Explaintheir respective philosophies on education, as it relates to their respective historical context.
- Do you think either philosopher had an impact on the way education was institutionalized in the United States.
- Using the articles as a guide, explain your own views of education as it relates to present day education-either primary education or higher education (university, college, professional schools).
Does the Negro need Separate Schools? W. E. Burghardt Du Bois The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 4, No. 3, The Courts and the Negro Separate School. (Jul., 1935), pp. 328-335. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2984%28193507%294%3A3%3C328%3ADTNNSS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K The Journal of Negro Education is currently published by Journal of Negro Education. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/jne.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Thu Oct 18 18:45:15 2007 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2984%28193507%294%3A3%3C328%3ADTNNSS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html http://www.jstor.org/journals/jne.html CHAPTER IV Does the Negro Need Separate Schools? W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS There are in the United States some four million Negroes of school age,of whom two million are in school, and of these, four-fifths are taught by forty-eight thousand Negro teachers in separate schools. Less than a half million are in mixed schools in the North, where they are taught almost exclusively by white teachers. Beside this, there are seventy-nine Negro universities and colleges with one thousand colored teachers, beside a number of private secondary schools. The question which I am discussing is: Are these separate schools and in- stitutions needed? And the answer, to my mind, is perfectly clear. They are needed just so far as they are necessary for the proper education of the Negro race. The proper education of any people includes sympathetic touch between teacher and pupil; knowledge on the part of the teacher, not simply of the individual taught, but of his surroundings and back- ground, and the history of his class and group; such contact between pu- pils, and between teacher and pupil, on the basis of perfect social equality, as will increase this sympathy and knowledge; facilities for education in equipment and housing, and the pro- motion of such extra-curricular ac- tivities as will tend to induct the child into life. If this is true, and if we recognize the present attitude of white America toward black America, then the Ne- gro not only needs the vast majority of these schools, but it is a grave ques- tion if, in the near future, he will not need more such schools, both to take care of his natural increase, and to defend him against the growing ani- mosity of the whites. It is of course fashionable and popular to deny this; to try to deceive ourselves into think- ing that race prejudice in the United States across the Color Line is gradu- ally softening and that slowly but surely we are coming to the time when racial animosities and class lines will be so obliterated that sepa- rate schools will be anachronisms. Certainly, I shall welcome such a time. Just as long as Negroes are taught in Negro schools and whites in white schools; the poor in the slums, and the rich in private schools; just as long as it is impracticable to welcome Negro students to Harvard, Yale and Princeton; just as long as colleges like Williams, Amherst and Wellesley tend to become the pro- perty of certain wealthy families, where Jews are not solicited; just so long we shall lack in America that sort of public education which will create the intelligent basis of a real democracy. Much as I would like this, and hard as I have striven and shall strive to help realize it, I am no fool; and I know that race prejudice in the Uni- ted States today is such that most Negroes cannot receive proper edu- 328 DOES THE NEGRO NEED SEPARATE SCHOOLS? 329 cation in white institutions. If the public schools of Atlanta, Nashville, New Orleans and Jacksonville were thrown open to all races tomorrow, the education that colored children would get in them would be worse than pitiable. It would not be educa- tion. And in the same way, there are many public school systems in the North where Negroes are admitted and tolerated, but they are not edu- cated; they are crucified. There are certain Northern universities where Negro students, no matter what their ability, desert, or accomplishment, cannot get fair recognition, either in classroom or on the campus, in din- ing halls and student activities, or in common human courtesy. It is well- known that in certain faculties of the University of Chicago, no Negro has yet received the doctorate and seldom can achieve the mastership in arts; a t Harvard, Yale and Columbia, Ne- groes are admitted but not welcomed; while in other institutions, like Prince- ton, they cannot even enroll. Under such circumstances, there is no room for argument as to whether the Negro needs separate school$ or not. The plain fact faces us, that either he will have separate schools or he will not be educated. There may be, and there is, considerable difference of opinion as to how far this separation in schools is today necessary. There can be argument as to what our attitude toward further separation should be. Suppose, for instance, that in Montclair, New Jersey, a city of wealth and culture, the Board of Education is deter- mined to establish separate schools for Negroes; suppose that, despite the law, separate Negro schools are already established in Philadelphia, and pressure is being steadily brought to extend this separation at least to the junior high school; what must be our attitude toward this? Manifestly, no general and inflexi- ble rule can be laid down. If public opinion is such in Montclair that Ne- gro children can not receive decent and sympathetic education in the white schools, and no Negro teachers can be employed, there is for us no choice. We have got to accept Negro schools. Any agitation and action aimed at compelling a rich and power- ful majority of the citizens to do what they will not do, is useless. On the other hand, we have a right and a duty to assure ourselves of the truth concerning this attitude; by careful conferences, by public meetings and by petitions, we should convince our- selves whether this demand for sepa- rate schools is merely the agitation of a prejudiced minority, or the con- sidered and final judgment of the town. There are undoubtedly cases where a minority of leaders force their opinions upon a majority, and induce a community to establish separate schools, when as a matter of fact, there is no general demand for it; there has been no friction in the schools; and Negro children have been decently treated. In that case, a firm and intelligent appeal to public opin- ion would eventually settle the mat- ter. But the futile attempt to compel even by law a group to do what it is determined not to do, is a silly waste of money, time, and temper. On the other hand, there are also cases where there has been no separa- tion in schools and no movement to- 330 THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO EDUCATION ward it. And yet the treatment of Negro children in the schools, the kind of teaching and the kind of ad- vice they get, is such that they ought to demand either a thorough-going revolution in the official attitude to- ward Negro students, or absolute separation in 'educational facilities. To endure bad schools and wrong education because the schools are "mixed" is a costly if not fatal mis- take. I have long been convinced, for instance, that the Negroes in the public schools of Harlem are not get- ting an education that is in any sense comparable in efficiency, discipline, and human development with that which Negroes are getting in the separate public schools of Washing- ton, D.C. And yet on its school situa- tion, black Harlem is dumb and complacent, if not actually laudatory. Recognizing the fact that for the vast majority of colored students in porary, much less as a relatively per- manent institution, in the United States, is a fatal surrender of prin- ciple, which in the end will rebound and bring more evils on the Negro than he suffers today. (2) The other reason is at bottom an utter lack of faith on the part of Negroes that their race can do anything really well. If Negroes could conceive that Negroes could establish schools quite as good as or even superior to white schools; if Negro colleges were of equal grade in accomplishment and in scientific work with white colleges; then separation would be a passing incident and not a permanent evil; but as long as American Negroes believe that their race is constitutionally and perma- nently inferior to white people, they necessarily disbelieve in every possi- ble Negro Institution. The first argument is more or less metaphysical and cannot be decided elementary, secondary, and collegiate ,, a priori