raising, largely in the form of focusing on teaching young people about their African roots, disputing both its effectiveness and its reliance on stringent ideology.  In Fulani’s opinion, “the black intelligentsia’s inability to loosen its grip on cultural nationalist ideology has proven more detrimental to the advancement of inner-city youth than helpful.” Pigeonholing certain behaviors and thought processes as “white,” Dr. Fulani believes, is a roadblock to development. “I decided a long time ago,” she explained, “to go where I had to go and do what I had to do in the interest of helping young people grow — whether or not I was being ideologically correct.”

Part Two of the series began with a discussion of the non-acquisitional learning model of the Development School for Youth and the failure of the antiquated acquisitional-learning model on which the U.S. public school education system is based. Professor Bell displayed particular interest in the DSY’s insistence upon punctuality, and how learning to be on time helps give young people a solid foundation. Dr. Fulani said that in inner-city communities, young people often don’t learn the importance of being on time. Young people relate to being on time as a disciplinary measure, as something an authority tells them to do because “those are the rules.” The DSY teaches young people that being on time is important because they themselves are important. Learning how to be on time teaches young people to take themselves seriously, to take others seriously, and to learn how to put forward their best performances. “The kids who join the DSY self-select,” Dr. Fulani added. “They want to be there. They’re not assigned by teachers; their parents don’t make them come. It’s an agreement between them and us to participate in whatever we have to offer.”

“Perhaps the most important component of the DSY,” Dr. Fulani continued, “is the résumé writing workshop. Young people in the DSY have lived their whole lives — gone to school, hung out — within a twenty-block radius. They’ve not been out into the world. Nobody talks to them about workshops or résumés. I think what’s so important about the résumé workshop is that it makes them see that they’ve done something in life that’s worth putting on paper.”

“One of the things that growing up poor does,” according to Fulani, “is rob you of a certain youthfulness. So we allow the young students to be in touch with their youthfulness — to play with things, to come alive and be excited about things. When they come here, we see an awakening of that youthfulness — not of a ‘lost childhood,’ but the youthfulness that gives way to a sense of excitement — something that the schools, unfortunately, don’t promote.”

The series concluded with an in-depth analysis of the debate between the developmental learning model, which, as employed by the All Stars Project, Inc. and the Development School for Youth, focuses on growth, and the acquisitional learning model, which is the standard in most American public schools and has a devastating effect on inner-city children.  According to Dr. Fulani, the acquisitional model, which “teaches kids to be knowers — to manipulate and acquire information — has failed the black community precisely because of its complete abandonment of development.” Having few or no opportunities to develop, Dr. Fulani believes, is why inner city black kids are “dumber” than middle-class white kids. With only the acquisitional learning model at their disposal, black kids find it nearly impossible to learn.

The DSY’s focus on performance, Dr. Fulani stated, serves as a way to initiate young people’s development. The insular lives that many DSY students lead give them few opportunities to discover the world around them and other ways of doing one’s life. The DSY provides young people with new opportunities to be in the world, as opposed to simply acquiring facts. Young people will not be able to grow if facts are all they’re exposed to. DSY graduates perform better in their academic environments, because they’ve learned how to perform.

One of the key components of learning how to perform in a corporate environment, said Dr. Fulani, is through learning how to be “less reactive to all that’s wrong with the public school system, and to prejudicial statements.” When Professor Bell asked if this would “make blacks more passive,” Dr. Fulani responded, “I think growing, along with making and responding to challenges, is much less passive than sitting around complaining about how white people treat us. In the DSY, kids learn to put ‘unpleasant’ matters on the table and to ask for help.”

During the question-and-answer sessions that followed each dialogue, audience members proved just as spirited and thoughtful as their onstage counterparts. Many questioners inquired about Dr. Fulani’s hopes and expectations for young people — if she wished for them to merely fit into the system or to change it as well, to which Dr. Fulani responded that it didn’t particularly matter to her what young people did with their lives, as long as they were able to take responsibility for their choices, and to find a measure of order amidst “the madness.”