So the chuck of text I read to write this post came from a really unlikely book: The Journal of Negro Education. It isn't really a book it's a journal and as such is a compilation of articles and wut not. It will soon become pretty apparent how it relates (hopefully).
This issue of the journal was published 2 years after what is considered the civil rights movement (1954). It talks about the sociological aspect of education vs. the Psychological. Once slaves were freed after the civil war and people of color gained rights thanks to a couple on amendments, people set out to increase their standard of living. It was widely believed by freedom fighters this must be done through education. Sociologically speaking the amount of education a person had corresponds to their income (to a point then one cross in to scholarly stuff and academia). So they set out too to help these people integrate into society and go to university by drilling education into them. However in the period between people of color didn’t experience a serious elevation from their not so amazing quality of living. They weren’t slaves no more, but they were clearly second class citizens. The reason why this didn’t work was because cramming knowledge into a person doesn’t lead to success. It got these your “Negros” through school and college but it hardly ever materialized into success. They were educated for political and social emancipation not to truly feel good and human. Jenne L. Noble said that what they must truly do if they want people of color to rise in society is (1) help them learn and be free to use their resources for the good of themselves and (2) Help them combat the meaninglessness and emptiness that dominates so many walk of life.
She understood that education is just not about studying hard for the future, but it is about being fulfilled with what one is currently doing. In fact the article took it one step further saying that people who embrace only the social aspect of education because a faceless member of the crowd and that in itself is a type of slavery.
I'm not following you here. Are you saying that African American progress was limited by the fact that they were too future oriented? This is hard to accept given all of the other significant factors that have limited the progress of AA's over the past 50 years. It's hard to feel fulfilled, regardless of your orientation, if you're not treated as an equal by the society around you.
ReplyDeleteThis one seems like a stretch to me.
10/15
I don't think that is what the article was saying. Maybe I did a bad job of explaining it. Jenne was saying that the proper way to get a people to respect themselves through education is not by cramming it , but by having them embrace it. She was speaking of people in all African American colleges and had a bunch of psych studies that compared them to all white colleges in their mode of teaching. It was not about society it was about self. She was saying the reason her people had not risen with the educational method, is how can one rise when they feel faceless? Also i think the implication was things like the civil rights movement and other changes would have come sooner with their educational format.
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