During the time of slavery, it was illegal to teach slaves how to read. The whole world of literature was kept from them, limiting their scope of knowledge to their own experiences, restricted to what slave owners wanted them to know, how they wanted them to act, ultimately influencing how they were to think.

Those who were not strong of will and knowledgeable of who they were would slowly begin to become European in thought and behavior. Sometimes this could not be avoided. Knowing nothing about their history and culture, a young mind would only follow what she/he saw. It is understandable why this happened. Slave owners would never give information to slaves that may help to liberate their minds.

Today, we have learned individuals who have accessed immense volumes of information, but refuse to share it with a community that is in dire need of it. There are so many areas that could be helpful and useful. As slave owners withheld information to those enslaved, scholars who withhold information from their community should be looked upon no differently.

Lack of knowledge is a critical component that can help keep a people intellectually underdeveloped. If there are individuals who can help to broaden and enlighten us on every plane of information, it is their obligation and responsibility to disseminate their vast knowledge. Not to do so is an unmitigated crime against the community. In the legal world, one can be charged for withholding information.

Too many of our scholars hide behind the walls of academia and could care less about their community, even though they may teach a subject about the community. Some of these same people are just brain dead, are mentally half-retired, haven�t updated their course information in years and are content to simply collect their monthly paychecks.

No effort is being made here to denigrate Black scholars; they are the originators of the concept of accumulating knowledge and teaching it. Some of us do not even know that we have extraordinary scholars. Whether one sees it or not, some of our scholars are being venerated as equally as entertainers. This is a positive sign that has basically escaped the previous generations. John Singleton mentions psychiatrist Dr. Frances Cress Welsing in the first five minutes of the movie "Baby Boy." Wesley Snipes has made feature documentaries on historian Dr. John Henrik Clarke, and Egyptologist Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan, and there are other examples.

We have to be hard on this because our community needs a lot of help. We have enough opinion makers and spin masters. What we need now is hard knowledge, not only of our history, but in areas that can improve our lives.

For example, a chemist could tell us what chemicals to watch out for in our food and how to prevent bacteria growth in our homes. A professor in agriculture could give us good advice on how to start and maintain home gardens to cut our food cost, and how to safely prevent bugs from destroying our crops.

Law professors and lawyers could educate us about laws that are detrimental to our community, how to prevent violating them, new laws affecting us, what to do when certain law enforcement personnel abuse their authority, and so many other areas. Professors in business could help us immensely in helping the community in becoming economically viable and less dependent.

Just think of all the years of experience education professors have training other teachers, the stories they have heard, all the teaching techniques they know, how to give a pre-schooler a head start in reading, and how they could share that information with parents needing help with their children in school.

What is being suggested here is to embrace our original Afrikan principle of "collective responsibility," that education must go beyond the classroom and into the community. Western civilization stresses individuality, which is counter to the culture we originated from, and prevents understanding or implementing a collective concept.

We cannot depend on the educational system to do everything. Sometimes we run across educators who do not have our best interest in mind, and can discourage a student. The biggest problem is lowered expectations, the belief that students of color cannot intellectually perform as well as students of European descent, causing the teacher to diminish his/her teaching approach, withholding certain information.

Sad to say, this has happened far too many times. Sometimes just an encouraging word can change the whole perspective of an individual. One must always remember, "To the world you might be one person, but to one person you might be the world."

So a plea is given to all our scholars: share your knowledge with the community, we need it badly. We should be overflowing with information every week. Go on the Internet and get the e-mail addresses of our community newspapers. And if you really want to reach the younger generations, publish in hip hop publications also. The results, in time, would be astounding.

(Kwaku Person-Lynn is the author of "FIRST WORD: Black Scholars, Thinkers, Warriors." Her e-mail address is [email protected].)