The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however

The great historian and father of Black history, Carter G. Woodson, once wrote with piercing truth: “The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples.” These words were not written to wound, but to awaken. They come from the pen of a man who saw clearly that education, though often praised as the path to freedom, can also be a tool of bondage—if it teaches the oppressed to admire their oppressor, and to despise themselves. Woodson, born to former slaves, understood that knowledge without liberation is illusion, and that an education designed by the conqueror can never serve the conquered unless it is reclaimed, redefined, and reborn.

To understand this profound declaration, we must turn to its origin. Carter G. Woodson, the author of The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933), had risen through struggle to become one of the most educated men of his time, earning a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Yet he found that the education he and others received did not uplift the Black mind—it alienated it. It taught Black students to revere the histories of Europe and to forget the glories of Africa; to quote Plato and Shakespeare, but to ignore the voices of their own ancestors. This “modern education”, he wrote, had been designed not to liberate the spirit, but to mold it into the likeness of those who ruled. Thus, while it served others, it shackled the Black soul with invisible chains—chains forged not of iron, but of ideas.

Woodson saw that education could be a double-edged sword. In the hands of the powerful, it becomes a means of control, shaping the minds of the oppressed to accept their place in the social order. The colonizer teaches the colonized that civilization began with him; the enslaver teaches the enslaved that freedom is dangerous; the master teaches the servant that obedience is virtue. This was the heart of Woodson’s warning: that modern education, unless reformed, would continue to “do others so much more good,” because it was created to serve the values, goals, and worldview of those who dominated the world. True education, he argued, must instead awaken self-knowledge—it must teach a people not merely to think, but to think for themselves.

History bears witness to the consequences of his insight. In the days of slavery, it was a crime to teach a Black person to read, because reading is the doorway to thinking, and thinking is the foundation of freedom. When Frederick Douglass learned to read, he said that “knowledge unfitted him to be a slave.” His mistress began by teaching him letters, but when her husband forbade it—saying education would make a slave “unmanageable”—Douglass understood at once that ignorance was a weapon. He then taught himself, reading in secret, gathering scraps of learning wherever he could. His education was not “modern”; it was revolutionary. It was not given to him—it was claimed. This is the kind of education Woodson demanded: not an inheritance from the master’s house, but a rebuilding of the mind’s foundation upon truth and dignity.

Woodson’s vision was both an indictment and a call to action. He believed that a people who depend on others for their education will always be miseducated—trained to serve another’s purpose, to think another’s thoughts, to speak another’s words. He warned that the greatest victory of oppression is not in the body, but in the mind. When a man is taught to hate his own race, to distrust his own intelligence, to look to others for leadership and validation, he becomes enslaved without chains. Thus, Woodson urged his people to reclaim education as a weapon of empowerment, to study their own history, to celebrate their own genius, and to build schools that teach both knowledge and pride.

This quote also challenges us in our own time. For even now, long after Woodson’s passing, much of education around the world still bears the imprint of conquest. The histories of empire are glorified while the stories of the colonized are silenced. The ideals of power are taught as truth, while the virtues of justice, humility, and diversity are treated as lesser lessons. To follow Woodson’s wisdom, we must ask: Does our education liberate the spirit or bind it? Does it teach us to question, or to conform? Does it serve the world’s majority—or merely its privileged few? For the purpose of education must always be the same as that of freedom: to uplift, to humanize, to make one see clearly.

The lesson that Carter G. Woodson leaves us is both simple and profound: Education must be rebuilt from within. Let no people accept a curriculum that teaches them to vanish from their own story. Let every teacher, parent, and child seek knowledge that restores dignity, truth, and unity. True education is not memorizing the thoughts of others—it is awakening one’s own. To be truly educated is to see through the fog of oppression and to know oneself as fully human, as fully capable, as fully free.

So let these words of Woodson live on: “The so-called modern education, with all its defects, does others more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples.” Let us not be content with an education that teaches submission, but strive for one that teaches sovereignty. Let every school be a forge of truth, every classroom a field of liberation. For when education becomes an act of self-discovery and resistance, then—and only then—does it serve its highest purpose: to free the mind, ennoble the soul, and restore the balance of humanity.