Black scholars endorse Classical Studies

[BidenPresident]

In this increasingly polarized debate, both sides reveal an astonishing lack of historical understanding combined with a lamentable lack of imagination. Have the classics and classical education at times been used to exclude and oppress? They certainly have. Is exclusion and oppression innate to an education steeped in the history and literature of the Mediterranean crossroads? Certainly not.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/05/black-educators-endorse-classics/

 

[BidenPresident]

Huey Newton, a founder of the Black Panther Party in 1966, had improved his reading by studying Plato’s “Republic” and wrote in “Revolutionary Suicide” that he shared insights from Plato’s “allegory of the cave” with other Black men on his block.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/05/black-educators-endorse-classics/

 

[BidenPresident]

"Down with classics and classical education? Not while we have the chance to invite our students to inhabit its crossroads and engage as interlocutors in its conversations with Plato, Averroes, Fibonacci, Wheatley and many more. These are our real teachers, and we submit that we all have much to learn from them."