Education as a Powerful Tool

Education leads to overstating one’s abilities.

ü  In “Good Country People,” Hulga firmly believes that given that she spends most of her days sitting on her neck, reading, she is better than everyone she sees. For instance, in the text, the author posits, “…All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair, reading. Sometimes, she went for
walks, but she didn‖t like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men.
She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.” (O’Connor). Also, through her education, she could easily seduce the Bible salesman.

ü  In Alice Walker’s Everyday Use, Dee feels that she is more intelligent than everyone and that they should listen while she speaks.

Education divides rather than integrates.

ü  In O’Connor’s Good Country People, Mrs. Hopewell’s perspective on people in her world is that they belong to certain groups hierarchically, with the “trash” at the bottom, followed by the “good country people,” and it is her view of them that changes things. In this case, she is condescending to them because she sees them as “good” only because she sees them as inferior to herself and Hulga.

ü  In Alice Walker’s Everyday Use, Dee’s education has made her foreign to the people she calls family. In this case, she arrives home as a stranger with lofty ideas such as civil rights and zero tolerance for inequality. This is not problematic. What makes it a problem is the fact that Dee has no respect for anything else apart from this new world of hers, which inadvertently puts a barrier between her and her roots.

Education leads to arrogance

ü  In O’Connor’s Good Country People, Mrs. Hopewell wonders what would make her daughter interact with a Bible salesperson. In the text, the author says, “…She was wondering what the child had said to the Bible salesman. She could not imagine what kind of a conversation she could have had with him” (O’Connor). In this case, she despises the salesman because clearly, he does not belong to the same class of wealthy landowners.

ü  In Alice Walker’s Everyday Use, Dee, with her vast knowledge and worldliness, has become a threat to this simple one that her mother and sister know. She appears poised to lord over them with her knowledge.

Undoubtedly, it is clear that education has its advantages. Still, in these two texts, it is apparent that education has been used as a tool to divide, despise, and reject, thereby affirming the assertion that education is a powerful tool. Still, it possesses a power that can separate people from each other rather than integrate.