If Dr. Bongang can come all the way from Cameroon, West Africa, get his Ph.D. and rise to the chair of the political science department, then surely you who were born here in America should be able to maintain a 3.0 GPA.
~ Professor Leonard McCoy, charge to the students at Savannah State University
Reason obeys itself: ignorance submits to what is dictated to it.
~ Thomas Paine
For several months, I wanted to organize a symposium on critical thinking, which is a major aspect of the core curriculum here at Savannah State University where I teach law and political science. Since I saw no designated activities to commemorate the historic presidency of Barack Obama, I decided to relate our symposium on critical thinking with the inauguration of the new president.
We had about 400 students in total that attended (about 14 percent of the SSU student body). The moderator, professor Leonard McCoy, like the great jazz impresario Miles Davis, set an intelligent tone for the event and kept the symposium running very orderly. After a succinct analysis of the importance of critical thinking techniques in the academy and throughout every aspect of life, citing examples of Buddhist monks as well as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and their followers, professor McCoy asked the panelists to give their own synopsis of critical thinking as a point of discussion and debate with the student audience.
Rather than giving a long discourse on Socratic dialectical reasoning, my opening statement focused on critical thinking techniques I used to celebrate my son Stone’s birthday, but also to teach subtle lessons on manhood – lessons I hoped would be learned by some of my male SSU students who perhaps grew up without a strong father figure.
Since students love hearing something about the personal lives of their professors, I would present a synopsis of my son’s birthday. Sometimes my son’s birthday falls on MLK Day; this year it was on Inauguration Day. First I woke him up, gave him a hug and a kiss and wished him a happy birthday. The hug and kiss is not some perfunctory gesture, but something I do every day and is designed to instill in my son that he is loved and also that he does not need to run out into the street to look for hugs, kisses and love from some girl, drug dealer, gangbanger or anyone else.
I told my son that I expect great things from him; that I got his name out of the Bible and that it is one of the names of Christ: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the head cornerstone.” Finally, I told Stone that he has a duty to be a blessing to God, his family and to all humanity.
Regarding Obama, I put him in a historical context going back to FDR, one of his models, and told the students each president from Wilson forward tried to use the power of the presidency to either make “We the People” one of two entities – victims or victors. FDR, with the apotheosis of the welfare state, saw Americans as pitiful victims where the State would become their god, parent and undertaker. On the other hand, Ronald Reagan’s boundless optimism saw Americans yearning to be unshackled from socialist government programs and set free to fulfill their ultimate destiny.
The next symposium panelist was a 30-year-old sophomore from the Commonwealth of Dominica, Johann Yorke, a marketing major at SSU. His opening statement on critical thinking retold his rural upbringing in an all-black country, the importance of strong family ties, the necessity of each generation striving to have a better education and quality of life than the previous one.
Johann next discussed the necessity of student preparedness. He chided his fellow students for not coming to class prepared, having undisciplined lives and mixed-up priorities like placing a higher value on spending the Christmas break buying new clothes rather than buying books for the upcoming semester. He also mentioned taking detailed notes ahead of time. Johann asked: “Am I engaging myself?” “Are students prepared to learn?” “Am I using President Obama as a catalyst for personal improvement?”
The next symposium panelist was Dr. Nat Hardy, professor of Humanities, who spoke poignantly of his ascent out of poverty in Canada, the son of a boilermaker and the first in his family to attend college. He is an immigrant married to a black woman who is pregnant with a biracial girl that will arrive in May. Dr. Hardy used critical thinking techniques to examine his unenviable background and to reform his destiny through dogged and persistent discipline, assiduous work and critical thinking.
Dr. Hardy, being a Canadian citizen, favored the parliamentary system over America’s federal system because in theory it allows all dissenting and minority voices to be heard. He thought that “corporatism” has so infected America’s “democracy” that the two-party system was essentially “broken” and “inadequate” to fully address to complex needs of contemporary society. Quoting the socialist historian Howard Zinn, Dr. Hardy said, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Ending his opening discourse by quoting King Solomon and the book of Ecclesiastes, Hardy cautioned students about the severe responsibility of those who seek to master critical thinking: “He who increases knowledge increases sorrows.”
Several of my colleagues attended this symposium and some even gave extra credit to their classes to attend. Dr. Johnnie Myers, quoting Rev. Dr. Robert Schuler’s “Peek to Peek Experience,” challenged the students to use critical thinking to find their niche in life, to transcend all of the pathologies of family background and achieve great things.
Dr. Silverman, an expert on the United Nations and a former official with the World Bank, continued Mr. Yorke’s responsibility paradigm as a foundation for critical thinking. He spoke of “two realities” one being that, “Leadership [of President Obama] provides opportunities for people to take advantage of.” A second reality is that “critical thinking starts with us.”
Silverman suggests that students read Obama’s first autobiography, “Dreams from my Father,” to get a better understanding of Obama, the man and his worldview and how he used critical thinking throughout his life to better understand himself, his family and how these connections affected the evolution of his political worldview.
Finally, Dr. Benn Bongang, the chair of the Political Science Department at SSU and the person cited in the opening epigraph, challenged the conventional thinking of the students saying that, “There is nothing that you can sacrifice that you cannot also use to achieve another goal.” Critical thinking requires deep introspection. “Reading books (not only those books that are part of your curriculum) is very important.” He stated, “Always go beyond what is expected of you” and “seizing the opportunities presented to you.”
Dr. Bongang concluded his remarks with a emotional story of his long journey from the shores of West Africa to America. In Cameroon, Bongang enjoyed a very successful career as a print and radio journalist. He had a loving, supportive family, money, nice clothes, a car, a servant and social status, but he yearned for more. Through a series of propitious events, he met key people who would help him move to America to continue his education where he eventually obtained his Ph.D. and in time rose to the rank of chair of the political science department.
Bongang’s Horatio Alger story prompted symposium moderator professor Leonard McCoy to make the prescient remark to the assembled students of Savannah State University: “If Dr. Bongang can come all the way from Cameroon, West Africa, get his Ph.D. and rise to the chair of the political science department, then surely you who were born here in America should be able to maintain a 3.0 GPA.”
The buried secret of the U.S. Senate
Around the Web