MLK warned that colleges could produce ‘close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists’ - The Washington Post

MLK warned that colleges could produce ‘close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists’ - The Washington Post

MLK: ‘If we are not careful, our colleges will produce … close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists’

Here, as I have published in recent years to mark the federal holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., are some of his prophetic writings related to the purpose of education and the U.S. government’s efforts toward educating its citizens.

Just read these excerpts:

— King attended Morehouse College, and this is an excerpt from “The Purpose of Education,” a piece he wrote in the February 1947 edition of the college’s student newspaper, the Maroon Tiger:

As I engage in the so-called “bull sessions” around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the “brethren” think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.

It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the ligitimate goals of his life.

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda.

At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

The late Eugene Talmadge, in my opinion, possessed one of the better minds of Georgia, or even America. Moreover, he CONTINUE READING: 

MLK warned that colleges could produce ‘close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists’ - The Washington Post