Category: Unit 2

I think that James Baldwin was trying portray a message to his reader. What I believe that he was trying to say that students should think more outside the box, think more critically. That there is much more to the world, history then what you see in the eye which should give students a reason to explore more. To have better understanding of America’s history and to examine it, to answer questions that one has been thinking about. James Baldwin is trying to say that understanding America’s history is very important for students to understand, so in future the same mistakes won’t happen again and to learn from those mistakes from the past. I think what he means when he says the world is larger is that to point out there are other things going on in the world that could/is being caused that happened in the course of America’s history. I am kinda curious about examining how America got where it is today. Throughout high school I never really was taught much about history mainly because as I was learning US history, it was the same time when the pandemic became a thing. I am also interested on how technology has developed overtime and what was the cause of rapid development in technology. Technology now is way more advanced now then it was 100 years ago and I want to explore more into that and see what has truly happened during this time period.

When James Baldwin says, “The world is larger,” I believe he means to say that there is so much more that exists beyond the scope of what you can simply see right in front of you and around you.  The majority of people live for many years, or their whole lives, in a very small portion of the world.  A neighborhood consisting of a few blocks, in which they become accustomed to.  Soon enough, this neighborhood becomes their “world” so to speak. Everything that happens in this neighborhood becomes a part of their lives and learning experience, the information gathered from these experiences become what these people believe life in general just is.  If a boy were to grow up his whole life in a crime-ridden project area of New York City, being poor all the time and never being able to do anything for himself because he doesn’t have the means to, then he will believe that the world is a cruel and unforgiving place.  He will believe that life is horrible and that that he is going to suffer like this for the rest of his life because this is the only information that he has ever been exposed to for his whole life.  The reality is, the world is in fact very cruel, but also very loving.  It contains all kinds of experiences and things, good and bad, that this boy will never get to experience because he doesn’t have the means to leave this small part of the world he was born into.  Reality, for many people, only consists of these small portions of the world that they are confined to, they cannot conceive anything outside of it because they have never seen it before and so the rest of the actual world might as well not exist at all.

I wish I had been taught the actual realities of life in school.  School lied to me when it taught me that the way forward was doing all this book work and then going to college to get a degree and then get a job in my field of studied expertise.  It’s not that simple, things get in the way, and things in my life changed and I was in no way prepared for that.  There were variables in my life I had no control over and I was never taught how to cope with them.  School teaches you how to be book smart, not street smart.  It gives you basic information that most likely will end up being useless in your life and doesn’t give you actual life skills that will prepare you for the world outside of the confines of its walls.  It’s very restricting, and the school system needs to teach kids from an early age how to prepare to become adults by giving them actual specialized skills that they can use to live life on their own after they graduate.

What James Baldwin conveys in the passage, is that students, or people overall, should be aware that just as America has a large history and is present with many great and horrible events, so is the entire world, large, with so many histories behind it and present, with great and horrible events, as well as large, but we shouldn’t be afraid to explore it, or “examine” as he states, that we shouldn’t be too attached to society, its limits and strict moralities. When he states “the world is larger” he means that the world is vast and full of many surprises and things we have yet to experience and discover about it or ourselves and that the events happening each day are both negative and positive, but it will either way happen. Our necessity to examine and obligation to learn more about the large world means that we should not be limited or restricted to stay within our limits or within our knowledge, that we are obliged to learn more, to gain more, and to create experiences that can either be negative and positive to learn new things and survive society and the world overall. In school, something that could have and could still help us learn about this vast world could be how society works, and how the financial system works so we can have an idea and make it easier for us as we grow into adults, so easier to manage it and understand it without making any mistake, although we learn from mistakes, other people’s advice or life tips can help us learn and manage the world without struggling. This will also help us be confident enough to try other things and gain more knowledge