The Mis~Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson

Chapter Two: How We Missed the Mark

"How we arrived at the present state of affairs can be understood only by studying the forces effective in the development of Negro education since it was systematically undertaken immediately after Emancipation"

-- We can only understand why things are the way they are by studying the past. The undertaking of educating Black people, after slavery was declared illegal, is critical to understanding our education today.

"The poverty which afflicted them for a generation after Emancipation held them down to the lowest order of society, nominally free but economically enslaved"

--Even after the slaves were free, they were still the lowest of the social order, because they were deeply impoverished.

"He was spending his time studying about the things which had been or might be, but he was learning little to help him to do better the tasks at hand"

--The things that Black people were learning were of little practical use to them.

"The Negro trained in the advanced phases of literature, philosophy, and politics has been unable to develop far in using his knowledge because of having to function in the lower spheres of the social order"

--Please tell me how memorizing Shakespeare, reciting Plato, or admiring Jefferson will help to solve the Black dilemma.

"Advanced knowledge of science, mathematics and languages, moreover, has not been much more useful except for mental discipline because of the dearth of opportunity to apply such knowledge among people who were largely common laborers or peons on the plantations"

--Again, the Pythagorean Theorem is not going to help me figure out how to properly budget a low-income family. It might help build yet another set of prison-like housing projects..but it won't help the people get out.



"The extent to which such higher education has been successful in leading the Negro to think, which above all is the chief purpose of education, has merely made him more of a malcontent when he can sense the drift of things and appreciate the impossibility of success in visioning conditions as they really are"

--This is one of my favorite quotes so far. The chief purpose of education is to train one to think. So far, the educational system has failed. We have not learned how to think; we have merely learned how to serve a master apart from ourselves.

"They have not risen to the heights of black men farther removed from the influences of slavery and segregation"

-- We have not yet risen to the standards set by the old greats such as Nzinga the Warrior princess or Mansa Musa.




"Even men like Roland Hayes and Henry O. Tanner have risen to the higher levels by getting out of this country to relieve themselves of our stifling traditions and to recover from their education"

--These men realized this, and left...it must have served them well.