Annotation of James Baldwin’s article:

  • “The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.” I really like this because it makes you a second guess of everything you taught your entire life. He makes you wonder about the questions we are afraid to ask.
  • “It is rich – or at least it looks rich. It is clean – because they collect garbage downtown. There are doormen. People walk about as though they owned where they are – and indeed they do. And it’s a great shock. It’s very hard to relate yourself to this. You don’t know what it means. You know – you know instinctively – that none of this is for you. You know this before you are told. And who is it for and who is paying for it? And why isn’t it for you?” This is so true because where I live it ain’t like the city. I wondered that exact same reason.

Response to James Baldwin:

What James Baldwin is trying to say is that American history as a whole is terrible, yet beautiful at the same time. That the world is larger, terrible, and still beautiful. He is also talking about how students have the right to ask questions and do research. What he means that the world is larger is explaining how there’s a big population of history ready to tell. To explain their side of the story rather or not it’s beautiful or terrible. That the student should examine everything rather or not it’s true or false. To always second guess about everything. No matter how crazy something might sound. Always be prepared to teach yourself something in case something or someone can’t teach it to you. While reading the article Baldwin points out some key points. He states “The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.” Baldwin points out some key points that in school sometimes refuse or bypass the sensitive topics. That we shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions that others might think it’s not important or questionable. Secondly, what I think in my opinion is that we have the “necessity” to examine, or obligation to learn more about the real world. Like what we should expect once we get to college? Or how to do taxes? Or learn why it’s so hard to maintain peace around the world?  Like why are human beings so eager to be greedy, ambitious to have power? For example, the tensions between Russia and Ukraine. Why did that ever happen?  And how and why did that escalate that far? All these questions that we are somehow afraid to ask or ignore.