Purpose of Education

I’m thinking about using this topic (theme) for my midterm paper, so I figured I’d see how much I like it as a blog post! A central theme/issue in both School Daze and Dear White People is education vs. the purpose of college. For instance, in SD, the character Dap rallies throughout the entire movie, talking about what’s happening in South Africa and wanting to stop apartheid. In DWP, similarly in concept, a group of students at Winchester are constantly rallying to speak out against racial injustices on campus, like the blackface party. In both the movie and TV show, the students rallying for specific racial causes are met with a great deal of resistance from the campus climate and even administration! In SD, Dap is classed to meet with the President of the University and threatened with expulsion, and told that he is interfering with the education of other students. Sam in DWP was also threatened by the principal of her university for the rallying she was calling for. In both scenarios you can see that the universities are claiming that what the students are working on clearly falls outside of “education.” But I disagree. I think we come to universities to expand, to grow academically, to grow as intellectuals. To broaden our horizons of thought, and the only way to do that is to question things, to start conversations, not to read conversations that have already been discussed in textbooks every day.

#Tabatha