Homework 2.1

READ AND ANNOTATE: “A Talk to Teachers” by James Baldwin. 

 WRITE:  Blog Post (at least 300 words) In “A Talk to Teachers,” James Baldwin writes:  

“I would try to make [the student] know that just as American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it, so is the world larger, more daring, more beautiful and more terrible, but principally larger – and that it belongs to him. I would teach him that he doesn’t have to be bound by the expediencies of any given administration, any given policy, any given morality; that he has the right and the necessity to examine everything. “

First of all, what do you think of what James Baldwin was saying? What do you think he means when he says “the world is larger?”

Secondly, what do you think you have the “necessity” to examine, or the obligation to learn more about? To put it another way: what do you wish had been taught to you in school that wasn’t? Why do you want to know about these topics?