Du Bois was writing against a particular American machinery—the vocational tracking that would sort poor and Black students into narrow job training while reserving full intellectual formation for the wealthy. His insistence that education must teach *life* isn't merely sentimental; it's a claim about who gets to think freely, who learns history and philosophy and art, and who gets trained only to serve. A modern parallel: when schools strip humanities from under-resourced districts while keeping them robust in affluent neighborhoods, we're still making the same bet Du Bois rejected—that some people need only to work, while others get to live.