Demonstrations as Means of Economic and Social Improvement
The fourth type of educational activity may be described as educational propaganda. The Federal government, especially through its Department of Agriculture, has promoted scientific farming where there was no initial impulse on the part of farmers to go to school. This work was supported, especially in the Southern States, by the General Education Board. It sometimes took the form of an appeal to the boys and girls as well as to adults. A typical case is set forth in the first report of the General Education Board.
A club consists essentially of a group of boys varying in number from twenty-five to one hundred, and ranging in age from ten to eighteen. Corn and cotton are both cultivated, but corn is preferred: first, because the South needs more corn; secondly, because corn lends itself better to study and selection. As a rule, each member works a plot of one acre. The county superintendent of education is usually in charge....
Driving through Macon County, Alabama, not long ago, two strangers observed, in a large field of ordinary corn, a patch standing out like a miniature skyscraper. They dismounted to interview the owner. A Negro boy approached.
“Is this your corn?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How did you come to grow it?”
“One of Dr. Knapp’s men showed me, sir.”
“Why did you plant it so far apart in the rows?”
“Because, sir, most all that grows comes from the sunshine and the air.”
“When did you plow?”
“Last fall, sir.”
“Why?”
“To make plant food during the winter.”
“Where did you get your fertilizer?”
“From the bottom, sir.”
“How many times did you cultivate?”
“Six times, sir.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s water down next to the clay, and when I don’t plow the sun draws it all away.”
“When did you put in the cowpeas?”
“After the last plowing, sir.”
“What did you do that for?”
“Because the cowpeas get out of the air nitrogen, and put back in the ground about as much as the corn takes out.”
How many valuable lessons had this remote Negro lad learned from doing one job right! But this is not the end of the story. His double crop was worth $52. From his pocket he pulled a dirty little pass-book, the entries in which showed what the crop had cost. Reckoning his own time at ten cents an hour and his father’s mule at a dollar a day, he netted a profit of $30 to the acre. His younger sister, it appeared, had had an equally profitable quarter of an acre in cotton. Three years later both were students at Tuskegee, paying for their education with the money earned as club workers.[50]
Equally impressive examples could be supplied of transformations in homes brought about by demonstrations in cooking, house decoration, and costume design given by teachers of domestic science and household art.