John Howard Griffin Research Paper

Fifty-seven years ago, John Howard Griffin had the courage to temporarily assume a black man’s identity through medical treatment in order to better understand what it means to be “black” in a society where black’s have little to no rights. He travelled throughout the southern states for six weeks and encountered a plethora of discrimination, oppression, and social injustice during his journey. Arguably, Griffin’s passion for the black community came from his liberal arts education at the University of Poitiers. Like Griffin’s education, there are a variety of ways a liberal arts education can contribute to social justice, such as the entitlement to one’s own opinion, the embraced atmosphere of change at the school, and the emphasis on virtue.
First of all, professors at a liberal arts school encourage a person to develop their own opinion about topics. Too often students …show more content…
Virtue is the quality of displaying wisdom, kindness, self control, and a variety of other factors relating to living a moral life. Living a virtuous life should be the end-game of a successful education, however in today’s society, the majority of schooling neglects the importance of virtue, and instead only focuses on knowledge. This results in a society that is selfish, narrow-minded and ignorant towards others. “To live in a world where men do not love, where they cheat and are callous, is to sink into a preoccupation with death, and to see the futility of anything except virtue.” Griffin saw this lack of virtue in his journey as he realized that the educated white men lacked virtue and therefore completely ignored the fact that all men, regardless of their color, have inherent value. Even though virtue cannot be taught, liberal arts schools have taken up the challenge to teach the crucial value of obtaining virtue to their students in hopes to contribute to social justice and create a better