Kevin Harrelson: "Du Bois’s Two Philosophies of Education"

In The Souls of Black Folk and other early works, Du Bois defended liberal or classical education as part of a polemic with Booker T. Washington and his model of industrial training. The polemic itself became a classic in African American intellectual history, and for that reason Du Bois became an avatar for the universal value of classical training itself: studying Greek, Latin, and philosophy is part of the acquisition of high culture for any people, including the recently emancipated who formed Du Bois’s specific subject. What is less well known is that Du Bois himself later retracted much of his polemic, and developed a model of education that emphasizes cultural specificity and a pre-vocational mission for the university. This presentation will treat the central arguments of Du Bois’s later philosophy of education by contrast with his early, and more traditional, defense of classical education.

The Critical Theories Colloquium at FoF brings together researchers and advanced students with an interest in philosophical research that is sensitive to issues of social and epistemic (in)justice, incl. postcolonial theory, critical theory of race, feminism, queer theory, social/political epistemology, and the Frankfurt school. If you are interested, please contact Franz Knappik (franz.knappik@uib.no).