Today we are forcing men into educational slavery in order that others may enjoy life, and excuse ourselves by saying that the world's work must be done.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “Today we are forcing men into educational slavery in order that others may enjoy life, and excuse ourselves by saying…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois critiques the educational system that perpetuates inequality and limits opportunities for many.
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Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to…
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.