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Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Because James Baldwin Educates Educators, Too | The Jose Vilson

Because James Baldwin Educates Educators, Too | The Jose Vilson:

Because James Baldwin Educates Educators, Too

James Baldwin

Here’s James Baldwin, acclaimed writer and activist, on the purpose of education:

Since I am talking to schoolteachers and I am not a teacher myself, and in some ways am fairly easily intimidated, I beg you to let me leave that and go back to what I think to be the entire purpose of education in the first place. It would seem to me that when a child is born, if I’m the child’s parent, it is my obligation and my high duty to civilize that child. Man is a social animal. He cannot exist without a society. A society, in turn, depends on certain things which everyone within that society takes for granted. Now the crucial paradox which confronts us here is that the whole process of education occurs within a social framework and is designed to perpetuate the aims of