More on Public Education

I found this article on one person's take on public schools.

I also ordered Kaffir Boy after reading about how it had been banned in a public school. I didn't get very far (less than one page!) into the book when I had to do a little research on apartheid in South Africa. What do you think I found? That South Africa, by way of the Bantu Education Act, used the public school system as a tool of oppression.

Of special note: "The National Party now had the power to employ and train teachers as they saw fit. Black teachers salaries in 1953 were extremely low and resulted in a dramatic drop of trainee teachers. The policy of Bantu (African) education was aimed to direct black or non-white youth to the unskilled labor market, to ensure white control and prosperity."

This is reminiscent of the laws in the Old South that forbade teaching blacks to read and write.

So, if you're following this, a government school banning a book led me to read the book about a government that used the school to oppress its citizens, which in turn reminded me of how the government in this country used its control of education to keep some of its own citizens under the thumb of oppression.