How To Write An Essay On The Learning Tree By Gordon Parks

805 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Importance of Education to a society

The novel, The Learning Tree, by Gordon Parks is a semi-autobiography that draws upon experiences from his life. Although the characters are fictitious, the experiences they have in the book can be linked to those of African-Americans in rural Kansas during the 1920’s and the 1930’s. Gordon Parks focused his book on Newt Winger and his family and all of the racial prejudices they had to deal with while growing up in Kansas. There are many things that are important to Newt but nothing is more important to him and his family than education. On Newt’s journey to complete his education, he has to face and overcome several obstacles on his way. In the beginning of the book, education is not touched in detail but to say that Newt’s siblings attended high school and that white and black children attend separate churches and primary schools (Parks, pg. 26). The first obstacle that Newt has to face comes after he mentions his love for music but that he is told that he will not even have a chance because his white teacher believes she is wasting her time with teaching the black students. Newt’s sister Prissy came home one day and told him that “the white teachers at high …show more content…

As furious as she was upon hearing this, she was more determined than ever to make sure Newt received the best education. And in order for him to do so, Sarah brought together black parents and teachers to create the Negro Parent-Teacher Association of Cherokee Flats (pg. 102). Sarah then led the group to present their case to the mayor and as a result a heated argument erupted between the Negro Parent-Teacher Association and the white parents and teachers. After taking time to determine his answer, the mayor returned to the meeting and announced that he agreed with Sarah and would allow the black kids to take any class in the high school (pg.

Show More
Related

  • Ernest Green

    2341 Words  | 5 Pages

    Testament to his resilience and determination in the face of angry segregationists, Ernest assumed the role of head of his family at the age of sixteen, after his father’s death in 1953. Ernest’s mother, an elementary school teacher, and his younger brother Scott both respected this new allotment Ernest assumed at such a young age. His mother knew it was useless attempting to persuade the headstrong Ernest to reconsider attendance at Little Rock Central High School after he had been selected as one of the nine Negro children to attend. Students were selected based ...

    Read More

  • Book Report On The Other Wes Moore

    718 Words  | 2 Pages

    Richelle Goodrich once said, “To encourage me is to believe in me, which gives me the power to defeat dragons.” In a world submerged in diversity, racism and prejudice it is hard for minorities to get ahead. The novel “The Other Wes Moore” is a depiction of the differences that encouragement and support can make in the life of a child. This novel is about two men, with the same name, from the same neighborhood, that endured very similar adversities in their lives, but their paths were vastly different. In the following paragraphs, their lives will be compared, and analyzed from a sociological perspective.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Of Stepping Into The Light By Tanya Savory

    1393 Words  | 3 Pages

    But unlike Gregory’s tale, Wilkins’s story lacks figurative language. Though he does use descriptive language, like when he described what his white neighbors thought about him and his African American family moving in: “The prevailing wisdom in the neighborhood was that we were spoiling it and that we ought to go back where we belonged (or, alternatively ought not intrude where we not wanted.)” (Wilkins). The main problem is that there are no metaphors, similes, symbols, alliterations, and so on. But a strong point of this piece is that it is to the point. All the details he put in his story made sense and helped make his point of equality clear. One such example of this is when he describes his teacher Dorothy Bean, “I later came to know that in Grand Rapids, she was viewed as a very liberal person who believed, among other things, that Negroes were equal.” (Wilkins). This detail helps to establish her as a guiding force to help the other students see Wilkins as an equal. Another great strength in this story was its clear organization of the events that took place. It began with an explanation of the setting, how he was treated, how the teacher treated him, and ended with him being accepted by the other students. Everything was chronologically ordered and easy to follow, which also made it a more enjoyable

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Honky By Dalton Conley

    1297 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Dalton Conley’s memoir “Honky”, written in 2000, Conley talks about his experience of switching schools to a primarily white elementary school. He discusses the major differences between his prior, very diverse school and his new, primarily caucasian school. He focuses on the main topics of race and class, and how they enhanced the differences between these two schools.

    Read More

  • Cassie And Little Man Character Analysis

    475 Words  | 1 Pages

    In Addition, Cassie and Little Man refused to use the textbooks Miss Crocker gave them, because of how poorly treated the book was. The book was not in good condition, and also they gave the white people the nicer books. They also referred the bad books as the ¨Dirty Books¨, and The ¨Dirty Books¨ had offensive words inside. Little man refused to use the books, but Miss Crocker told him he had to. Even knowing that

    Read More

  • White Teacher by Vivian Gussin Paley

    818 Words  | 2 Pages

    The things that Mrs. Hawkins says to Mrs. Paley are things that really stuck out to me. I think that if Mrs. Paley had thought more about what Mrs. Hawkins said to her in the beginning of the book she would have made a few of her discoveries about teaching African American students earlier. I feel that this statement made a huge impact on the way that I think about teaching. I never thought about the positives of the differences before. I grew up in a mainly white area. We had a few black students in our school, but most of them where bused in from the city and didn't live in the area. I always wondered why they wouldn't just stay and go to schools that were closer to where they live. Mrs. Hawkins brings up a good point that integrating brings in positive, interesting and natural differences. I think that if I had gone to a school with only white children I wouldn't have been shown these differences in such a good light.

    Read More

  • Coretta Scott King

    650 Words  | 2 Pages

    At the Lincoln School Coretta was taught by white and black teachers. She learned that white people from the North treated blacks equally. Coretta was an...

    Read More

  • Compare Frederick Douglass And Mark Twain

    1205 Words  | 3 Pages

    Education is a privilege. The knowledge gained through education enables an individual’s potential to be optimally utilized owing to training of the human mind, and enlarge their view over the world. Both “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass himself and “Old Times on the Mississippi” by Mark Twain explore the idea of education. The two autobiographies are extremely different; one was written by a former slave, while the other was written by a white man. Hence, it is to be expected that both men had had different motivations to get an education, and different processes of acquiring education. Their results of education, however, were fairly similar.

    Read More

  • The Learning Tree Sparknotes

    550 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Learning Tree, written by Gordon Parks in 1963. Gordon Parks is an African-American author. The Learning Tree is a fictional autobiography when he was growing up in Fort Scott, Kansas. It was written based on a third person's viewpoint about the life of a teenage African-American boy’s named Newt Winger. It was about the struggle they went through as an African-American and about a murder trial which resolves with Newt Winger testimony.

    Read More

  • Maya Angelou’s The Graduation

    518 Words  | 2 Pages

    The same consistent, expressive voice introduces Ms. Angelou's effective strategy of comparison and contrast. By comparing what the black schools don't have, such as 'lawn, nor hedges, nor tennis courts, nor climbing ivy,' reveals not only a clear illustration of what luxuries the white schools in the forties had but also how unjust the system was. The adults at the graduation focus on the differences that were previously left unspoken. The black principal's voice fades as he describes "the friendship of kindly people to those less fortunate then themselves" and the white commencement speaker implies that" the white kids would have a chance to become Galileo's.... and our boys would try to be Jesse Owenes..." The author's emotions vary from the first proclamation that "I was the person of the moment" to the agonizing thoughts that it "was awful to be a Negro and have no control over my life" to the moment of epiphany: "we are on top again."

    Read More

  • Being Biracial-Personal Narrative

    891 Words  | 2 Pages

    I was late for school, and my father had to walk me in to class so that my teacher would know the reason for my tardiness. My dad opened the door to my classroom, and there was a hush of silence. Everyone's eyes were fixed on my father and me. He told the teacher why I was late, gave me a kiss goodbye and left for work. As I sat down at my seat, all of my so-called friends called me names and teased me. The students teased me not because I was late, but because my father was black. They were too young to understand. All of this time, they thought that I was white, because I had fare skin like them, therefore I had to be white. Growing up having a white mother and a black father was tough. To some people, being black and white is a contradiction in itself. People thought that I had to be one or the other, but not both. I thought that I was fine the way I was. But like myself, Shelby Steele was stuck in between two opposite forces of his double bind. He was black and middle class, both having significant roles in his life. "Race, he insisted, blurred class distinctions among blacks. If you were black, you were just black and that was that" (Steele 211).

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Mis Education Of The Negro

    1626 Words  | 4 Pages

    From reading the book, I have developed my own stance that the book education system is similar to today’s education system. I can relate with the text because I have noticed most of my history fails to mention successes of the Negroes. In fact, I was astonished that Dr. George Washington Carver had invented peanut butter. I can relate to chapter four’s solution because in my school system, Teach For America teachers who were from different areas and ethnic backgrounds were ill equipped to teach African American students while an older teacher would be able to raise test scores and teach students

    Read More

  • Racism and Poverty: Barriers to Achieving the American Dream

    1084 Words  | 3 Pages

    Bell hooks knows about the challenges of race and class, and why some people have a harder time than others in achieving the American Dream. It is normal to feel uncomfortable and awkward arriving at a new school for the first time, but this was something completely different. For bell hooks, walking through the halls with eyes staring at her as if she was an alien, she realized that schooling for her would never be the same. She describes her feelings of inequality a...

    Read More

  • Brown V. Board Of Education Case Study

    631 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to the text, “Oliver Brown wish to enroll his daughter Linda Brown to an all-white summer school that was closer to their home. However, they were refused, Brown took the case to the NAACP, and soon after the case of Brown v. Board of Education was born” (Ginsberg et al. 116). It was a victory for African Americans when Thurgood Marshall along with a team of NAACP attorneys won the case. However, the success of the case was bittersweet because adjudication alone did not result in a greater number of schools being integrated. The chapter went on to mention “ten years after the Brown, fewer than 1 percent of black school-age children in the Deep South were attending schools with whites” (Ginsberg et al. 117). Steadily, however, this case paved the way for the Civil Rights movement and many other revolutionary actions in the black community. The chapter highlights the case of Brown v. Board of Education and how it was the small opening move to more social protests and more congressional

    Read More

  • Effects Of Racism And Racism In Education

    1336 Words  | 3 Pages

    The American society, more so, the victims and the government have assumed that racism in education is an obvious issue and no lasting solution that can curb the habit. On the contrary, this is a matter of concern in the modern era that attracts the concern of the government and the victims of African-Americans. Considering that all humans deserve the right to equal education. Again, the point here that there is racial discrimination in education in Baltimore, and it should interest those affected such as the African Americans as well as the interested bodies responsible for the delivery of equitable education, as well as the government. Beyond this limited audience, on the other hand, the argument should address any individual in the society concerned about racism in education in Baltimore and the American Society in

    Read More

More about How To Write An Essay On The Learning Tree By Gordon Parks

Open Document