It’s February, the middle of winter. Cold weather, the Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day, and, for some reason, the month we still designate as Black History Month. But maybe it’s time we all take a closer look at just what that last feature of February really means.

Until fairly recently, the history of African-Americans was not thoroughly taught in our schools. Even more specifically, the world history of black people was not thoroughly taught to students in American schools. To fix that, we ended up with Black History Month, an attempt to bring to the forefront the history of black people. Only for one month though, of course. Let’s not get too crazy.

When asked by Mike Wallace what he thought of Black History Month in a now-viral video from an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes”, actor Morgan Freeman responded that he thought it was “ridiculous”! The position Mr. Freeman went on to elucidate, as have so many others, is that it is absurd to compact the history of black people into a single month. The fact is, not only is such an endeavor insulting, it fails to accomplish the goal it set out to accomplish of increasing the exposure of black history, and even ends up having the opposite effect that it was supposed to have as far as increasing the teaching of black history in our schools as it becomes relegated to being taught only in the brief allotted time.

Black history (which again, is more than just African-American history, it encompasses the history of all black people around the world) should not be relegated to a single month. We’ll ignore that it was inserted into February, the shortest month of the year, and leave that for the stand up comedians. Rather, black history should be taught throughout the year. If an eight-grade social studies class is studying colonial America in November, then in addition to whatever historical events, people and issues are being taught at that moment our teachers should be including any relevant history concerning black history in that time frame. An eleventh-grade history class working on European history in April? Hmm? It would be a safe assumption that a black person played a role in that time and place worth teaching to the students. Fourth graders engaged in December in a unit covering the “explorers” like Columbus, Magellan and da Gama?  Surely there would be an opportunity to teach and discuss what was happening with black people at the related time in history. George Washington Carver (come on, the peanut guy!)? Frederick Douglas? Why are they only studied in February in a chapter on “famous prominent black people”? Shouldn’t Carver be taught in whatever science class his work most applies to. And Douglas taught when the time period he most affected (the 1800’s) comes up in the curriculum, even if that doesn’t fall into the designated month of February?

Even worse, by squeezing all of black history into a single month, a ready-made excuse is handed on a silver platter to those that are perfectly fine with ignoring black history in the first place, and not teaching it throughout the year. It becomes a license to avoid teaching black history in the other eleven months of the year. What can be said to a teacher who avoids or works around including black history in their class throughout the year except for the required month of February when they are confronted with such an avoidance and their response is “well, we teach it in February”. It’s like authorizing the sweeping of black history into the corner, only to take it out when the requirement says you must.

We don’t live in a post-racial world yet, perhaps we never will, perhaps we never should. And perhaps there was a time when Black History Month served a purpose that was greater than any divisive negative that it carried with it. But perhaps the time has come to take a closer look at just what having a single designated month to teach black history means, what it does or doesn’t accomplish, and if its benefits still outweigh its downside. Sure doesn’t seem like they do.