Educating Our Children in the Black American Community

Introduction

Obtaining a quality education is the foundation to improving peoples lives and sustainable development. The proverb goes: give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life. Education is the cornerstone of all growth, economic development, sustainability projects, and solutions to the social, economic and political problems that serve as global challenges today. From poverty, to inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice, the one common denominator that can make a huge difference in them all is education. Education leads to knowledge acquisition and the formation of the character. It is people with character and knowledge, and the ability to engage in critical thinking, who will take the necessary steps to address our most important issues. Therefore, this paper focuses on Goal 4: Quality Education of the Sustainable Development Goals. Obtaining a quality education is the foundation to improving peoples lives and sustainable development.

Children in the Black American Community

Children in the Black American community are currently underserved when it comes to education. In the century and a half that has passed since slavery ended, not much has changed in terms of the education of Black American communities. Du Bois refers to the plight of the Black American as double-consciousness: of being aware of being American on one hand, yet of being aware of being Black and different on the other hand. Du Bois pointed to education as the main issue affecting Black American communities. The thing that made him different from others, such as Booker T. Washington, was that Du Bois was adamant about character education: he believed Black American communities needed to be trained in classical education, because this would help them to form and develop their characters. According to Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk, the reason Black Americans had such a sharp sense of double-consciousness was that they were not educated in the same way White America was: they were not given the same educational opportunities, the same educational foundation, the same knowledge, and the same tools to strengthen their characters. Instead, they were teased with an industrial educationa type of training that would enable them to get a job in the industrial agebut an education that lacked the basic elements of character building. For Du Bois, this was a non-starter: Black American communities needed a moral education rooted in classical educationfor it is in the character that all true education starts and ends.

Du Bois believed that it was important for Black Americans to be able to pursue the lofty ideas, for it is these ideas that support true sustainability. Higher education opportunities remain closed to a great extent to many Black Americans because their secondary schools are so poor and inadequately prepare them for undergraduate training. They are not being taught how to think critically, nor or they given a great deal of training in classical education, which is the bedrock of character education (Kristjansson, 2013). As Haynes (2009) explains, the character of a nation is determined by the character of its people.

Better Education Leads to Better Outcomes

Higher education leads to better outcomes for people: College grads see a 17% increase in earnings, compared with a 10% increase for primary and a 7% increase for high school grads (Children International, 2019). In short, the more educated a person is the more likely he is to be self-sufficient. The problem that Black Communities are facing is that children in the schools within these communities are woefully underprepared to enter into higher education (Yaffe, 2013)....

…they put into it themselves. Children and young people are thirsting for this kind of education. By talking only of rights and equal distribution of funds, people lose sight of the heart of the matter. They cannot put this at the forefront of any discussion about education. At the forefront of any discussion about education has to be the issue of character. No amount of money will make any difference when it comes to the education of the character. It only takes one teacher of character to inspire a hundred others. Socrates himself is the perfect example of this truth. He alone insisted that truth be the focal point. And from this insistence, the Western world adopted a philosophy of education that altered the course of history.

Conclusion

Quality education should be rooted in character education, which is obtained through classical education. This is what made a difference in the life of Du Bois. He saw it and experienced it personally. He saw the power that it had to open up the world to him. Trade schools might teach a trade that one can put into practice, but they do not form the mind and heart. If these are unformed, what is there to drive the will to work and achieve sustainability? Todays standardized education might emphasize values and ideas that are politically correct, but what does this do to inform the character of theindividual? So long as virtue ethics is ignored in the classroom, the children of communities will miss out on what they need the most. Gong (2010) is right to argue that only virtue ethics can help the global community accomplish the noble aims its people seek to achieve. This aim can be supported in every Black Community: all it requires is a few teachers willing to commit to…