James Baldwin // A Talk to Teachers

James Baldwin's A Talk to Teachers is a text that has been an undeniable influence on my teaching experiences this year. In this speech, Baldwin was really urging teachers to demolish the unhealthy state of American education, transforming it from a system of skewed indoctrination into a forum for empowerment. The child, Baldwin states, can only make peace with the "conspira(cies) set out to destroy him" based on his own decision of what "he is worth" (331): not based on what outside forces tell him he is worth. Granted, the initial stages of this self awareness are frequently nurtured by the support of peers and mentors, but they should only be influences solid enough to guide, not dictate. Students must be taught from within themselves, drawing references from the world around. It is therefore critical for us all, and especially "those who deal with the minds and hearts of young people" (325) to take the greatest care in nourishing our minds and our actions based on the global societal truths. In a sense, we must "take care of ourselves" with the utmost respect so that others may do the same, based off of us. Our responsible existences dutifully nourish those of others, enabling them to take care of us in return.

Baldwin's primary and most urgent point is that citizens and teachers with senses of responsibility must "be prepared to 'go for broke'" (325)while they approach existence and teaching as forms of activism and resistance to the highest degree. He says that "what passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's [supposedly] heroic ancestors" (330). Although Baldwin finds this to be a falsehood, and though it does admittedly hold much merit, the remainder of his speech holds a subtext suggesting that there is absolutely no reason for this to be a sustained mode of operation within American society. There is no reason why we can not be the true "heroic ancestors" for our descendants.