Du Bois and Advancing African American Culture

Acccording to Marx, "[Man] becomes an apendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him (164).

"...no secure civillization can be built in the South with the Negro as an ignorant, turbulent proletariat" (Du Bois 87).

Du Bois's discussion of African American education during his time period connects with this quote from Marx. Du Bois desdescribes how the education limits blacks becasue it trains them practically for their trade. It does not train them to be scholars. These people become parts of a machine. "It was not enough that the teachers should be trained in technical normal methods; they must also, so far as possible, be broad-minded, cultured men and women..." (81). Although being a teacher requires much more education than being a factory worker, there still is the same problem. These students are not taught to reach higher and to expand their minds. They are just being taught to earn an income. In a way, they are machines because they "pump out" students with educations which society needs. It is similar to someone working in a shoe factory who makes shoes for society because there is a demand for them. Du Bois would like to see an education that would produce scholars that can advance African American culture as a whole and prove whites wrong.

One editorial by a white person said, "The experiment that has been made to give the colored students classical training has not been satisfactory. Even though many were able to pursue the course, most of them did so in a parrot like way, learning what was taught, but not seeming to appropriate the truth and imort of their instructon..." (83). It was believed that blacks were a less advanced people and they cannot reason. A parot does not think when it speaks. It just repeats whatever humans say to it. Whites believed blacks could not think and could not expand their horizons in education. They could just be taught the tools to support themselves.