Breakfast or Education? Breakfast with Destiny, written by Jack Sheridan, is really thought provoking. It goes against the world trend which advocates that knowledge can change our destiny and reevaluates the importance of the breakfast. In Breakfast with Destiny, Sheridan starts considering the history that affects our breakfast. He traces the history of orange juice, oatmeal, coffee, toast and sugar and shows that our breakfast today owes a lot to many Middle-east and Asian countries such as Egypt and China. He also reviews the history of America, pointing out that American Revolution, “is in reality a byproduct of the sugar and slave trade”(109). Then in the next part, Sheridan uses examples of Hitler’s failure to illustrate that every political concept has a practical material base. Moreover, he even compares breakfast to education which is highly regarded today. He contends that education is as a matter of fact a discipline imposed by the rulers on the public. We can not directly benefit from education but we can at least get sustenance from our breakfast. And in the following parts, Sheridan continues to emphasize how the breakfast is more valuable than the art and culture. The breakfast should always come first when we are thinking about the art and literature. Without breakfast, there are no things like schools or lessons and furthermore, the world could not be better off in the future. In fact, the point that Sheridan wants to make here is very simple, that is, from Marxist perspective, material base determines the superstructure. Therefore, in Sheridan’s article, “breakfast” represents the material base and political concepts such as liberty and equality, education and culture stand for the superstructure. If individuals in a society were always suffering from starvation, they would not think about liberty or equality or even receiving education. However, in today’s world - a world has an abundance of food, why does the author put so much emphasis on the breakfast? As Sheridan puts it, “breakfast is commonplace and we take it for granted as an everyday occurrence in our lives, and think nothing of it”(120). Thus, he wants us to refocus on the importance of having a good breakfast so that we can have a real start in the making of the world instead of working with ideas which is regarded as “the poorest material” by Sheridan(121). Nevertheless, I do not totally agree with Sheridan’s opinion, especially his negative idea about education. It is true that in a society in which social members suffer from hunger, material base comes first. It is also true that in a society with rich food, people seem to overemphasize the significance of the superstructure. The point is that we can not overlook either one of them. We need to build a balance between them. That is why so many people are dedicated to solving food crisis of Africa as well as providing African people with better education.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 23:19:39 +0000
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