Southern Schools And Education
Throughout history the South seems to have always been at an educational disadvantage. Some of these shortcomings are due to lifestyle elements out of the states' control; like a highly dispersed living style that made establishing a school district vastly complicating. Yet other contributions to these disadvantages were of personal choice. The lack of an organized, formal education in the South was highly the result of sexism, racism, and a lack of seeing education as a valuable and essential contribution to life.
The Southern states did not concern themselves with education firstly because it was viewed as a private matter, set aside for those who could afford it. This outlook created a defined gap between the classes for you either had the money for school or you did not; there was no in-between or "middle class" (Cheek 1). Schooling was also not attainable for distinct groups of individuals, such as women and slaves. Women were viewed as baby-makers whose only tasks were to keep house, raise the children, and tend to their husbands (Davis). Slaves, on the other hand, were outlawed an education as a means of keeping them from learning about equality in other parts of the United States, and to assure the absence of rebellions. In fact, "Southern colonies began passing laws to make it a crime to teach slaves to read and write" (Cheek 2).
These measures continued as the norm because the Southern children were brought up learning that this way of life was correct and amiable. From an early age, these children were taught "that mankind was divided naturally by race" and that "each race [had] certain physical and mental characteristics which had remained fundamentally unchanged throughout history" (Cheek 2). These children were also brought up to believe in the white supremacy. Early on they learned that slaves and first people were inferior to people of white decent (Michael). There was an outlined "racial hierarchy" that placed the white race at...
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