Education Vs. Du Bois's Purposes Of Education

Du Bois offers two purposes of education that are deeply related to another. First, Du Bois views education as the answer to the question of how to reconcile the three “vast and partially contradictory streams of thought” that he detailed in the beginning of Chapter 6. Those streams of thought refer to manner of thinking by the larger world who believes in the world-wide cooperation of satisfying human wants while maintaining afterthoughts of force and dominance, the older South who believes that God created the Negro to be a tertium quid between men and cattle, and the black and whitened who cry freedom but nonetheless entertain the idea that the older South is correct. The second purpose of education according to Du Bois is to create “a
The first aspect is that both recognize that there is a public mind in each society that must be addressed by education. Du Bois terms this public mind the “streams of thought,” and Durkheim terms the public mind as “the social consciousness.” Du Bois and Durkheim both observe that within this public mind lie contradictory thoughts. Accordingly, there must be some aspect of society that can address those contradictory thoughts. Du Bois and Durkheim maintain that the great reconciler and pruner of those contradictory thoughts is education. The second similar aspect is that both understand education to be the giver of something far greater than the individual himself that was previously devoid of him. To Du Bois, individuals are devoid of that “loftier respect for the human soul,” and to Durkheim, individuals merely feel the reality of the social consciousness when they need to be fully immersed in it. To create what Du Bois and Durkheim desire, education is
First, Du Bois and Durkheim divide on what the act of education does. Du Bois thinks that education is freeing, allowing for “expansion and self-development.” Conversely, in Durkheim’s view for education, students are disciplined, conforming to a collective consciousness. Thus, the second difference between their purposes for education is that only Du Bois’ appears to recognize that the collective conscious may not be what is best for individuals being educated. Durkheim merely assumes that the collective conscious that students are immersed into is a moral, noble one. Additionally, it assumes that what the collective conscious deems as “trivial and secondary” is actually trivial and secondary. Indeed, one could picture the rift that would ensue between Du Bois’ and Durkheim’s views of education if, in Durkheim’s world, the trivial and secondary issues of the collective consciousness would be those concerning the humanity and dignity of the