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Bonus if you can name this lake.

Office: 7-7216
Office Hours:
  • MW 1:30 - 2:30
  • TuTh 10 - 11, 1-2
    and many times by arrangement
Phone: 650 738 - 7032
E-mail: freedmanj@smccd.edu

 

 

'Tain't what we don't know that hurts us so much.
It's what we do know that just ain't so.
                                                                                        Artemus Ward                                                                                   (or Josh Billings?)

Why education?

Consider this quotation from Frederick Douglass' autobiography . . .

"Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he said, 'If you give a n------ an inch, he will take an ell. A n------ should know nothing but to obey his master--to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best n------ in the world. Now,' said he, 'if you teach that n------ (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.' These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty--to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it. Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master.

Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering.

 

 

 

It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn."
(Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1854)

Almost 150 years later Civil Rights leader and math teacher, Bob Moses writes,

"People who don't understand algebra today are like those people who couldn't read or write in the industrial age. Computers have made elementary mathematics as important as reading and writing. Knowing algebra is the new floor, so to speak. To participate fully in a world driven by computer technology, to be able to get a job that supports a family, you have to be literate in math—and that requires that you have to be at least literate in algebra by the time you go to high school. We think that in an era where the "knowledge worker" is replacing the industrial worker, illiteracy in math must now be considered as unacceptable as illiteracy in reading and writing."

 

I say the stakes are just as high as they were when Frederick Douglass wrote his autobiography, but the enemy is less obvious. The slave holder has been replaced by our own complacency and slave labor replaced by implied (manufactured) consent. If opportunity is what separates the "haves" and the "have-nots," then we're obliged to create our own opportunities. I trust that is what we are all here for.

 

Post Script:
My friend and former student, Jimmy Tran, quoted Harriet Tubman (the abolitionist who personally guided hundreds of slaves to freedom) to me after reading this page. She said, "If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more."

 

 

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