370.975 D55 THE SOUTH COMPARED WITH THE NORTH IN EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS AGENTS REPORT AT THE Fourth Conference for Education in the South HELD AT WINSTON-SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA APRIL 18, 19 AND 20, 1901 \ G. S. DICKERMAN, D.D. NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN STACKS AGENT’S REPORT: The South Compared with the North in Educational Requirements. G. S. DICKERMAN, D.D. T he thought of the North is of cities. Ought it to be the same in the South? Massachusetts has a good educational system in its way. How far can this ystem be used elsewhere ? Massachusetts is becoming a ommonwealth of cities and her schools are for populous istricts. Crowded communities anywhere may copy them, but will they fit people whose cabins and coun- try homes are a mile apart? Glance at the figures of the last census. Massachusetts has o cities of over 25,000 inhabitants. The 10 states south of "irginia, Kentucky and Missouri, with an area 85 times as reat, have only 19, and the aggregate population of the Mas- achusetts cities exceeds that of the latter by 417,000. Again, Massachusetts has no communities of over 4,000 inhabitants ith an aggregate of 2,437,994. Her entire population is ,805,346, so that the number in smaller places is but 66,352. These 10 southern states have 146 communities 3f this rank with an aggregate of 2,148,262. Their entire opulation is 17,121,481 and the number in smaller places is 14,972,738. By comparison with the census of 1890 we may see the rend of population. During the 10 years Massachusetts’ opulation increased 566,399, and the increase in her no large laces was 551,555. In the 10 southern states the increase was 3,071,276, of which 505,781 was in their 146 cities. Out- side the larger places Massachusetts increased 14,844, these instates 2,565,495. Massachusetts people live in cities and the growth is there. Southern people live in the coun- tTy and are to do so in the future. A small part live in com- I \ 15 p 9 '■/ munities of even i,ooo inhabitants. The 608 places of this size or larger contain but 3,029,000, while 14,090,000 remain for the strictly rural population. This is for the ten more southern states. If we add Maryland, Virginia and Ken- tucky the number will rise to over 17,000,000. How many people has Massachusetts or Connecticut or Rhode Island in communities of less than 1,000 inhabitants? So few as to be hardly appreciable as an influence in their educational policy. Now it is a serious question in the North, how to provide good schools for the country. Even in Massachusetts there are scores of little places where educational opportunities are by no means of a high order. Else why has Berkshire county 415 native white illiterate men of over 21 years of agei One county in northern Maine has over 15 per cent of its na- tive white voters who cannot read and write. New England has not yet answered in her own domain the question of edu- cation for her rural people. But in the South this is the, main question. Southern cities, like northern cities, have institutions which are their pride : but the cities are few in the South and play a subordinate part. The multitudes of people are widely scattered. The neglected few in Massa- chusetts or Maine multiply into millions. To make the situation harder the South has 'the two races to complicate everything, two peoples so unlike yet bound together in all their interests. Usually we separate the races in our thought and discussion. It is not so easy to separate them actually. They touch one another in al; occupations ; they breathe the same atmosphere ; they follow the same motives. Notice how the more prosper- ous schools for negroes are distributed. You find them not where the negroes are most numerous, as a genera thing, but where the whites are in the majority and have given the community something of an intellectual char-^ acter. North Carolina has about twice as many whites as negroes. South Carolina has a third more negroes than whites. Yet the former state shows a much larger numbef of high-grade schools for this race. These schools, too., I are not in the eastern counties of North Carolina, where the most negroes are, but in the Piedmont section, where the whites outnumber them. In Tennessee less than a quarter of the people are negroes, in Mississippi over three- fifths. Yet Tennessee is conspicuous for its great negro schools and Mississippi has very few. The explanation seems to be that the negroes are much more likely to become really interested in education where Intellectual there is a vigorous intellectual life among the Life Stim- white people around them. Where most of ulates All people are white and are making exertions to give their children an education, it awakens the negroes’ ambition for the same object. By a wise statesmanship, however, in regions populous with negroes quite a number of schools have been planted — Claflin University, Benedict College, Brainerd Institute and Schofield Industrial School in South Carolina ; Tuskegee Institute and Calhoun School in Alabama ; and Tougaloo University in Mississippi. In these instances I have the impression that the white people of the locality have also shown exceptional interest in the enterprise and aided much toward its success. The whole movement of negro education when faithfully analyzed tells not of the negro’s independence of his white neighbors but of the influences they have exerted on him. Since the emancipation as before, though in another manner, high-minded men and women, moving from day to day among these people of another race, have been the potent factors of civilization and enlightenment. But over against such influences are others that work for barbarism, some coming steadily from the negroes themselves and others from the lower order of whites. It is unnecessary to speak of these in detail. Their baleful fruits are too well known. How much this means to the white people and their children ! If the negroes are apt to get better standards of life in a place where two-thirds of the people are white, .turn the case around and ask how it will be with the whites where two-thirds of the people are negroes ? This is not felt to so great an extent in such states as North Carolina 17 or Tennessee, where the counties are few in which the ne- groes preponderate. But take South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana. About 120 counties have in them twice as many negroes as whites and some of these have eight or ten times as many. If it is not practicable to maintain good negro schools under such conditions, how must it be with educational opportunities for white chil- dren ? Can any northern community understand such a situation or enter into the dangers involved ? What won- der that the people who have most at heart the welfare of their families incline to move away from such an envi- ronment ? But this makes the community only the worse off. Such people cannot be spared. They are wanted to improve conditions. An effect of superior schools in the larger centers, with none to match them in the rural districts, is to draw away the more progressive. A fine thing for the centers but ruin- ous to the hamlet. A process of this sort has been going on of late all over the country. North and South. But the disastrous conse- quences are probably greater in the South. It would seem that this must be so, because southern life has been so generally rural and the country gentleman has had such commanding influence. In communities with such a his- tory people of high character are wanted more than any one can tell, to illumine everything, to mould sentiment and guide action, to raise people’s ambition for themselves, their families and the neighborhood, to cultivate an appre- ciation of good institutions, to represent the locality in the legislature, as in other notable assemblies, and to inspire a civic spirit by participation in great deliberations. Some things do not work now as they did once. Once the development of a central community in culture and intelligence developed the whole region tributary to it, pro- ducing in every hamlet the scholar and leader of men. Go into the hamlets of to-day and ask for the scholars and leaders of men. Visit particularly the old rural communi- ties of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennes- The Hamlet Loses 18 see, Alabama, and learn from those native to the soil what have been the gains and losses in community character during the last twenty years. Vital to the welfare of the community is the progressive spirit. This means educa- tional spirit, good schoolhouses and churches, good pas- tors and teachers, and, as a sure result, improved morals, higher intelligence and prosperity. If this does not exist, what is to be done ? Something to bring it in, and that must be something that enters into the spiritual sphere and is not all material. Only one way has ever been found to give a better spirit to individual or community. It is that of personal impartation from souls who themselves are full to overflowing with the power of a higher life. In a certain county of the Appalachians there is a people dwelling in their mountain homes who have known little of good schools. The constitution of the state provides that certain funds accruing from the courts shall be used for educating the children, but careless officials, more inter- ested in roads and bridges than in anything intellectual, have employed these funds for various public purposes, but never for schools. No one noticed it. Nothing was thought of it. But there came into the office of the county superintendent an old school teacher, alive with enthu- siasm for the upbuilding of character in the children of every family. He bent his mind to the mastery of his work in detail and did not pass over investigation of the laws and constitution, when lo ! he discovered that a sum amounting to $ 6^,000 was due from the public^treasury for the maintenance of his schools. So inadequate are all laws, even to a constitutional clause, till the man arrives to give it application in the realm of the spirit. There is more than one county where funds legally belonging to the pub- lic schools have been used for making roads and repairing bridges. Traverse these counties, look into the wretched schoolhouses, or in the frequent absence of such into the hired ‘‘shack” that answers the purpose; notice the hard benches, the battered and old-fashioned school books, the un- attractiveness of everything — teacher and all ; then find out 19 how long the school keeps — two or three or four months only in a year — and the school money going for roads and bridges ! In such circumstances it cannot be expected that the teachers will be of an inspiring order. Capable men and women cannot afford to follow an occupation that gives employ- ment less than half the year. But if such teachers were available they could not get the places. Where schools ^ are so little honored they are wanted by any person who « has nothing else to do in the community, for the spending money they may yield. A member of the board is glad ^ to give a school to his son or daughter, and influential citizens lay claim to them for one and another favored relative. It is essential to correct all this in order to effect any great improvement in educational work. Somehow people must get a better apprehension of what a good school re- A Clearer quires. The best public schools are usually Apprehension supported, in part, by a local tax. When citi- Needed zens meet together and vote to raise a sum of money by taxes on their own property, they are likely to take some personal interest in the things for which the money is used. School support by a local tax is prevalent in the North, and has been introduced extensively into the cities of the South. In these places people value their schools enough to incur personal expense. So they have erected commodi- ous buildings, extended the sessions to nine or ten months and secured the service of teachers as accomplished as can be found anywhere. Something corresponding to this needs to be carried into every rural district. For however poor a community may be, the people must go to some expense in order to prize their schools. People will not prize anything that costs nothing. So long as all the school money comes from the state and the people do nothing but spend it, they will spend it unprofitably. And if, in the course of events, the national government should make educational provisions and do nothing to cultivate the spirit of self-help and inde- pendent initiative, we could hardly expect anything better to come from that. The community must have a hand in the 20 development of an institution so wrought out of its own char- acter as a school. To whom shall we look for the diffusion of this nc^ spirit in these backward districts? The answer is at hand. We have only to look to the men already in the work, men of the South, who, with clear intelligence and unwavering purpose, have toiled while others slept, giving themselves with all their hearts to the task of thinking out these intricate mazes of popular necessity and trying every clew to a solution. The number of these is not so small as some may think. They are to be found in every state and distributed in positions of educational power, clear-headed, pure-hearted scholars who find no joy so unalloyed as to serve the people among whom they live. When our Lord Jesus sent out his apostles to their ministry he said to them : Into whatsoever city or vil- lage ye shall enter, search out who in it is worthy, and there abide till ye go thence.” He laid that down as a primal law of his kingdom, — recognition of the honored men in a com- munity and painstaking effort to accomplish one’s mission in agreement with them. j Some of us come from a distance and think, perhaps, to bear a part in this educational work. Let us not lose out of mind that primal law. The men on the ground are in the foremost place. They know the situation. They are fa- miliar with conditions. They have sharpened instincts to sense the meaning of things that would be a snare to others. In agreement with them is strength. We have to wait for these master spirits of the South to bring in the new order. Our highest ministry is to work with them, to The Highest them like Jethro in the tent of Moses, — sympathetic guests with open mind to enter into their plans and make them our own. Something is to be said of fostering interest in public ; schools by gifts from private sources. In my paper last year I at Capon Springs, I spoke of an undertaking in Washington 1 county, Georgia, whereby a number of rural schools had been consolidated and manual training made a part of the course of instruction. When the paper appeared in print there was 21 a foot-note mentioning certain pressing requirements that might be supplied for ^i,ooo. Last January a New York gentleman, of our Conference, engaged to bestow this sum if the object should be found as represented. This led me to visit the county in the following month and look into some fifteen of the schools in widely separated districts. It was decided that the sum should be equally divided between the whites and the negroes, it being understood that the people should raise enough among themselves to duplicate the sum. The particular demand was for an industrial school for each race in which the instruction should be carried a grade higher than was practicable in the schools generally. For the whites there was a building favorably situated that could be used for a shop. The people of the neighborhood responded to the offer by raising $500 in cash. This provides $1,000 in all, with which the shop is to be equipped and one or two extra teachers employed. It is believed that after the first season the people will be so interested in the school that they will continue it themselves without further aid. For the work among the negroes a shop had to be built. The people bought land for it to stand on, materials were purchased at a cost of $300, and the work of construction was done by the people, most of it by the pupils. The $200 remaining furnished the school with tools. It is now com- pleted, a building fifty feet long and of good proportions. In three months from the time of the offer the new shop was ready to be occupied. The principal of the school, for whose expansion this annex was built, received his education at At- lanta University, and has been teaching where he is for fifteen years. Some time ago he began to recognize the demand for a more practical education and went to Chicago one summer vacation, at his own expense, to take a course of lessons in Sloyd, which he reproduced for his own pupils on his return. When I saw the school the pupils were showing excellent proficiency in this kind of work, and the assistant teacher ex- hibited results that were equally good in needlework and garment-making. I am confident that this will prove a good investment. There are eight thousand children of school age 22 in tliis county to feel its influence. Can any one tell of a more promising fleld in which to lay out a thousand dollars for beneficent ends? Is it not time for some comprehensive undertaking to foster an educational spirit in the rural portions of the South ? Some things are possible to private beneficence which are not so to legislation. Sometimes legislation cannot discrim- inate where discrimination is essential. It has to lay down general principles and treat all alike, even if it does more harm than good. Discrimination is indispensable. One community requires what another does not and the treat- ment that would help one might hurt another. In what way can such a wise discrimination be insti- tuted ? Or is it unattainable ? It is not our habit in these days to say that anything which needs to be cannot be. Look about us, as business men do, and see if there is not some suggestion, some working instrument now in use that may be turned to this fresh demand. See what is done to provide teachers for our schools, what institutions are estab- lished for this object, what organized activities there are, and what judicious, experienced men are directing them. Do these have no meaning for that toward which we are aiming? For what does a normal school exist? To train teachers. And does it exercise no discrimination ? Does it take all who come and train all alike with no regard to individuality, and when their course is done recommend them with no difference to every position open? It is the practice of incessant discrimination from the hour the student crosses the thresh- old till he takes his diploma, that makes the attendance an education. Why may not this discriminating process be carried into the wider educational field, and why may we not look to those who are already engaged in the work to tell us how it is to be done ? Bid the officers and teachers of these training schools take into their view the communities, far and near, for which their students may be in training, and make a study of them. Add to the faculty other officers A Wise Dis crimination 23 specially designed for this service and put in their hands the means of doing for these communities what they most need to have done. It seems to me that we are not getting out of our great educational institutions anything like what they are capable of doing. They are only in the infancy of their development as engines of popular enlightenment ; they have in them undiscovered capabilities, comparable to the forces of elec- tricity twenty years ago, and fresh, unimagined puttings forth of power are coming to send thrills of recreative life wher- ever the homes of men are found. In this state of North Carolina the average length of school term is about 14 weeks. In the larger places it is 8 or 10 months, which implies that in the rural portions ses- sions are much shorter than 14 weeks. Conditions in South Carolina are no better, probably not so good. In the 12 southern states the average number of school days is 97. Correcting this for the long sessions of the larger places, and the rural schools cannot last over 3 or 4 months : often they are only 2 or 3 months. For such schools teaching as a vo- cation is impossible. Educated persons cannot follow a call- ing that occupies only 3 or 4 months of the year. The only teachers for such schools are those who happen to live near by, competent or incompetent. Over against this situation is another of the teachers’ training schools. The number of these is not small and they are giving to many thousand young men and women a supe- rior education for just this employment. We may embrace in the list not only the normal schools but colleges and high grade schools, public and private. With such an unspeak- able want in the rural districts and such increasing prepara- tion of teachers, is it not reasonable to ask how teaching as a vocation may be made more practicable? How much would it cost to maintain a good teacher 8 months in one of these country schools ? Not over $200 -y less than this with the public fund. But if half of this sum were offered the people in many cases would gladly raise the re- mainder. Thus, a school might have its term extended to 8 24 or lo months for ^loo. How many of these schools might be built up with the amount of money put into a single school building in one of our large cities? A hundred thousand dol- lars would maintain i,ooo schools and reach with educational influences 40,000 or 50,000 children. Normal schools need an extension system added. They have scholarships by which pupils are maintained in school. They ought to have teacherships by which graduates could be maintained to carry on the work for which all their train- ing is given. Suppose that even so moderate a sum as ^1,000 were put into the hands of the officers of the State Normal College at Greensboro or Rock Hill or Athens, with the un- derstanding that it be used to assist selected graduates to con- tinue short term schools to a full session. It would have a threefold value. It would help the graduate to a good start in her vocation ; it would be a blessing to the little commu- nity whither she went ; and it would benefit the normal school by broadening its range and bringing it into closer touch with public school work. President Mclver, of Greensboro, tells me that he could name 50 students of his institution who would gladly seize upon such an opportunity and go to the most needy districts in the state if they could be assured of maintenance. Presi- dent Johnson, of Rockhill, writes: ^‘With $1,000 a year, I could induce many a public school, running now only 2 or 3 months in the year with poorly paid and utterly inefficient teachers, to lengthen the school term materially and to em- ploy good teachers. No educational fund has been man- aged more wisely and been made to accomplish better and greater results than the Peabody Educational Fund. Dr. Curry, the distinguished agent, has always pursued the plan you now propose to stimulate action and to give only where some effort at self-help was made. I should be glad to give my services and the services of Winthrop College in putting this plan to the test in this section of the state.” A number of others engaged in similar work have spoken in correspond- ing terms. Educational leaders are ready for any measures that promise practical efficiency. In all efforts to develop 25 public schools the normal school officers will be found prompt to do whatever is in their power. Concerning the education of the colored people, it grows plain that the counsel and friendly assistance of intelligent whites in the neighborhood are invaluable. Let me illus- trate : In Wilcox county, Alabama, where more than three- quarters of the people are negroes, four schools have been established under the care of the United Presbyterian church. Each of these schools has the constant oversight of one or more wealthy and influential citizens of the neigh- borhood, who have contributed generously for the purchase of land and the erection of the school buildings. The teachers of these schools, some twenty in number, received their training in Knoxville College and are still under the personal supervision of the president of that institution. He visits the schools once or twice each year and carefully sees to their management, and each summer the band of teachers is recalled to Knoxville to pursue a normal course and keep their minds fresh for their work. So this favored institution of east Tennessee is working in direct partner- ship with planters in one of the darkest regions of Alabama. Can there be any question concerning the soundness and permanent power of an enterprise like that ? In every educational effort search should Men of Fore- made for the men of vision and of power aSoh^^ who are nearest at hand. A gentleman who is one of our number to-day, speaks of them habitually as ‘‘prophetic men.” These men should recog- nize in what a position they stand and hov/ much it means to have the anticipatory faculty for a new order that is coming. They should plan on a large scale and expect large things, looking for allies to join them from unknown quarters, and means to flow in for carrying on their under- takings as fast as they are ready. The generous acts of so many captains of industry in these times, appropriations of millions for various institutions of enlightenment, may be taken as an earnest of what is waiting in the develop- ment of their own work, and lead them to open channels 26 and clear the way for other golden streams to turn their mill wheels also, and hasten achievements more wide- reaching than any that have yet been seen. The nation has yet to open its eyes to the possibilities lying dormant in these great states of the South — 17,000,000 people in these stretches of territory, none of whom live in a village of a thousand inhabitants ! Ten million whites of our native American stock, with few exceptions, and having 3,500,000 children of school age usually unprovided with good schools! Seven million negroes, with 2,500,000 children, and these vitally identified in their rise or deterio- ration with the whites about them ! Who grasps the scope of these figures and comprehends the task of the men who have to wrestle with these problems ? Do they deserve no recognition from the nation ? Can the nation in a prudent regard for its own permanence and future growth afford to go on heedless of what is done or not done in half of our territorial domain ? There is no end of the bounty bestowed on institutions for the common people in northern cities. Why, as an American, should I be more interested in the children of Boston or of New Haven than in those of the Carolinas and Georgia ? Who are the children of Boston ? Sixty- seven per cent of them are of parentage from beyond the sea. Eighty per cent of the children of New York are of such parentage, and the story is the same for other great cities — Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco. More than three-quarters of their people are of foreign antecedents : Irish, Germans, French, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Rus- sians, Armenians, Chinese. Not that I disparage the beneficent ministries of educa- tion for any of these. It is all an occasion of joy. I only speak of what we are doing for them to emphasize what we ought to do for those of our own blood. It was the apostle to the Gentiles, engaged with all his might in efforts for people of other races, who wrote : If any provideth not for his own, and especially his own household, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.” And so, to-day, our 27 interest in other people should but deepen our sense ot re- sponsibility for those who are our nearest of kin. Who are these 10,000,000 whites of the South? They are the children of the colonial pioneers, of the soldiers who made the conti- nental army, of the fathers who established the Republic. They are many of them descendants from a New England an- cestry as well as from settlers of Virginia and the Carolinas. A cursory study of the subject leads me to believe that in some counties of Georgia a larger proportion of the people can trace back through some line to a New England sire than in the city of Boston. The cracker is of the same blood with the merchant prince. This is to be seen in their very names. The people. North and South, are one, in features and in na- tive force, cherishing common religious beliefs and conserv- ing the immemorial traditions of freedom and independence. What is due from the prosperous men of the great cities of New England, New York and Pennsylvania to their kins- folk in the rural parts of the South? This is only giving a new direction to a very old question. For a Pms^rity^^ full hundred years these cities have generously recognized their obligations to their own chil- dren as they went to Ohio, Michigan and all the region be- yond to the Pacific coast. What academy or college was planted anywhere in these states during their pioneer days that was not helped from the older and wealthier commu- nities of the East? We see the results to-day in the whole life of the Northwest. Will any one say that it is too early now to recognize simi- lar obligations to these other pioneers in the South? The precedents of all our history declare the necessity of educa- tion for all the people. Only in this way can be secured the perpetuity of our institutions and the stability of our govern- ment. What is already done for the larger communities we have now to do for the rural population, especially for the rural population of the South. 28