Wednesday, May 5, 2010

My Topic: Du Bois & HBCUs

I've always been interested in the "Philosophers in Focus" style of learning philosophy. And when we got to Du Bois in "The Idea of Race," I knew I had found my philosopher. His pragmatic yet unquestioning understanding of racial problems was so unlike the philosophers we read before. The issue of African Americans in higher education had always interested me, so I wrote a paper applying the educational philosophy of W.E.B. Du Bois to HBCUs today.

Using his writings, the writings of his critics, and research on modern HBCUs, I came to a two-sided conclusion. Du Bois' primary priority was successful education, not dictating the race of the students in the classroom. Ultimately, there are some HBCUs that provide rich educational experiences and offer the added bonus of a built-in racially supportive and diverse environment. On the other hand, there are other HBCUs that are simply academically inadequate. I argue that Du Bois would call for the closing of subpar HBCUs at more attention to the place where education begins to fail, in primary school.

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