Every Friday at Highlander Charter School, during after school we have a different special theme that we focus on and call Freedom Fridays. This is one way Highlander carries on the Highlander Folk School tradition of providing students an outlet for self – discovery, critical evaluation of social issues and skills to affect significant social change. Students get to explore and gain a better understanding of what it is like to be “free” through group projects and activities, guest speakers, performances, field trips, and multicultural exhibitions.
Here is a video to show you some more background about Highlander Folk Schools:
A Brief History of Freedom Schools
In the summer of 1964, over 40 Freedom School opened in Mississippi by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. These schools were part of Freedom Summer, a project of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, with the goal to empower African Americans in Mississippi to become active citizens and agents of social change.
They did so by having secret school, labor schools and Citizenship Schools. Through reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and civics, participants received a curriculum which spans through a six-week summer program that was designed to prepare disenfranchised African Americans to become active political actors on their own behalf. These nearly 40 freedom schools served close to 2500 students.
The curriculum: based on the original Freedom Schools model
Academic: reading, writing, verbal activities based on students’ experiences.
Citizenship: develop students to ask informed questions about society.
Recreational: physical activity
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