Book Review: Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South 1860 – 1935 University of North Carolina Press (Book Review Sample)

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Book Review: Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South 1860 – 1935 University of North Carolina Press, 1988 -  HYPERLINK "/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=subject:%22Education%22&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0" Education - 366 pages
Introduction
There are ties which are inextricable between citizenship in popular education and in a democratic society that is bound to the American education history. This information is important for one to understand the American history in education. The information is among the crucial issues addressed by the author. It is also necessary to recognize that within the democracy of the Americans there have been groups of people who have been oppressed, and there have also been relationships which are essential to politics of oppression and the popular education. Schooling for the second class as well as democratic citizenship has always been in the basic traditions of the American education. However, there are traditions that were opposing. The difference between some isolated or aberrations in the Blacks and Americans education are simply the author intended to cover. He clearly shares his ideas on the issue in an easy to understand form.
Summary
In this book the author, James Anderson interprets in a crucial manner the initial life of the southern black education and its progress from its reconstruction all the way to the great depression. He clearly outlines in details the experiences and the outcomes. Through the placement of the black schooling in a context which is political, economic as well as cultural, he presents clear and precise insights into the commitment of blacks to education, the strange importance of Tuskegee Institute. The author offers fresh views on the goals of several philanthropic groups which are conflicting as well as others issues concerned with the matter.
The book entails all the details related to the topic. Previously, the ex- slaves made attempts in the creation of an education system that would aid as well as widen their emancipation. However, regardless of their efforts, their children were forced into an industrial education system that presupposed the black economic and political subordination. The pushing of the children into this system disadvantaged their attempts. The ex-slaves, however, kept pressing on. Most of the school officials from the South had conflicts with these aspirations of the ex-slaves, their children, and their descendants while on the other hand the industrial philanthropists from the north, most southern school officials and some of the black educators supported this concept of education and also social order. Due to this, the conflict resulted in a bitter debate nationally at the turn of that century. This debate was based on the importance of the black education. The conflict grew as the conception of education was insisted on. Those that opposed could not view the significance of this development. The blacks lacked both political as well as economic power. Due to this, the white elites who were more advantaged were able to govern the content and control the structure of the black elementary, normal, college as well as secondary education during the initial third of the 20th century. This means the success of the attempts of the blacks seemed to be hitting a dead end. Nevertheless, the blacks kept on persisting in their struggle towards developing an education system that was by their desires and needs.
1. Ex- Slaves and the Rise of Universal Education in the South, 1860 – 1880 (pp 4-32)
In this chapter, the ex-slaves are considered to be first among the first native people from the southern to depart from the ideology of education of the planters and the society. They make efforts to campaign for state-supported education for the public which is universal. In their action to fight for the universal schooling, the ex-slaves actively pursue and welcome the help of the Republican politicians, northern missionary societies, the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Union army. The act of the former slaves becomes a major threat to the planters’ beliefs of the right roles of the church, family, and state in the matters of education and a threat to the planter rule. The upper class that resides in the South put up with the idea of this education. Their tolerance is a form of charity to the poor white children. The author covers the efforts of the ex-slaves in this chapter which fits the thesis of the book.
2. The Hampton Model of Normal School Industrial Education 1868-1915(pp.33- 78)
This serves as among the great Afro- American history ironies that the programmatic and ideological challenge to the former slaves concept of universal school. There was conceiving of the social progress which is initialized and taken care of by Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Yankee and Booker T Washington, who was a former slave. There was a struggle among the leaders of the class of the former slaves towards building an education system that would aid in the reinforcement of their freedom conceptions and social order. All leaders represent a certain class of individuals and character.
3. Education and the Race Problem in the New South: The Struggle for Ideological Hegemony (pp. 79- 109)
The debates and reforms that are widely covered in this chapter are the most thoroughly examined of all the topics that are covered in the southern black educational history. They began in the late 1890’s and ceased at around 1915. Similarly, there is the persistence of the fundamental misunderstandings. There are half-truths and certain distortions which have been repeated and developed in a series made of fine monographs. The series is repetitive. The distortions evolved into the interpretation that was standard at the century’s turn. This interpretation can be written in a synopsis as the philanthropists from the north affected by the economic and social hindrances placed on those from the south.
4. Normal Schools and County Training Schools: Educating the South’s Black Teaching Force, 1900 – 1935 (pp 110 -147)
At the start of the 20th Century, several proponents of universal education that was elementary for the blacks from the South not considering their educational and social ideology identified a common calamity; the infrastructure that was necessary to cater for a viable public school for blacks was nonexistent. More than half of the black children who were supposed to be in elementary school were not even enrolled. This was because the school buildings were inadequate and the capacity to accommodate these children was lacking. Another serious issue was the adverse shortage of black teachers to teach in these schools. There were no enough common schools that could be developed until the black teachers to teach were adequate. This chapter fits the author’s main idea of the book and the thesis. It explains the problems that the former slaves went through in details.
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