Education for the Uplift of a Race

When we think of education, we tend to envision the training of boys and girls in practical skills. These being kills which they might go on and use later in life, possibly forming the basis of a career. In this way, we think of education as “training for life”. Central to the educational paradigm of W.E.B. Du Bois, however, was the notion that education should be the training of life. It is my intention to demonstrate in the following pages how the Du Boisian epistemology of education was innovational, in particular when compared to that of his nemesis, Booker T. Washington. Furthermore, I hope to illustrate that, although the Du Boisian epistemology of education was constantly open and responsive to ever-changing historical and cultural needs[1] -- that despite this, the same clear principles ran throughout: the object of education, as Du Bois saw it, was always manhood; the ultimate goal was constantly the development of men. In particular, he sought to create men who could lead the persons of African origin towards to a more enlightened future.

Du Bois called these leading African Americans the ‘Talented Tenth’, a phrase he would substitute later in life and replace with ‘Guiding Hundredth’. The establishment of this guiding few, he argued, should be the principal concern, and should precede the establishment of industrial schools. Once it was in place, these men would be in a more appropriate position to establish adequate schooling for the ‘masses’.

For Du Bois, education was intertwined with culture, history, economic thought, and social & political philosophy; it was the most pressing problem confronting persons of African origin[2].

Du Bois’s ‘Talented Tenth’ theory has been the most divisive feature of his educational paradigm and has intrigued scholars for over a century now. “The Negro race,” it begins, “like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.[3]” We can see from this that Du Bois believes the solution to the problem of education lies within the race itself. The majority of the most important work has to be carried out by the exceptionals from that race; there is only a limited amount white philanthropists can do. With this comes an implicit challenge to Booker T. Washington, who was closely acquainted with the likes of Rockefeller and Carnegie, whom Washington was able to talk into financially supporting Tuskegee and his other policies. Du Bois’s experience with white philanthropists was not so positive[4]. As the opening paragraph continues, it becomes all the more challenging towards Booker T. Washington’s political ideology and to his stance on education[5]. This should be considered very brave when one remembers Booker T. Washington edited the book in which “The Talented Tenth” appears.

With “The Talented Tenth,” Du Bois’s epistemology becomes directly polarised from Washington’s. By emphasising the need for the educating of African Americans to degree level and higher, he is laying the foundations for what we might call a ‘top-down’ model. “The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving.[6]” The Washington epistemology of education was a ‘bottom-up’ model. It is paradoxical to suggest member of Washington’s Tuskegee Institute could achieve what Washington himself had by attending school there. Washington seemed only too happy to burn the bridges which had carried him to where he was by the turn of the century.

The criteria of what it is to be a part of the talented tenth is explicitly outlined in the essay. As we might expect, the first and most important criterion which has to be met is a college education, although Du Bois probably makes Frederick Douglass exempt from this due to his exceptional circumstances. By the dawn of the twentieth century, Du Bois was banging his fist on the table and demanding the higher education of competent African Americans: “the best and most capable of their youth must be schooled in the colleges and universities of the land.[7]” Du Bois was firmly of the opinion that universities were the only institutions capable of passing on the most important knowledge and culture. “No other invention will suffice,” he wrote, “not even trade and industrial schools.[8]” As Gilroy notes: “Du Bois’s image of the Black University is central to [his] argument. In opposition to Washington’s anti-academic emphasis on the technical, vocational, and practical, he defended the idea of higher learning both as a goal in itself and as the foundation upon which a new educational system must be constructed.[9]”

Furthermore, the ‘top-down’ model does not solely concern itself with education. Indeed, it brings with it the civilising force of pure culture -- something which could not be supplied by Washington’s epistemology. “Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth civilised from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters.[10]” Du Bois places education within his overall thought process, supplementing it with history and culture. This is something Booker T. Washington failed to do.

The second criterion which must be adhered to for one to be a part of the talented tenth centres upon members setting aside their personal goals and making private sacrifices, for the public good of African Americans as a race. This is the distinguishing factor between the talented tenth and the black bourgeois, and made it possible to be educated to degree level and be outside the talented tenth. While some academics have slipped into the habit of using “black middle class” and “talented tenth” interchangeably, the two terms have different connotations (though there can be a degree of overlap)[11].

The talented tenth’s relationship to white principals is a complex one and worthy of study. Du Bois points the finger of blame at the dominant race for casting the black man as a stereotypically lazy lay-about, whose life is mired in crime and decadent behaviour. “A silly nation has made them the rule,[12]” he declares. Du Bois makes it the mission of the talented tenth to prove that black men are, indeed, capable of achieving great goals. Du Bois himself is testament to the possibilities of success in black skin.

Yet instead of writing about his own achievements as exemplification of what African Americans could achieve, Du Bois instead highlighted the life and work of Coleridge-Taylor in Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. Forming the first half of “The immortal Child,” this retelling of one of the world’s most famous musicologists of his day is done so in a very Du Boisian way. And by that, I mean it emphasises the ‘Africanness’ of the man, without enforcing stereotypes. “Life to him was neither meat nor drink,” Du Bois tells, “it was creative flame; ideas, plans, melodies glowed within him.[13]”

The selection of someone involved with music should not be understated. In Souls of Black Folk, each chapter begins with bars of music, each one a separate sorrow song. Du Bois’s passion for this music comes out in the final chapter, in which he supplies some of the words to some of the bars. In his summary, Du Bois notes that “the music is far more ancient that the words, and in it we can trace here and there signs of development.[14]” Seventeen years later, Du Bois is telling us about “the tempestuous outpouring of [Coleridge-Taylor’s] spiritual nature.[15]” Du Bois witnesses the (European) training of a man of African origin and he once again hears the texture and spirit of the sorrow songs -- only this time they have benefited from education.

Under the harshness of the institution of slavery, it goes without saying that musical education of any kind was unavailable to the enslaved. According to Du Bois, the wasting of talent and genius which existed then was still manifested in the American psyche in 1920. “We may well talk of the waste of wood and water, of food and fire,” he writes, “but the real and unforgivable waste of modern civilisation is the waste of ability and genius.[16]” Du Bois goes on point out that Coleridge-Taylor was educated in London, and that, sadly, he would most probably have not achieved what he did had he had the misfortune of growing up in the United States. In this way, Du Bois is able to make a strong case for the educating of all African Americans, while emphasising the lacklustre education (so affected by racial discrimination) offered to black people in 1920.

Once he is through reciting the life of Coleridge-Taylor, Du Bois deals briefly with education in a general sense. Nevertheless, his arguments remain the same: “this world has never taken the education of children seriously,[17]” he declares. More specifically, he acknowledges the benefits of education in the ‘modern world’, to use his phrase, but he also criticises it as possessing modern fallacies. He argues for several paragraphs that the monetary cost of education has become of greater importance than the concept of education itself. With the concept being nothing more than epiphenomenal in western society, Du Bois comes to the conclusion that “we have linked money and education inextricably. We assume that only the wealthy have a right to education.[18]” Du Bois draws upon common morals to assert that birth itself is the right to an education, and that money monetary concerns should be only auxiliary.

As has already been conveyed, “The Immortal Child” was published seventeen years after “The Talented Tenth” appeared in The Negro Problem, but prior to both of these Du Bois published “Of the Training of Black Men” in 1903’s Souls of Black Folk. This chapter varies from the two essays I have spoken of previously because it begins with old adages of the meaning of race, with undertones of educational depravity: “The … thought steaming from the death-ship and the curving river is the thought of the older South, -- the sincere and passionate belief that somewhere between men and cattle, God created a tertium quid†, and called it a Negro, -- a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable within its limitations, but straightly foreordained to walk within the Veil.[19]” In a mocking sense, Du Bois stresses what many scientists seriously believed well into the twentieth century: persons of African descent were uneducated and uneducatable. Palaeontologist Fairfield Osborn, for example, assumed it to be obvious that inequalities of intelligence existed within the taxonomy of race[20]. Du Bois steps away from the concept of race quickly, and does not bother to argue this by citing the opinion of George Combe, who, in the midst of the nineteenth century, believed that “what was needed was a vigorous program of education.[21]”

Instead, Du Bois turns his essay into a synthesis of the two works he would write later on in his life; we can view this work as a foundation for what Du Bois would write later in his career. He details the (recently historical) educating of black men in the United States as follows: “The Negro colleges, hurriedly founded, were inadequately equipped, illogically distributed, and of varying efficiency and grade; the normal and high schools were doing little more than common-school work, and the common schools were training but a third of the children who ought to be in them, and training these too often poorly.[22]” Du Bois paints the picture of disorganised educational practices in shambolic institutions. The underlying interpretation of this passage is that this was so because of a lack of any talented tenth; had these men been educated first, and to the highest possible standard, then they would have been able to establish more efficient educational institutions and with greater logic and thought. Furthermore, it is likely more persons of African descent would have gone on to be educated at a higher level than just an industrial school.

At the turn of the century, many were questioning what was wrong with just educating black people solely with institutions like that of Tuskegee Institute. Again, Du Bois had an adequate response to these people with what he would write seventeen years later; without an education of the highest possible standard in classical music from the Royal Academy of Music, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor would not have evolved in to one of the world’s most respected musicologists. But in April 1903, all Du Bois could do was rely upon what he believed education should be: the training of life, and not training for life: “… we have a right to inquire … if after all the industrial school is the final and sufficient answer in the training of the Negro race: and to ask gently, but in all sincerity, the ever-recurring query of the ages, Is not life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?[23]”

Bibliography

Battle, Juan et al. “W.E.B. Du Bois’s Talented Tenth: A Quantative Assessment.” Journal of Black Studies. 32:6. (July 2002): p 654 – 672.

Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. 1920.

Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. New York: Dover. 1994.

Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth” from The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative Negroes of Today. 1903

Fitchue, M. Anthony. “Locke and Du Bois: Two Major Black Voices Muzzled by Philanthropic Organisations.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. 14. (Winter 1996): p 111 – 116.

Gates, Henry Louis. The Future of Race.

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso. 1993.

Gossett, Thomas F. Race: The History of an Idea in America, New Edition. New York: Oxford University Press. 1997.

Rabaka, Reiland. “W.E.B. Du Bois’s Evolving Africana Philosophy of Education.” Journal of Black Studies. 33:4. (March 2003): p 399 – 449.

Notes

[1] Reiland, Rabaka, p 419
[2] Reiland, Rabaka, p 399
[3] Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth”
[4] For a good analysis of white philanthropic censorship, see Fitchue, M. Anthony. “Locke and Du Bois: Two Major Black Voices Muzzled by Philanthropic Organisations.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. 14. (Winter 1996): p 111 – 116.
[5] Gates, Henry Louis. The Future of Race. P 128
[6] Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth”
[7] Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth”
[8] Ibid.
[9] Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. P 121
[10] Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth”
[11] Battle, Juan. P 658
[12] Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth”
[13] Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil
[14] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. [1903] 1994, p 157
[15] Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil
[16] Ibid.
[17] Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil
[18] Ibid. † literally, third something; a third something of ambiguous status
[19] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. [1903] 1994, p 55
[20] Gossett, Thomas F. Race: The History of an Idea in America, New Edition. p 388
[21] Gossett, Thomas F. Race: The History of an Idea in America, New Edition. p 73
[22] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. [1903] 1994, p 58
[23] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. [1903] 1994, p 58

Personally, I Need To Free Myself

At the moment, I feel I don't quite know where I am or where I'm supposed to be. I know what I did today, but I don't know what I'll be doing tomorrow. It scares me (just a little bit), but I think that's what I want. I don't want to live in anything like a routine -- not just at the moment, anyway. I'm moving to Liverpool soon, and I think that's going to be situation where everyday is different. Everyday will (hopefully) bring with it new challenges and new pleasures, new emotions and new feelings. I want to live closer to the realm of spontaneity than to the realm of routine.

I think this can only be achieved by the acceptance that any coercive lifestyle must have a certain amount of routine to it. I'm a unique person and I'm coming to terms with that by forging a closer perspective with bohemianism. I'm going to try and govern the next few weeks of my life by some famous lyrics:

We're not bad people,
We're not dirty we're not mean,
We love everybody but we do as we please,
We're always happy,
Life's for livin', yeah, that's our philosophy.

Where do I want to be in five years time?

I don't know. I want to have had as many positive, worldly, experiences as possible. If, in five years time I've achieved a good degree, an M.A. (as I want to do) and I have a healthy bank balance, then that's alright. There's nothing wrong with that. But if, in five years time, I've got a degree, and an M.A., but I have less than no money because I went round New York on a budget three week trip and saw baseball in Yankee stadium and a play on Broadway and got absolutely completely lost on the subway system and ended up walking thirty blocks in the pouring New York rain with no coat, then I would prefer the latter of the two.

I'm a free spirit, and this summer I failed my goal of making it back to New York in the warm weather. I paid over £1,000 to have work done on my teeth. This hasn't been a wasted experience. I found out being in debt isn't that bigger problem. Well, not when you're a student. And I suppose that's why I want to make the most of the forthcoming 12 months.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

The Rock n’ Roll Lifestyle: The Holy Grail Of Living Without Boundaries

The typical rock n’ roll lifestyle comprises late nights, non-existent mornings, lazy afternoons, hangovers, excessive alcohol intake, &c. &c., all with a soundtrack built up of guitars, amplifiers, drums and lots and lots of noise. A lifestyle of such freedom is the “I would if I could” choice of so many people stuck in repetitive jobs with go-nowhere possibilities. Such a lifestyle is incompatible with Western living, but only just.

As the name suggests, the concept comes from the star of rock music. But it wasn’t always an integral part. A process of liberalisation since the 1950’s has made it a greater possibility for many people. With the popularity of such artists as Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley to name but two, there were new ideas about life and how to enjoy yourself. Ideas that appealed to a younger generation, which was to be infatuated by the likes of Steve McQueen as well. The conservative West and the Establishment were… conservative to say the least. ‘The Devil’s music’ as it was branded by many, had arrived, and they didn’t like it. Teenagers were beginning to think for themselves, and they didn’t like it. Rebellion was in the air, and they didn’t like it. But a full-blown life, styled around the music, was still a decade away.

As bands like Led Zeppelin, The Who and Thin Lizzy arrived in the mainstream, rock music was well set. But the artists become known for their shanagans before, after, and during tours and not just their music. The reporting of Pete Townsend’s (apparent) distain for hotel rooms was, and still is, well documented. The baby boomers loved it. They loved it so much they aspired to such recklessness themselves. And who can blame them. A life free from parents, ‘real’ work, responsibilities, family ties of any nature, and freedom from anything of great importance was, and still is, mouth-watering. In the US, the hippies had a similar philosophy. The Vietnam War gave them something just to rebel against.

Since then, the music scene has changed amongst teenagers. A broader view of the music sphere is evident. But there’s still a lust for the rock n’ roll lifestyle.

My favourite band of all time is Guns n’ Roses. They lived the rock n’ roll lifestyle to the full. And survived. Just. The opening song from the first EP Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide is called Reckless Life. They wrote about what they knew, and that sums up what they knew. “Livin’ with the danger/ I’m always on the edge now”. They were effectively homeless, but as Slash has since explained, hookers and strippers were good people to know in LA back then. They were put in a similar place by society, so they would often crash at their places. Guns n Roses were a group of five skilled musicians. Their musical ability carried them through the rock n’ roll lifestyle, and they were able to make a success out of it. Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide is full of explicit references to living the rock n’ roll lifestyle. They encourage it in track three Move to the City: “Ya pack your bags and you move to the city/ There’s something missing here at home/ You fix your hair and you look real pretty/ It’s time to get out on your own… Ya stole your Momma’s car and your Daddy’s plastic credit card/ You’re sixteen and you can’t get a job/ You’re not going very far…” They tell you what it’s like in track four, a cover of Aerosmith’s Mama Kin: “It ain’t easy/ Livin’ like a gypsy/ Tell ya honey how it feels/ I’ve been dreaming/ Floating down screaming/ Loosing touch with all that’s real… It ain’t easy/ Livin’ like you wanna/ And so hard to find piece of mind (yes it is)… You better check it out/ Or sometime soon you’re gonna climb back on the wagon… Livin’ out your fantasy/ Sleeping late and smoking tea…”



As strange as it sounds, skill is very important to the rock n’ roll lifestyle. The Rolling Stones are still going strong in 2007, after 40 years of making music. They have seen many great bands come and go. Bands who let the lifestyle get the better of them. Musicians who lost their lives in the mayhem. Something the remaining Stones know all about. They were skilled. Without skill, homelessness and utter loss beckons. At least, that’s how it used to be.

Today, there’s a new, more accessible spin-off to the rock n’ roll lifestyle: university. It is something of a paradox that an institution of great minds can make something so frowned upon by society so accessible. In Britain, there are more people going to university than ever before. For many, they are living free from parental control for the first time. They don’t need to worry too much about employment. The student loan does the business for many. Failing that, there’s the overdraft. Failing that, there’s breaking the law and opening another student account, as I think a few people I know have done.

Ultimately, though, the rock n’ roll lifestyle is not entirely sustainable for undergraduates. Fail to get any work done and they’re finished. By the time they are thrown out, they are addicted to the lifestyle of freedom and can’t go back to living with parents. They are thrown into the rock n’ roll lifestyle proper, and cannot support themselves as they crash at a mates places or with friends who have avoided the cut from higher education. Failure to realise the damage that can be caused by living the rock n’ roll lifestyle while at university is a real problem. But this generation will sort it out. Yesterday’s generation should not worry.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Our Staff

I can't help but feel bad about how poor some of our weekend staff are. I feel part of their inability to work is my fault; I feel part of their inability is their fault; and I feel part of their inability is due to the failing of fundamental education to prepare them properly for the working world.

Firstly my fault. I've seen them making mistakes and I try and point them out as pleasantly as I can. I almost always manage that. I've seen them slacking around and being generally lazy and teenage-ish (if you know what I mean), but I've done little to help the situation. I did try to lead by example, but they simply aren't mature enough to recognize what I was doing. I watched them pricing last week, with white labels, wrong prices and putting them anywhere on the product. I told them once how to do it. But they didn't bother to change (in the end I changed the white labels in that gun). The only other way I stepped in was to tell one of them to not just throw the seed into the containers, but arrange it neatly. I feel bad about pointing things out like that because it seems straight forward common knowledge to me. I just think I could have done more though.

I feel partly responsible seeing as I trained one of them, but an incident last week makes me think I did everything right. He was putting a bag of compost through the till and didn't use the PLU codes and Andy walked past, and I happened to be standing in the vicinity. Andy asked him, "you know how to use the PLU codes, don't you?" and he said no. Andy told me to show him how to use the PLU codes. But I remember taking him outside when training him (even though Andy had already given him a tour of the garden centre). I showed him the bags of compost outside and telling him that if someone brought one of these bags to his till then he should use these codes in the book. I then took him to the till and showed him how to use the codes! I then gave him a demonstration!

Not only are they crippled by their inability to listen, but they have no work ethic what-so-ever. For the likes of you and I, and all the full-time staff, we have to work or we don't eat. But if they get fired, they still get food put on their tables by their Mums. They seriously need to read Booker T. Washington's book 'Up From Slavery'. They simply don't care if they do the job right because they don't have to care. It just isn't possible to survive in the working world with the same attitude that gets you through school. You just can't do it. The same can be said about university. In university, you have to listen to pass exams to get a degree. But above all, they don't understand the fundamental principle of interdisciplinarity. The grossest lack of such a skill was evident a few weeks back. I don't want to 'grass' on people, but if I have to I will. I saw her tearing one of her many voids off the top of the till and throwing it in the bin. I thought, "did I just see that?" so I stuck around. Two minutes later she did it again. It became painful to watch so I made a hasty exit. It just seems silly, illogical, stupid and wrong. I still can't believe she does that. It just seems sad that, in the end, most of it really is all her fault.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright