The article "On the relevance of Education for Black Liberation" has awakened some new thoughts in my mind. For those interested it is in the Summer 1978 (Vol 47, No. 3) issue of The Journal of Negro Education(why the journal had not or even, I believe has not changed its name is a mystery to me) on pages 266- 282, and authored by Joyce Williams and Ronald Ladd. It critiques the idea that formal education will cause equality by talking about the pay gap for blacks and whites who lived in the ghetto and got the same amount of education.(hopefully this has been rectified by now)and posits that black self education has been more helpful since it does not mean that blacks need to assimilate to white culture, and doesn't have the culture based judgments that formal education seems to. (if you don't have a big vocabulary, well, just use the dictionary, is a bit less limiting in life than you don't have a big vocabulary, you're shit for brains. )

I think that people of all cultures should self educate. Even us college educated people should always be trying to read and learn. We can't take in all we can or should know in a life time just by sitting in a classroom, although classrooms are helpful. We should take the initiative ourselves to be where we are supposed to be in the realms of knowledge. If we don't educate ourselves, anyone can lie to us, and try to say that's the truth. If we have the knowledge, we are not so easily swayed by every jackleg politician. So read early, read often,and read critically.