ther nanve to expect her students to have a better understanding merely by reading "The Education of a Wasp", among other texts. What is far more telling is the revolt (in the epilogue) after an alternative certification program which angered some students who now felt that they were not perceived as prepared to teach everyone effectively.
If there is one thing this article proves: minority students may be more encouraged to learn if the teacher is from their own environment, because he or she could serve as more of a role model than a white teacher could. Minority students could therefore see what their opportunities are -- that here is something they can achieve, that there is more at the end of the education rainbow than frustration, unemployment or welfare. Understanding issues is not the same as experiencing them.
Baldwin asserts that it is the responsibility of a parent, from the time a child is born, to somehow "civilize" that child. That, of course, means providing an education, the purpose of which is "to create in the person the ability to look at the world for himself".
Speaking as a black man, Baldwin is adamant about a number of things -- first, that without a good education a black man or woman -- boy or girl -- cannot fight or change society and its perceptions of them. Secondly, he rails against the use of the Negro (historically) not as a human as much as an economic tool, and the subservience and downcast eyes and silence of some of today's (1963) black people is a result of what happened centuries earlier.
This is not a Christian nation, Baldwin laments. No matter how often citizens attend church. In fact, he says "what passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors" (p. 9). The problem is that Americans today (1963) have no real sense of identity. Baldwin says that popular culture in America is really nothing more than fantasies on radio and televisio...