How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"You'll see that it'll take more than five and a half months to wipe away—peel—scrape away the blanket of ignorance that has been plastered and replastered over those brains in the past three hundred years." (8.36)
Professor Antoine makes an interesting point. The problem isn't that slaves were not being educated for three hundred years. The problem is that they were being educated: they were being educated to think and act like slaves. That is why it's hard to change society.
Quote #8
Next year it would be the same, and the year after that, the same again. Vivian said things were changing. But where were they changing? (19.71)
Grant has truly lost all hope as he sees the years passing by him, the same Christmas pageant being performed, and the same problems in his community. However, we've got the feeling that the change that Vivian was talking about wasn't necessarily in the students; it was in Grant.
Quote #9
"I teach because it is the only thing that an educated black man can do in the South today. I don't like it; I hate it." (24.38)
This is a huge insight into one of the reasons that Grant's students don't care to learn their lessons or go on to get further education. There's no point. If there is no motivation to become a doctor or lawyer (or underwater basket weaver) or whatever a student wants to become (unless they happen to want to be a teacher), they have no motivation for learning.