She was about 13 years old when she read Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy. An English play from 1946 based on an actual event that happened in the Edwardian era, at the Royal Naval College, Osborne.
She did not know any piece of literature that altered her senses as did The Winslow Boy. She was going with him through the emotions of shame, helplessness and fear as he went through investigations and in and out of court.
What she did not know was that these emotions would be translated into my own in Ogden, Utah. Someone was involved in misconduct and they had to clear theirr name. That person was not the Royal College, but Weber State University. In order to clear their name, they use an African foreign student and single mother with no abilities to represent herself in court. Look at the plot for the Winslow Boy, remove the barrister and the attorney, and all the others in the boy's defense and leave him to defend himself. That is the case Victoria Sethunya vs Weber State University.
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/utah/utdce/1:2008cv00163/68715/
During this time, the adverb "stiflingly" became fresh in her mind.
Dr. Nelson Mandela on Education
Dr. Mandela warned during the apartheid era that there was an instrument boers would use to divide blacks and weaken their struggle against apartheid. That instrument was restricted education. He said boers would bar blacks from education liberties which would arm blacks with techniques on how to grow together against their enemy which was racism, discrimination and injustice.
In that part of the world and in several antiApartheid movements , uneducated blacks were used by boer ogranisation to harm the anti-racist movement. They spied on activist in order for activists to be locked away without due process. Dr. Mandela blamed this on lack of education.
That movement then in Southern African has not changed much in parts of USA where those who suffer injustice ironically work to support the same machinery that seeks to destroy equality. In parts of USA, education for the minority is "stifled" to dwarf possible activism towards injustice. It therefore does not come as a surprise when you hear one of the leaders of Arizona SB 1070 extols as achievement low Spanish student enrolment in Arizona.
That is precisely because he knows that an uneducated Spanish student is limited in what she can or cannot do to demand what is due. Dr. Mandela most likely not know President Senator Pierce, but he knows very elaborately the calculations of those who must abbreviate activists efforts to demand justice, he knows that they do so by "stifling" their education.
Dr. Martin Luther King
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically... that is the goal of true education.”
It should not be a shame for those who are educated to "think". Years ago when I read this statement I was not certain why Dr. King would suggest that "to think critically" is an excercise that ought to come as a result of education. It appears that many of us who have "education" take years thinking about one little small thing, many more to think about even a smaller thing, and a life time to think about the smallest thing! This certainly explains why it was imperative for Dr. King to pronounce correctly the thinking parts.
Many times in our lives there have been times when it seemed like the only job that ought to be done to solve the most seemingly complex problems is to think. Think.
As a matter of fact the methods that Dr. Mandela used to spread ideas against apartheid, did not "TELL" people what to do but instead they spread the seeds for those anti-aprtheid to decide in what ground to bury the seeds and under what conditions. That, was the thinking.
Even when schools are closed for minorieties, education for the grassroots movements against injustice still continue and this shall not be halted by politicians' selected interests.
The ultimate goal of an educated person is to think critically despite political barricades.
It was Dr. King's vision that brought us where we are. Ms Rosa Parks and others widened that view. Many of us who remain are committed to fighting injustice against minorities by mobilising all peaceful means possible to dwarf any seeds that tend to belittle any member of the human race. I think Dr. King would say we have a noble cause.
