Monday, February 05, 2007
Booker T. Washington II
Katja
ENGL 48B
Journal # 14, Washington II
5 February, 2007
"This experience of a whole race beginning to go to school for the first time, presents one of the most interesting studies that has ever occurred in connection with the development of any race." (Booker T. Washington 756)
Washington indicates the importance of developing a formal educational culture among African-Americans.
The newly freed slaves faced many obstacles, one of the biggest and most imposing ones being the lack of formal education. The ramifications of insufficient schooling for generations can amount to nothing less than atrocious. Regardless of the numbers of slaves that did learn the three Rs, any attempts at establishing a culture of formal learning was repressed.
I find myself wondering about those very first slaves that were brought over from Africa a couple of hundred years before Booker T. Washington’s lifetime. Where did they come from and what was their educational culture like in their homelands? They may have been from extremely advanced communities in which numeracy and literacy were commonplace. I think of Aphra Behn’s 1688 text Ooronoko, or The Royal Slave where the novel idea of a noble, educated slave, Ooronoko, who "spoke French and English" (Aphra Behn 2174), was introduced to European audiences. It seems rather unfair that generations of people got thrown back into the Stone Age, culturally, just because of American greed.
I think Washington is right in noting that it is the very first educational opportunity afforded American slaves. Indeed, so much time had passed since the first slaves set foot on the North American continent and their race was no longer by any means the same as it once was what with all kinds of rape and horror going on between slaves and masters. Washington wants to get it right. He sees the importance of a fresh start and is not interested in the past. He want the former slaves to become Americans in their own right, honoring American values such as education.
Behn, Aphra. "Ooronoko, or The Royal Slave." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. Ed. M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. 2174.
ENGL 48B
Journal # 14, Washington II
5 February, 2007
"This experience of a whole race beginning to go to school for the first time, presents one of the most interesting studies that has ever occurred in connection with the development of any race." (Booker T. Washington 756)
Washington indicates the importance of developing a formal educational culture among African-Americans.
The newly freed slaves faced many obstacles, one of the biggest and most imposing ones being the lack of formal education. The ramifications of insufficient schooling for generations can amount to nothing less than atrocious. Regardless of the numbers of slaves that did learn the three Rs, any attempts at establishing a culture of formal learning was repressed.
I find myself wondering about those very first slaves that were brought over from Africa a couple of hundred years before Booker T. Washington’s lifetime. Where did they come from and what was their educational culture like in their homelands? They may have been from extremely advanced communities in which numeracy and literacy were commonplace. I think of Aphra Behn’s 1688 text Ooronoko, or The Royal Slave where the novel idea of a noble, educated slave, Ooronoko, who "spoke French and English" (Aphra Behn 2174), was introduced to European audiences. It seems rather unfair that generations of people got thrown back into the Stone Age, culturally, just because of American greed.
I think Washington is right in noting that it is the very first educational opportunity afforded American slaves. Indeed, so much time had passed since the first slaves set foot on the North American continent and their race was no longer by any means the same as it once was what with all kinds of rape and horror going on between slaves and masters. Washington wants to get it right. He sees the importance of a fresh start and is not interested in the past. He want the former slaves to become Americans in their own right, honoring American values such as education.
Behn, Aphra. "Ooronoko, or The Royal Slave." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. Ed. M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. 2174.
# posted by Katja @ 1:45 PM 
