I often attend the basketball games for some of my students. I usually sit in the crowd among the parents, and I occasionally overhear their conversations. Usually, I don’t pay attention but earlier this season I heard a parent complain about their child’s history teacher:

Parent 1: “Yeah, I asked my son if he knew who Marcus Garvey was and he said no. I was like don’t they got history here or something? Why ain’t they teaching y’all about Marcus Garvey?”

Parent 2: “I bet the teacher don’t know either.”

Parent 1: “I think it’s some white dude. So he probably doesn’t know. But why isn’t that something they learning though, is what I’m saying.”

Spoiler alert – I am his son’s history teacher. I am not white, and I do know who Marcus Garvey is. But I also have a question for that parent: Why aren’t YOU teaching him about Marcus Garvey?

I understand that parents might not understand the way teaching at a public school actually works so I am usually pretty lenient when it comes to complaints about my classroom instruction. But one thing I wish they understood is that my curriculum is not an ascending list of all the things I personally think are important. It is a set of state mandated standards that build upon each other every year. Meaning that I have to teach them because it’s the law and because their teacher next year will operate under the assumption they learned them.

Another point parents often misunderstand is that their child’s history class is not an all-encompassing dive into the totality of human history. It is taught in sections, and eras. So often, the topic parents assume their kids should be learning in this class, this year will be taught in another class, another year.

I teach Black history. I teach it year around and chronologically like it should be taught. My class goes from colonial times to the Civil War. There are a lot of important Black figures his son will learn about from that time. From Phillis Wheatley and Crispus Attucks to Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, but I don’t get to the 1920s.

It suffices to say that though I may want to teach all about the important Harlem Renaissance figures it isn’t really in my area of coverage.

However, there is a solution. A loophole. A secret that the MAN doesn’t want you to know: Teach your kids yourself.

That doesn’t mean you have to homeschool them but you should certainly take an active role in their education beyond throwing stones at the school building. The father seemed to know all about Garvey. My question to him is why is the teenage son so ignorant of a subject when the father is so knowledgeable? I don’t say this to be elitist or condescending but people have to understand what a public school is and more importantly isn’t. There is over a 70% chance your kids won’t be proficient in math by the time they graduate high school, and that’s the one area everyone actually agrees we should teach.

This isn’t to say schools shouldn’t do a better job of teaching Black history. It is to say no parent should leave that totally to the state.

I have a daughter. I am not depending on the school to teach her everything she needs to know and certainly not everything I want her to know. The way things are going politically, she may even learn less Black history in school than I did. But I’m ready to make up for that at home. Are you?