This is an excerpt from Darkwater, written by W.E.B. Dubois and published in 1920. I find it valuable and insightful today. If we think of the problems of our time, I believe the source of much of our discontent remains, as a cause, inadequate education. We often see our histories as we want to see them, not as they really are, we see our world as it is and think it has worked for us, why won’t it work for the next generation. We invest so much into policing, criminal incarceration, and welfare, and other programs. When possibly investments that would better serve our society would improve our children, making them better people. Improving how they see themselves, how they think and how they can be the source of our future advancement. Alas however being honest about who we are and what we are doing and where are we going is a necessary first step.
From Darkwater:
“We have a right to assume that hundreds and thousands of boys and girls today are missing the chance of developing unusual talents because the chances have been against them; and that indeed the majority of the children of the world are not being systematically fitted for their life work and for life itself. Why?
Many seek the reason in the content of the school program. They feverishly argue the relative values of Greek, mathematics, and manual training, but fail with singular unanimity in pointing out the fundamental cause of our failure in human education: That failure is due to the fact that we aim not at the full development of the child, but that the world regards and always has regarded education first as a means of buttressing the established order of things rather than improving it. And this is the real reason why strife, war, and revolution have marked the onward march of humanity instead of reason and sound reform. Instead of seeking to push the coming generation ahead of our pitiful accomplishment, we insist that it march behind. We say, morally, that high character is conformity to present public opinion; we say industrially that the present order is best and that children must be trained to perpetuate it.
But, it is objected, what else can we do? Can we teach Revolution to the inexperienced in hope that they may discern progress? No, but we may teach frankly that this world is not perfection, but development: that the object of education is manhood and womanhood, clear reason, individual talent and genius and the spirit of service and sacrifice, and not simply a frantic effort to avoid change in present institutions; that industry is for man and not man for industry and that while we must have workers to work, the prime object of our training is not the work but the worker—not the maintenance of present industrial caste but the development of human intelligence by which drudgery may be lessened and beauty widened.”
