Blog #3

If I were going to be a teacher at one of the lowest achieving schools in New Orleans where 90% if its’ student population is African Americans, I would choose to motivate my students with the philosophy of W.E.B. Du Bois, which is to have the top 10% of the black community to have higher education so that they are equipped with the right tools in order to create and fight for change. This higher education would consist of a liberal arts education which included majors like sociology, political rights, law, and history (Haddow). Extensive knowledge in these fields would help African Americans write and create new laws towards their equality and against the ongoing segregation. But unlike Du Bois and beings concerned only about the “Talented Tenth”, I would teach all of my students to strive towards higher education, instead of only picking the most promising students. I think that in order to motivate students to create change, they need to realize that there are building blocks that must be accomplished in education in order to create change that is successful. And unlike the problems that arose when this philosophy was introduced like the creation of an elitist class-based hierarchy or that most the black community was illiterate at the time, these problems wouldn’t occur teaching at a school in America today, or at least it wouldn’t be as drastic. Du Bois was a strong critic of Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of industrial education, where blacks were supposed to accept the discrimination they were exposed to while working hard in order to acquire economic gain as well as respect from white people. Du Bois is against the continuation of a form of slavery with Washington’s philosophy and in his book he explains this - “Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism, saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half-men?”  (W.E.B. Du Bois).

I think this philosophy would not be the most effective in a high school today in New Orleans because African Americans don’t need to acquire industrial education in order to be respected or to make money, this can be done by being educated in higher institutions. It might have made sense in the past because since the industrial jobs Washington talks about like domestic work and fieldwork were very similar to the labor they experienced while enslaved, but in the present day these students never had to endure the intensive labor during slavery. Washington thought it would lessen the immediate shock of freedom, but “The mass of those to whom slavery was a dim recollection of childhood found the world a puzzling thing: it asked little of them, and they answered with little, and yet it ridiculed their offering.” (W.E.B. Du Bois). I also don’t think Alain Locke’s philosophy of representation of the black community through aesthetics would be the most effective way to motivate students because although I believe it is important to create a new image of themselves based on their own perspectives, it might gain them respect but it won’t help students become higher achieving pupils. Whereas with Du Bois’s philosophy, motivating students to become as educated as they can possibly be in order to have the skills and leadership experience to create change will be more effective.

Now, if I were teaching a highly ranked achievement-oriented school with a student body that is 90% white and I was trying to mobilize students to become activists in order to create a better society in America, I would choose to teach the philosophy of the Black Panthers because I believe it will ignite their criticality and help them think across racial lines. The Black Panthers fought for the protection of African Americans, for them to be seen as equals to white people, and also fought for gender equality (Stewart). They believed that in order to achieve their goals they had to fight for them, and did not partake in the nonviolent protests that were happening because they didn’t think they were effective. Their initial platform was to promote self-defense from police brutality they also encouraged blacks to carry firearms in order to protect themselves against persistent police brutality (Stewart). I think this type of radical activism is the only way things are going to change in America because as we have seen in the past, nonviolent protests are an effective way to create exposure to the problems, but it doesn’t create change very effectively. If these students are highly ranked upper class kids, then they don’t need to fight for change for themselves, they need to fight for change for others that are experiencing racism and other issues in America today and they need to use the persistence and inspiration that the Black Panthers expressed. I chose a different philosophy for the two situations because I believe that students in underachieving schools need to be motivated towards higher education and the students in the second situation are already highly-ranked and are part of a white community where they do not face the same problems as those in the black community.