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Welcome

Dear Reader,  Welcome to my blog. Here, the discussion of the educational gap between Affrican Americans and the white population will be discussed. In history, African Americans were segregated in schools and placed in separate institutions. Through the analysis of A Lesson Before Dying , readers can infer some of the factors that create an educational gap for Grant’s students. However, in this blog I will dig deeper into other factors that may influence this gap, presently and historically. The purpose here is to learn, analyze, and understand the education issue as it still presents itself and as it has presented itself in the past.  The perspective on this issue that will be discussed is that this educational gap needs to be closed and the items contributing to the issue need to be discussed and changed. Because there is a lack of funding for African Americans  and a lack of African American school teachers today, the student achievement gap is widening. Even though segrega
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Playlist on Education

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Greatest Love of All- Whitney Houston  In Whitney Houston’s powerful ballad, she sings “I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside.” This relates to the novel, as the children are the ones who strive to reach beyond Bayonne, Louisiana. In the scene with one of Grant’s students and Grant, the young boy informs Grant that he desires to go to Yugoslavia. Grant had to learn to see this student’s dream through, even if he knew how hard it would be for him to get out of his small town. She continues, singing “I found the greatest love of all inside of me.” Grant hated his job, saying “I teach because it is the thing an educated black man can do in the South today. I don’t like it; I hate it” (194). Grant had to learn to love himself as a teacher, something that was not an easy process for him. He could learn to love himself through his interaction with Jefferson, whom he mentored througho
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An Interview with Ernest Gaines

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            As the author of A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines has spoken about his stance on education, in an interview posted in 2009. As someone who escaped the south and moved to California, Gaines based on his novel on his own hometown where he attended a school just like that of where Grant teaches. In this video interview, Gaines gives viewers an insight into the story behind the primary text of this blog.              Gaines, in his interview with Larry Bridges, says that he had never read a book about his “own people” and that his path to becoming a writer was not necessarily the intended one. He observed the lack of African American novels in a library in Vallejo, California, where someone suggested maybe he was the one to put that missing book on the shelf. He took that idea to heart and began his writing journey, eventually writing A Lesson Before Dying.              After returning to Louisiana, Gaines gained some ideas of topics to discuss in his
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Timeline

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In looking at my timeline, I have included many events that have led us to the point where we are today with education. From 1849 to the present day, many events included have shaped our education system and how successful it has or hasn’t been in the past. The timeline that has been created include thirteen major events, all of which are still relevant today.  Beginning in 1849 , long before the Civil Rights Era, Massachusetts state ruled that segregated schools are permissible under state law.This, arguably, was the first event to cause a downward spiral in educational segregation. Based on the facts of the court case, Massachusstes deemed school segregation constitutional under state law after a man sued on behalf of his five year old daughter, who was denied access to a school because of the color of her skin. This is a problem that did not just happen in 1849, but also in the present day United States, as in multiple recent cases that have discussed race in re
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