Education

In the reading (pg 604-609), I read about how the European idea of education affected the colonial era. Europeans believed that education was a big key in success, like nowadays. This was caused by the Enlightenment era because people started to learn for themselves, making learning and education for the upper classes. Reading and writing was considered amazing because not many people had time to learn. That's one of the reasons why the colonized people from Africa and such were called uncivilized there was no system of writing or reading. After these areas got colonized there were some who were able to get a small education, in our perspective, because all they could do was read an write. In the book it mentions a man looking at his relative with awe because with a simple education you are able to rise in class. Africans were seen as the lowest they were called heathens, and barbarians but with a small education they were able to rise in class and they were able to make a decent living. It was a way for these people to escape laboring in fields, and they were able to have a family. In most rubber jobs they were not able to have families, they were deprived something as simple as a family. It survival of the fittest a Social Darwinism belief, the Europeans are at the top because they have an education, if you do not have an education you can't make it. Education was the path that only elite Africans and Asians were able to take but it was a path that had to be taken to escape the racism and the superiority of Europeans, not fully but partially.

Ways of the world by Robert W. Strayer (pg 604-609)