First fruits: our elders speak.(general personality development)(Excerpt)

As a child, my Mama use to take me to many of the lectures of Dr. Amos Wilson's at the United African Movement forums in Brooklyn, NY and Harlem, U.S.A. where some of the best minds and scholars like Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Yosef ben Yochannon and Dr. Asa Hilliard would lecture regularly. Even before I was born, while I was in the womb, my mother and I would both be in attendance at many of these movement meetings ... listening. Now that I am all grown up ... well half grown up, I can appreciate what she was doing for herself AND for me. In our "First Fruits: Our Elders Speak" column this issue we present the words and scholarship of Dr. Amos N. Wilson excerpted from his book "Awakening The Natural Genius Of Black Children".

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT: It is with appropriate stimulation, motivation, guidance and support where the promise or the problem of the intellectual, behavioral, social and general personality development of the Black child lies. The "natural head start" of Afrikan children, is too often thwarted, stagnated, negated, or reversed by the inappropriateness or inadequateness of these seminal factors.

EXPECTATIONS: One of the reasons our children do not grow as much as they can is because we do not expect them to grow to their fullest extent. Our children are born with the best brains in the world and they can deal with any kind of problem that we put to them. Any kind of problem that we must solve, whether it is science, technology, mathematics or whatever--they can solve! We did it in Egypt! We don't need any proof of our capability of doing it! Our people were among the first to invent mathematics, so when we practice it, we are practicing our heritage. But if we believe Black people are not good in math, then of course, we are going to produce exactly what we believe. If we expect and can believe then we can produce whatever we will--but we must believe.

CHILD DEVELOPMENT: One of the major things necessary for enhancing the intelligence of our children is to have knowledge of their development. It has been shown clearly that it is not so much the income, but a knowledge of how our children develop that is very important to their intellectual development. Our lack of knowledge about the development of our children helps to retard the intellectual potential that our children so abundantly possess.

INFANT STIMULATION: The nature of the home environment at six months can give us some indication of how the infant's mind is going to be at three and four years old. The emotional nature of the home, the emotional responses of the mother, the parental involvement of the mother with the child, the provision of appropriate play materials, are very important to the child's development.

WELL ENDOWED: We have seen that the Afrikan child is born well endowed by nature to meet the intellectual challenges of the world. The cognitive-behavioral potential of this child is by all means first rate. However, potential must be actualized by the application of appropriate educational conditions. The education of the child begins with the education of its parents and caregivers. Their education refers to the degree to which they are prepared to provide the required physical, emotional, intellectual, and social experiences and environments necessary to permit their children to acquire the knowledge, skills, competence, qualities of personality and character which will enable them to maintain and enhance their lives and the life the group to which they belong.

STARTS AT HOME: A significant part of the social chaos so typical of American society, in ...