The academic instruction given to students caused numerous approaches to form in order to best determine how concepts were received, sought throughout life, and utilized out of schooling. The debate over the dictation of learning has and continues to be a controversial topic. W. E. B. Du Bois made a point in his essay “The Talented Tenth” that higher education should focus on intellectually privileged, promising, and exceptional blacks in order to raise the academic level for their race. His essay, written in 1903, tackles the issue of education in an equally important, but different way than Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who protests against the idea of (the then) conventional instruction in her 1915 novel Herland. Observing their differences, readers of “The Talented Tenth” and Herland get a historical perspective and understanding in the development of our modern ideas of education.
W. E. B. Du Bois’s ideas in “The Talented Tenth” were written in response to Booker T. Washington’s idea in the Atlanta compromise, but together both arguments played an important role in shaping today’s view of personal learning, higher education, college applications, and scholarships. Booker T. Washington gave the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition Speech in 1895, which emphasized working to blacks all as well as the beginning of personal learning through the Atlanta compromise. Personal learning-the ability to choose what to study and how far to pursue those studies- advanced the former idea of education and exists to provide knowledge for particular interests determined by interests, wants, and needs. We see those ideas today in trade schools, magnet schools, the declarations of majors and minors, and even work-study program...
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...ons of ideas from Washington’s specialization, Du Bois’s higher education, and Gilman’s relaxation together create a much more diversified, open-minded, well-rounded sense of education and learning. With the advancement of technology, the importance of moving out of the classroom became apparent. Experiences, interests, specialties, and high drives-those key principles seen by those figures in the late 1800s and early 1900s-hold up the foundation that keeps our current education alive, important, and civilized.
Works Cited
Du Bois, W. E. B. "The Talented Tenth." The Negro Problem: A series of articles by representative negroes of to-day. New York: James Pott & Co., September 1903.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland. New York: Penguin, 1915.
Washington, Booker T. "The Atlanta Exposition Address." Up From Slavery. New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., September 1895.
Alridge, Derrick P. The Educational Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois: An Intellectual History. New York: Teachers College, 2008. Print.
While growing up in the midst of a restrictive world, education becomes the rubicon between a guileless soul and adulthood. In the excerpt from W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois provides a roadmap for African Americans to discover and understand themselves through the pursuit of knowledge, self-awareness, and authenticity. The excerpt is a significant part of the essay because it also speaks for the modern day pursuit of knowledge, self-awareness, and authenticity, an indispensable path into finding one’s self.
For almost two hundred years, Historically Black Colleges and Universities or HBCUs have played a pivotal role in the education of African-American people, and negro people internationally. These schools have provided the majority of black college graduates at the Graduate and Post-Graduate level; schools such as Hampton University, Morehouse University, Spellman University and Howard University are four universities at the forefront of the advanced education of blacks. For sometime there has been a discussion on whether or not these institutes should remain in existence or if they are just another form of racism. There were also concerning the quality of education provided at these institutions. In my opinion, from the evidence provided in our own world today, HBCUs are very important and significant in the education of black people throughout the nation, and are essential to our society.
Education is a privilege. The knowledge gained through education enables an individual’s potential to be optimally utilized owing to training of the human mind, and enlarge their view over the world. Both “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass himself and “Old Times on the Mississippi” by Mark Twain explore the idea of education. The two autobiographies are extremely different; one was written by a former slave, while the other was written by a white man. Hence, it is to be expected that both men had had different motivations to get an education, and different processes of acquiring education. Their results of education, however, were fairly similar.
Newman says that the scope of education should broaden and encourage more learning outside of the career track, while Freire says how the material is learned should be broadened and laid out where it is learned for its entirety and not just its basic ideas. They feel that “the learned professions altogether... [are] the most popularly beneficial and… most intimately divine of all human pursuits” (Newman, 57). Simply said, education is something of high importance that should be desired and acquired by all. If one does not embrace education, he or she will not gain knowledge or understand its importance. Fredrick Douglass, a famous slave that worked to gain knowledge, and ultimately helped abolish slavery understands this concept. In his biography, “Learning to Read,” he describes his struggle of learning to read and write. He says, “I wished to learn… [and] after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning” (Douglas, 50). As a slave, being educated was a difficult task, but Douglass understood its importance and desired to pursue it. At first, he despised, the education, “while they [(the arguments in the Columbian Orator)] relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than the one of which I was relieved,” but it eventually lead to his understanding of “abolition” and helped him free “[him]self and fellow-slaves” (48,49). The education Douglass learns from the Columbian Orator and local newspapers, among other places, is a prime example of liberal knowledge. He learned it “for the sake of knowing it.” Douglass’s example solidifies Newman’s idea that liberal education is valuable because it is proven to have “value and dignity” (Newman, 58). His example also exemplifies Freire’s point that “Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it” (65). Freire believes that one
The readings Booker T. Washington, The “Atlanta Compromise” and “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” were both very interesting to me. The “Atlanta Compromise” was the actual speech Booker T. Washington gave to a majority white crowd asking for support for vocational/technical training and education. His focus on the speech was for the Black community to use their skills to earn a living and focus more on that than race relations. He was encouraging the black community to gain financial security and be open to getting the necessary tools to be their own providers.
E. B. Du Bois indicated that the dominant influence that Booker T. Washington had on Blacks came at a time when there was less attention on the memories of war and more focus towards the idea of commercialism. Du Bois stated that Washington’s plan of industrial education was not original, that he simply added great enthusiasm as a way to gain an interest of the people. He recognized Washington’s achievements in the South as being the founder of Tuskegee Institute and the most notable achievement in favor of African Americans, his “Atlanta Compromise” speech. As a result, radicals accepted this as an act of surrender to Whites, and conservatives received this as a mutual understanding. Washington then gained attention in the North by grasping the concept that now dominated that area, which was maximizing profits and material
“Nationally, more than one-quarter of the students in the 1930s were black. Yet they received only about one-tenth of the total education revenues. Many Americans believed that African Americans were simply not capable of excelling in school” (“The 1930’s education…”). For colored women, it was more difficult to prove their abilities than any other race. For example, Asian women were not affected as much simply because their skin color was closer to that of a white’s than a black person. As black women were treated unequally in the education department, white women have also struggled in getting a higher education. “They gave young women a chance to gain the same kinds of education as their brothers without having to spend much of their time and energy fighting the prejudice they would have faced at male-dominated institutions. At the same time, they provided a proving-ground in which college administrators, professors, and students could demonstrate that women could flourish intellectually while remaining healthy and ladylike.” (“The Value
Du Bois’ study of the American race revealed the propaganda about what the American children are being taught today about Reconstruction. This era was two-fold; the entire nation, the North and the South, had to rebuild after the Civil War and the South had to reconstruct the state and society. The facts were falsified in order for the “Southerners” to save face. The three issues taught about the Negroes were that they were ignorant, lazy & dishonest, and responsible for bad government during the Reconstruction process. They were deemed ignorant because they did not know how to read. As slaves, they were not allowed to go to school or even own a book without severe punishment. Because they had no or very low book learning, some Negroes depended on others who took advantage of them. Due to their lack of knowledge, they could not be effective ...
W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington were two very influential leaders in the black community during the late 19th century, early 20th century. However, they both had different views on improvement of social and economic standing for blacks. Booker T. Washington, an ex-slave, put into practice his educational ideas at Tuskegee, which opened in 1881. Washington stressed patience, manual training, and hard work. He believed that blacks should go to school, learn skills, and work their way up the ladder. Washington also urged blacks to accept racial discrimination for the time being, and once they worked their way up, they would gain the respect of whites and be fully accepted as citizens. W.E.B. Du Bois on the other hand, wanted a more aggressive strategy. He studied at Fisk University in Tennessee and the University of Berlin before he went on to study at Harvard. He then took a low paying research job at the University of Pennsylvania, using a new discipline of sociology which emphasized factual observation in the field to study the condition of blacks. The first study of the effect of urban life on blacks, it cited a wealth of statistics, all suggesting that crime in the ward stemmed not from inborn degeneracy but from the environment in which blacks lived. Change the environment, and people would change too; education was a good way to go about it. The different strategies offered by W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington in dealing with the problems of poverty and discrimination faced by Black Americans were education, developing economic skills, and insisting on things continually such as the right to vote. ...
The differences of their philosophies were clearly shown in their writings—Booker T. Washington’s “Up from slavery” and Du Bois’s “The Souls of Black Folk”. Before we analyze the similarities and differences of both of the leaders, we have to look at their early life experiences as it can be an important factor on how and where they get their inspiration for their philosophies. Booker T. Washington was an influential leader during his time and a philosopher that always addressed the philosophy of self-help, racial unity and accommodation. He had preached and urged all the black people to simply accept the discrimination that they got and asked them to work hard to gain material prosperity (Painter 169). In his
When talking about the history of African-Americans at the turn of the twentieth century, two notable names cannot be left out; Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois. They were both African-American leaders in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s, fighting for social justice, education and civil rights for slaves, and both stressed education. This was a time when blacks were segregated and discriminated against. Both these men had a vision to free blacks from this oppression. While they came from different backgrounds, Washington coming from a plantation in Virginia where he was a slave, and Du Bois coming from a free home in Massachusetts, they both experienced the heavy oppression blacks were under in this Post-Civil War society. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois were both pioneers in striving to obtain equality for blacks, yet their ways of achieving this equality were completely different. W.E.B Du Bois is the more celebrated figure today since he had the better method because it didn’t give the whites any power, and his method was intended to achieve a more noble goal than Washington’s.
The first condition necessary to create and promote this system of white superiority was a lack of education amongst blacks. Many blacks thus supported Booker T. Washington’s mentality, one that promoted passive acquiescence to white power by learning basic skills such as reading and writing, and then attending vocational schools. In Washington’s own words, delivered at the 1895 Atlanta Exposition Address, “Cast down your bucket where you are… No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top” (Washington 219-220). It seems absurd for Washington to claim that blacks needed to begin at the bottom of life, when they had always been at the bottom of life in America. Although his view was widely accepted, it was antithetical and full of pitfalls compared to that proposed by the supremely educated scholar W.E.B.
Phillip, Mary-Christine. "Yesterday Once More: African-Americans Wonder If New Era Heralds," Black Issues in Higher Education. (July 1995).
Du Bois examines the years immediately following the Civil War and, in particular, the Freedmen's Bureau's role in Reconstruction. He feels the Bureau's failures were due not only to Southern opposition and "national neglect," but also to mismanagement and courts that were biased. The Bureau did have successes, and there most important contribution to the progress was the founding of school for African American. Since the end of Reconstruction in 1876, Du Bois claims that the most significant event in African American history has been the coming about of the educator, Booker T. Washington. He then became the spokesman for the ...