January 5, 2010
A Talk to Teachers
Period 1
Education is a major component if we want society to be a good one. There are many things in society that are not fair, but we don’t fight for it to be the right way. There are many injustices, within races, people feel superior to others and some are treated badly. African Americans are treated very unfairly but that’s just because no one in society wants to speak out and fight for a better one. Kids at a young age understand more than we think, that’s why they should be taught the right things. James Baldwin uses anaphoras, personal experience and short stories to suggest that kids in America should be taught to speak out against society or else society will perish because we are manipulated by the government.
Many Americans look down on Negroes because of past history. That’s why it’s important for them to be educated so that they can fight this society who has been so unfair to them. Baldwin uses short stories to make the reader picture what is going on: “Let us say that the child is seven years old and I am his father, and I decide to take him to the zoo, or to Madison Square Garden, or to the U.N. Building.... We get into a bus and we go …and we get in New York City, which is not Harlem. Now, where the boy lives – even if it is a housing project – is in an undesirable neighborhood. If he lives in one of those housing projects of which everyone in New York is so proud, he has at the front door, if not closer, the pimps, the whores, the junkies – in a word, the danger of life in the ghetto. And the child knows this, though he doesn’t know why.” Many kids understand everything that is going on around them. That’s why it’s important to teach them to be able to speak out against injustices that may later on affect them. Many if these kids see the things that go on, but don’t know why they’re going on. They understand more than adults do but don’t know how to put it into words. That’s why it’s crucial to...