Response to “A Talk to Teachers’ by James Baldwin.
James Baldwin creates an outline on how students should be educated. He feels that students must delve into the world and go out and experience every single thing. They should not feel inferior and incapable of carrying out such a task. They should feel that the world belongs to them and the sky is the limit. There are no limits to their achievements and they could go into every single field they wish to explore. The author’s statement “the world is larger’ possibly means that students should not restricts themselves in only one narrow way of thinking but rather they should have a broad understanding of the world and understand how it is beautiful but at the same time it could be terrible. The students should not be narrow minded and try to have a wholistic understanding of the world.
The idea of examining and learning more about the world around them should be a necessity for each individual, this should be something which is crucial for their survival, just like breathing oxygen. Each and every student must be hungry for knowledge. They should not be limited and bound by the expediences of any administration. The yearning for exploring the world around them should not be a secondary matter but it has to be a priority in their minds in order to succeed.
I wish that I had been taught to think out of the box and not follow what everyone thinks and set that as the standard. Also I feel that schools must teach how to interact with people in your family and outside the family. The reason I feel such topics are important is because school makes it seem that there is only one way to succeed in life, which is to study as much as you can, the higher the degree you attain the better the job you get. It shows us only one certain way to succeed in life and does not teach us how to think differently and different ways to achieve our goals. School teaches us to accept every single thing which the society accepts, for example, if a certain idea is popular everyone must be on the same page and has to accept ot otherwise they feel left out. Individuality is non-existent. Understanding how to interact with one’s family and the people surrounding oneself is very important. Schools do not teach that repecting parents, teachers and elders is very important and crucial for their success. It is more of a trait that is found in certain students because of their cultural backgrounds. If schools taught us how to interact with other people and how to choose certain words and avoid other words there would be very few conflicts and students would be better equipped to solve their problems by themselves.