Dr. Carr's lecture urged us to understand the difference between learning and wisdom and to pursue both at Howard. While it is important to acquire knowledge we must also be wise as to how to apply our knowledge for society to progress. Dr. Carr said that we can gain the wisdom of our African ancestors' by studying what they left behind for us, particularly through texts but also through music, art and prayer. This is also a way for us to communicate with the ancestors even though they are gone. The “deep African thought” in these texts is the foundation for our academic work. Dr. Carr introduced the concept of “sankofa” meaning 'go get it'; meaning we must go and get wisdom from our ancestors. Dr. Carr also stressed the importance of striving for excellence in education as opposed to working to fill an achievement “gap”. He said to achieve excellence we must read, write, and speak and that success in learning also depends on excellent measuring and excellent service. I was particularly intrigued when Dr. Carr taught us that the glyph for beauty is an image of lungs and a windpipe, and that this suggests that beauty is what you say, and it is internal as opposed to external physical beauty, and it is important to learn what our ancestors said because it is beautiful and wise.
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