The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906 - 1960

Thankfully this book has been reprinted, along with a new 2001 introduction by Herbert Aptheker (who puts in a gentle "slam" of David Levering Lewis's two Pulitzer Prize winning biographies for good measure). The picture of Du Bois on the new cover is another one of those "I am God and You are not worthy" type of pictures. I've gone and made it one of my screen savers.Du Bois's prescient and practical advice is, as usual, pretty much on target. It is also interesting to observe the evolution in his thinking in the fifty-four years covered in this slim (you can read this book in a couple of sittings) volume. He answers some eternally debated questions: To whom should college presidents and administrations be ultimately accountable? (Alumni) What is the point of a liberal education? (character) etc.This book goes far beyond the "Booker T vs. W.E.B." educational debates that dominated 100 years ago (and that most people remember). It provides specific pedagogical advice and is written in the typical Du Boisian style; lucid, straightforward, inspirational. The man lived longer than most, and did a whole lot while he was alive. In its own way this little book is just as important, if not more so, than the other little book for which he is justifably famous, "The Souls of Black Folk."