Du Bois and Education
After the Civil War, the South was left in tatters. The Federal Government tried to rescue freed blacks from economic depravity with funding, increased opportunity, and an educational agenda of equality for the post-slavery South that was far less than ideal. For W.E.B. Du Bois, public education for blacks is a dominant theme that runs throughout his collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk. Education, Du Bois contends, is the great equalizer of blacks and whites, but it must be applied discriminately -- training the scholar to think rationally, and the carpenter to use his tools of the trade to build useful structures. Du Bois treats the subject with the utmost consideration, and offers suggestions on how to gird up the black man -- and woman -- by offering them the best education. Clearly, he saw education as the best means to eradicate racism in the post-Bellum South.
As Du Bois contends: "And so, in this great question of reconciling three vast and partially contradictory streams of thought, the one panacea of Education leaps to the lips of all"
(Du Bois, internet). Du Bois argues that education is the touchstone by which we must measure the progress of civilization. He is most concerned with joining the black man and the white man in a singular cause, thus creating a mutual bond that is free of prejudice. He envisions a future where public education is available to all, regardless of color.
For Du Bois, education is in the service of work, yet he also insists that work itself must be in the service of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness -- not merely gold (Leiter, internet). He borrows from Greek mythology by re-telling the story of Atalanta, and Hippomenes, and their lustful tryst due to the result of their gold fever. Du Bois is adamant that higher education must serve to both reconcile the North with the South, the whites with the blacks, as well as improve the values of civilization. "The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization" (Du Bois, internet). Towards this end, Du Bois has dedicated his life's work.
Moreover, Du Bois expounds the idea that education, more than any other force, can mold students of learning into upstanding men. He claims that these men are sorely lacking in the South after the Civil War. Many of the former slaves became wage slaves in the Industrial North, while many freed men in the South became carpet-baggers, or even land-holders -- with little training or schooling. Without education, however, even the free man is still in shackles, Du Bois states.
As Du Bois explains, schools in the South went through four distinct stages: directionless enthusiasm, a more-serious planning phase, implementation of a public-school system, and finally, the specialized training of workmen for industry. Yet, Du Bois insists that industrial schools should not be considered the pinnacle of public schooling in the South. He argues for a system that offers even more opportunity to blacks, a system of higher education such as Tuskegee. Du Bois offers a concise prescription for what ails the second-generation of free men in the South: "It was not enough that the teachers of teachers should be trained in technical normal methods; they must also, so far as possible, be broad-minded, cultured men and women, to scatter civilization among a people whose ignorance was not simply of letters, but of life itself" (Du Bois, internet).
Du Bois lays out a plan for the Southern Black College. "The function of the Negro college, then, is clear: it must maintain the standards of popular education, it must seek the social regeneration of the Negro, and it must help in the solution of problems of race contact and cooperation" (Du Bois, internet). Education -- especially higher education -- is the means by which the black man and the white man will work together harmoniously. Ironically, Du Bois never proposes an integrative system -- where primary, secondary, and post-secondary schooling are desegregated. Perhaps, this would have been too radical for a race that had just broken the chains of slavery. Yet, it cannot be denied that Du Bois's ideas laid down the foundation for a future of desegregated -- as opposed to black or white -- colleges and universities. Unfortunately, Jim Crow was still the law of the day (bio.com, internet).
Du Bois was an avid spokesman for the value of education for a number of reasons. Namely, he advocated higher education because he corresponded with other blacks who had graduated from Yale, Harvard, Oberlin, and other elite Universities in the North -- and he witnessed that higher education improved the quality of the lives of these black graduates. Not only did higher education improve the quality of their livelihoods, more importantly, for Du Bois, he saw that the quality of their character had improved due to a University education.
In his collection of essays, Du Bois stresses education as the primary way to achieve the realization of a New America, where prejudice and racism are extinct, where black men and white men can live and work side by side harmoniously. Finally, education, as Du Bois stresses, is less about books and more about learning how to lead a better life. To Du Bois, this is education's ultimate goal, raising a man to the heights of civilization and out of the shadows of barbarism.
Works Cited
Du Bois, W.E.B. (1903). The Souls of Black Folk. Retrieved on 25 Oct 2014 from http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/408
Leiter, Andrew. (n.d.). Documenting the American South. Retrieved from http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/duboissouls/summary.html
W.E.B. Du Bois. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.biography.com/people/web-du-bois- 9279924#synopsis
