The African-American Baseline Essays are a series of educational materials commissioned in 1987 by the

Portland public school district Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

and compiled by Asa Grant Hilliard III, intended to "provide information about the history, culture, and contributions of Africans and African-Americans in the disciplines of Art, Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and Music," to "be used by teachers and other District staff as a reference and resource just as adopted textbooks and other resources are used" as part of "a huge multicultural curriculum-development effort."

History

Despite criticism of their inaccuracies and "Egypt-centric" outlook, the Baseline Essays were widely adopted in the early 90s by large school districts throughout the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Since the debut of the African-American Baseline Essays, three other series have been released as part of the "PPS Geocultural Baseline Essay Series," focused around " American Indians," " Hispanic-Americans," and "

Asian-Americans Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous peoples ...

Criticism

Their inclusion of the essay "African and African-American Contributions to Science and Technology" by Hunter Havelin Adams III was criticized in particular for promoting

pseudoscientific Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...

ideas like

astrology Astrology is a range of Divination, divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of Celestial o ...

, psychokinesis, and "psychoenergetics" as "

Egyptian Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...

science." Adams' essay is referenced in the article behind the

Sokal affair The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax, was a demonstrative scholarly publishing sting, scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article t ...

; in light of this the Baseline Essays themselves have sometimes been called a hoax, but they are still available on the Portland Public Schools web site.

References

Educational materials 1987 establishments in Oregon {{US-stub