I A Dream of Empire
A keen Atlanta business man leaned forward on his chair and spoke eagerly. “Yes, sir,” he exclaimed, “the world is ours. We have the biggest, finest batch of undeveloped resources in the country—perhaps on the planet. Iron, coal, stone, timber, power—our hills are full of them, so full that we have never even inventoried our treasure-house. Our possibilities are beyond the power of words, and we’ve got to live up to them.”
This man knew Georgia and the South. He had helped, and still is helping to convert the iron, coal, timber, and water-power into Southern prosperity. He was still unsatisfied.
“The trouble with us is, we can’t go fast enough,” he admitted. “Do you know why? Do you know the biggest burden we have to carry—the most determined enemy we have to fight? Well, sir, [it’s] ignorance—the ignorance of the common man about his farm or his trade; the ignorance of the business man about outside things; the ignorance of the teachers who are supposed to enlighten us.” He leaned forward again. “That sounds strong, doesn’t it? But it’s gospel.”
I reminded him of the rapidity with which the South was forging ahead in its educational activities. He threw his head back proudly. “Of course,” he cried, “the experiment stations, the colleges, the high schools, the club movement, and all that—of course we’re going ahead. I’m not speaking of that. My point is that we must wake up to two things. First of all, we must never make the mistakes that you did in the North when you built up your educational system. That means no pedantry, or classical snobbery. We mustn’t go that way. Our way is plain though. I see it more clearly every time I think the matter over—we must train the intelligence of the Southern people.”
He continued, in his enthusiastic mood. “Yes, there is a great future for the South. Its resources make a future possible; but unless those resources are intelligently used, our prosperity will not go very deep, or reach very far. We must take the people with us.”
This man’s view typifies the educational vision that is sweeping over the South. “We must take the people with us,” he said. There is nothing novel in the idea; but coming as it did from a representative business man, it carried weight and conviction.
Another thing he said in the same connection enforced his argument. “They talk about the race problem in the South,” he said. “That is, the old generation does. We younger men are not so much concerned about the race problem as we are concerned about efficiency in industry and in agriculture. The races are here to stay; we cannot change that if we would. Meanwhile, all of us, whites as well as blacks, are slovenly in our farming, indifferent in our business transactions, and hopelessly behind in our methods of conducting affairs. From top to bottom we need trained intelligence. That, more than anything else, will solve the South’s problems.”
II Finding the Way
The step is a short one from a vision of trained intelligence to a demand for effective education. Throughout the South, the will to progress is everywhere in evidence, and with unerring accuracy, one community after another is turning to this as the way.
There is no Southern city in which the agitation for increased educational activity is not being pushed with vigor and intensity. On all hands there appears the result of a conviction that the only means by which the effectiveness of the South can be maintained and increased, lie along the path of increased educational opportunities. The South, if it is to fulfill the greatness of its promise, must remodel its educational system in the interests of a larger South, as the West has remodeled its educational system in the interest of a larger West. The notable State universities of the Middle and Far West, the Normal Schools, the prevalent system of education, have been felt, and are now being felt, in the progressive, efficient, Western population. Nothing less than a generally educated public could have made the West in the brief years that have elapsed since it was a wilderness. Nothing save general education can make the resources of the South yield up their greatest advantage to the Southern people.
The time for traditional formalism has passed in the South, as it has passed in every other progressive community. Whatever the needs of the community may be, those needs must be met through some form of public education. In the South the most pressing need appears in the demand for intelligent farming. For decades the tenant farmers, largely negroes, cultivated their farms as their fathers had cultivated. They raised cotton because the raising of cotton offered the path of least resistance. Farm animals were scarce, because the farm animals only came with surplus cash, and surplus cash was scarce indeed in districts where the tenant farmers lived through the year on the credit obtained from the prospective cotton crops. There was little corn raised, because the people did not understand the need for raising corn, nor did they realize the financial possibilities of the Southern corn crop. In a word, the agricultural South lacked the knowledge which modern scientific agriculture has brought.
The past generation has seen a revolution in Southern agriculture, because of the revolution which has occurred in Southern agricultural education. Led by the experiment stations and universities, the South has undertaken to reorganize its system of living from the land.
The Atlanta banker fully realized the need for culture. He was himself a cultured gentleman; but he also saw that before the people of the South could have culture, they must have an economic system directed with sufficient intelligence to supply the necessaries of life, which must always be taken for granted before the possibilities of culture are realized. Cultural education comes after, and not before, education for intelligent and direct vocational activity.
During the educational revolution of the past twenty-five years, no section of the country has thrown itself into the foreground of educational progress with more vigor and with greater earnestness and zeal than that displayed in the South. In certain directions the South has proved a leader in the inauguration and administration of new activities. In other directions the Southern States have followed actively and energetically.
A traveler through the New South stumbles unavoidably upon countless illustrations of the part which modern education is playing in Southern life. Individuals, families, communities, are being re-made by the new education.
III Jem’s Father
Jem wasn’t a good boy, but he was interested in his school. He was one of those fortunate boys who lived in a county that had been possessed by the corn club idea, and the corn club was the thing which had given Jem his school interest.
Jem never took to studies. Each year he had told his mother that “there weren’t no use in goin’ back to that there school again.” Persistently she had sent him back, until one year when Jem found a reason for going.
A new teacher came to Jem’s school—a young man fresh from normal school, full of enthusiasm, energy, and new ideas. The boys felt from the start that he was their friend, and before many weeks had elapsed, the community began to feel his presence. This new teacher was particularly enthusiastic over the “club idea.” “We must get the boys and girls doing something together” he kept saying to his classes.
The year wore on, but interest in the school did not flag, because all through the winter months there were entertainments, parents’ meetings, literary meetings, spelling bees, reading hours, and other evening activities. In fact, the time came when there was a light in the school-house three or four nights in each week.
Toward spring the new teacher began to push the “club idea.” He started with the boys, and, as luck would have it, picked out Jem. “Jem,” he said one day, “I want you to stay after school, I want to speak to you a minute.” Jem stayed, not knowing exactly what was coming. When the rest of the pupils had tumbled out of the school door, and disappeared along the muddy road, the teacher and Jem sat down together.
“Jem,” said the teacher, “we ought to have a corn club in this school.”
Jem looked up doggedly, but gave no sign of interest or enthusiasm.
“You see,” the teacher said, “it’s this way. Farming isn’t all that it might be around here. People raise things the way they have always been raised. Our county superintendent has an idea. He proposes to teach the farmers in this county how to raise corn.”
Jem looked skeptical. “Are you to do the teaching?” he asked.
“No,” was the answer, “you are.”
“I?” said Jem.
“Yes,” said the teacher, “you and the other boys in the school.”
Jem scratched his head. “I ain’t never taught no one nothing in my life,” he commented.
“It’s this way,” the teacher went on. “Up at Washington and out at the State College they have been doing a lot of thinking and working with corn. They found, for instance, that if you pick seed corn carefully, you get a better crop than if you are careless in seed selection. They have also found that if you follow certain rules about planting and cultivation you get a better crop. For years the men at the Experiment Station and at Washington talked about these things in Farmers’ Bulletins. They established experiment farms, and demonstration farms, too. Lately they have been doing something more, and something which I think is better than anything so far—they have decided to have the boys teach their fathers how to raise corn.”
“Do you mean to say,” asked Jem, “that I could teach Dad anything about corn-raisin’?”
“Yes,” said the teacher, “you can, and, what is more, you will, won’t you?”
“Well,” said Jem, “I dunno.”
“Here is what we have to do,” said the teacher. “This year the county superintendent is going to offer prizes for the boy with the best acre of corn. He sends out rules. You have to plough a certain way, plant a certain way, and cultivate a certain way. If you do not follow the rules you are not allowed to stay in the contest. Now I’ll tell you what I want to do. The boys in this school are as smart, if not smarter, than the boys in any other school in the country; so I guess it is up to us to get some of those prizes right here at home.”
Jem was visibly interested. “Money prizes?” he asked.
“Yes, money prizes,” said the teacher. “The first prize will be fifty dollars.”
Jem’s eyes opened wide. “I’m in for that,” he said with conviction.
That night, when Jem sat down to supper, he broached the corn proposition to his father.
“Shucks,” his father exclaimed. “You raise an acre of corn? Why you wouldn’t get twenty-five bushels!”
“Twenty-five,” said Jem, contemptuously. “I’d get a hundred.”
“A hundred,” said his father. “Here, look here, boy, I have been farming this land for thirty odd years, and the best I ever done on an acre of corn was seventy bushels. I’ll tell you what, though,” he added conclusively, “this here talk about corn clubs makes me tired. You and your hundred bushels! I was looking over the paper when it came in this noon, and I saw a piece about a chap over by Southport with over a hundred bushels to the acre. Do you know what I’m goin’ to do tonight? I’m goin’ to write that editor a letter, and tell him that any paper that publishes lies like that ain’t fit for my family to see. This year’s subscription ain’t run out, but they don’t need to send me the rest. I’ll get a paper somewhere else.”
Despite home opposition, Jem persisted and prevailed. His father gave him an acre grudgingly, but it was a good acre. And when, following the rules which he and the other boys who had agreed to enter the contest read over with the teacher, he disked his land and ploughed his narrow, deep furrows, he listened, not without misgivings, to the remarks which his elder brother passed at his expense.
“Say, Jem,” this brother remarked, “you have spent three times as much time on that acre as any acre of corn raised in this county was ever worth. Are you diggin’ graves for ’possums?”
When, later in the season, Jem cultivated with persistent regularity, he was forced to listen to similar comments. Jem wasn’t good at repartee; so he said nothing; but, sustained by the encouragement of the new teacher, who came to see his acre every week, Jem followed the rules to the letter.
He had his reward at harvest time. When the ears first set it became apparent that Jem had a good crop. As they developed, the goodness of the crop became more manifest; but when the acre had been harvested, put through the sheller and bagged, and Jem had stowed in his pocket a certificate of “ninety-six bushels on one acre,” it was time for some explanations.
“Jem,” said his father at the supper table on the evening of that memorable day when Jem’s corn went through the sheller, and his certificate showed ninety-six bushels, “I wrote a letter to that editor, and sent him next year’s subscription in advance.”
IV Club Life Militant
The experience of Jem’s father has been duplicated many times by parents and communities during the past ten years of club growth in the South. The school, working through the children, has educated fathers, mothers, villages, and whole counties.
All of the agencies of government,—local, State, and national,—have cooperated to make the children’s clubs one of the leading agencies in developing that trained intelligence which is so great an asset in the prosperity of any community. Thanks to the tireless efforts of men like William H. Smith, the children’s clubs have become one of the most aggressive factors in educating rural communities to higher standards of efficiency. There are many kinds of clubs—corn clubs, potato clubs, tomato clubs, pig clubs. Anything which the children can raise is a legitimate object of club activity. The work in the South started with corn clubs.
The corn-club idea in Mississippi grew out of an educational experience of Professor William H. Smith.[24] For years Professor Smith had taught, in a mildly progressive way, the time-honored subjects which were included in the study-course of the rural school. Two of Professor Smith’s students, a boy of twenty and a girl of seventeen, left school; and they left, as the boy told Professor Smith very frankly, because the school taught them very little that would be of use later on in the work which they would be called upon to do. This boy expected to grow cotton; the girl expected to marry the boy, manage his domestic affairs and attend to the many duties which fall to the lot of women on a farm.
When he left school, the boy put it to Professor Smith in this way: “I am goin’ to be a farmer. I ain’t fitted to be nothing else, and book learnin’ ain’t helpin’ me none. It’s just a waste of time. I’ve got to clear land and work it into a farm. If I was goin’ to be a bookkeeper or an engineer, or somethin’, what you are teachin’ me here might help; but I can’t remember that I have ever learned a thing since I got the hang how to figure the interest on a mortgage, that will be of any account to me on a farm. Almost all the boys has got to be a farmer like me. You know, professor, it appears to me like these schools for the people ought to be teachin’ the children of the people how to make a livin’ on the farm—how to make life better and easier, instead of just makin’ us plum disgusted with ourselves.”
This experience, standing out among a multitude of similar experiences, led Professor Smith to an interest in some form of educational work that would help boys and girls in their lives on the farm. The outcome of his thinking and experimenting, combined with the thinking and experimenting of many another capable educational leader, is the club idea for boys and girls alike.
There was a real need for the corn club. For the year 1899 the total corn area in Alabama was 2,743,060 acres. On these acres the farmers secured an average of 12.7 bushels per acre. Ten years later, in 1909, the total acreage had decreased to 2,572,092, and the per acre yield had decreased to 11.9 bushels per acre. Here was a decrease of 170,968 acres in corn; of 4,367,310 bushels in the corn crop; and of .8 of a bushel in the average yield per acre. The boys’ corn club movement was started in Alabama in 1909. That year two hundred and sixty-five boys were enrolled. The average per acre yield of corn in the State was 11.9 bushels. The next year the enrollment of boys reached twenty-one hundred; the total yield increased more than sixty per cent.; and the average number of bushels per acre rose to eighteen. The figures for 1911 and 1912 show an increase, though less extensive, in the total acreage and the total yield of corn for each year.
Southern land will grow corn. Properly treated, it will better a yield of twelve bushels per acre, five, ten, and even fifteen-fold. The leaders of Southern agricultural education knew this. They knew, furthermore, that the betterment could never be brought about until the farmers were convinced that it was possible. How could they be shown? The Farmers’ Bulletin had a place; the experiment farm had a place; but if it were only possible to make every farm an experiment farm!
The way lay through the boys. They could be induced to organize miniature experiments in scores of farms in every county, and then the farmers would see!
Backed by a carefully worked out organization, the authorities set out with the deliberate purpose of educating the farmer through his son. If his corn yield was low, he would learn how to get a larger yield. If he raised no corn, he would learn of the spot-cash value of corn. Boys were organized into clubs; directions were given; prizes were offered, and the boys went to work with a will. For the most part they took one acre.
When compared to the yield on surrounding acres, the corn crops secured by the boys are little short of phenomenal. In Pike County, Alabama, where the number of boys engaging in corn club contests increased from one in 1910 to two hundred and seventy in 1912, the average number of bushels per acre grown by the boys rose from 50.5 to 85.3. In the entire State there were one hundred and thirty-seven boys who made over a hundred bushels per acre each in 1911. The average per acre for each of these boys was one hundred and twenty-seven bushels, and the total profit on their corn crop was $12,500.
Records made by individual boys through the Southern States run very high. Claude McDonald, of Hamer, S. C., raised 2104/7 bushels at a cost of 33.3¢ a bushel. Junius Hill, of Attalla, Ala., raised 2121/2 bushels. Ben Leath, of Kensington, Ga., raised 2145/7 bushels. John Bowen, of Grenada, Miss., raised 2211/5 bushels. Eber A. Kimbrough, Alexander City, Ala., raised 2243/4 bushels; and Bebbie Beeson, Monticello, Miss., raised 2271/16 bushels.[25] These boys were all State prize winners.
There are several things worthy of note about these record yields. Practically all of the high yields were made on deeply ploughed, widely separated rows. The record made by Bennie Beeson (2271/16 bushels, at a cost of fourteen cents per bushel) was secured on dark, upland soil, with a clay sub-soil, ploughing to a depth of ten inches, rows three feet apart, hills six inches apart, with ten cultivations. Beeson used 51/2 tons of manure and eight dollars’ worth of other fertilizer on his acre. The seed corn was New Era. Barnie Thomas, who grew 225 bushels on rich, sandy loam, ploughed nine inches, planted his rows three and one-half feet apart, and kept the hills ten inches apart. He cultivated six times, and selected his own seed from the field. Many of the boys making the fine records developed and selected their own seed. One boy, with an acre yield of 124.9 bushels, cleared six hundred and ninety-five dollars, counting prizes. Another boy, with a yield of 974/5 bushels, reports that his father’s yield was thirty bushels. John Bowen, with a yield of 2211/5 bushels, reports the yield on nearby acres as forty bushels. Arthur Hill, with 1803/5 bushels, reports the nearby yields as twenty bushels.
Such figures, uncertified, would challenge the credulity of the uninitiated. The land on which these record yields were secured had been raising twenty, forty, and fifty bushels of corn to the acre. Over great sections, the per acre average was well under twenty. Into this desolation of agricultural inefficiency, a few thousand school boys entered. Under careful supervision and proper guidance, with little additional expenditure of money or of time, they produced results wholly unbelievable to the old-time farmer. Yet he saw the crop, husked, and watched it through the sheller. There was no magic and no chicanery. He had learned a lesson.
The records cited above are exceptionally high. There were hundreds of others almost equally good. “Twenty-one Georgia club members from the seventh congressional district alone grew 2,641 bushels at an average cost of 23 cents per bushel; 19 boys in Gordon County, Georgia, average 90 bushels, 10 of them making 1,058 bushels. The 10 boys who stood highest in Georgia averaged 169.9 bushels and made a net profit of more than $100 each, besides prizes won. In Alabama 100 boys average 97 bushels at an average cost of 27 cents. In Monroe County, Alabama, 25 boys averaged 78 bushels. In Yazoo County, Mississippi, 21 boys averaged 111.6 bushels at an average cost of 19.7 cents. In Lee County, Mississippi, 17 boys averaged 82 bushels at an average cost of 21 cents. Sixty-five boys in Mississippi averaged 109.9 bushels at an average cost of 25 cents. Twenty Mississippi boys averaged 140.6 bushels at an average cost of 23 cents. Ninety-two boys in Louisiana grew 5,791 bushels on 92 acres; 10 of these boys had above 100 bushels each, although the weather conditions were very unfavorable in that State. In North Carolina 100 boys averaged 99 bushels. In the same State 432 boys averaged 63 bushels. In Buncombe County, North Carolina, 10 boys averaged 88 bushels. In Sussex County, Virginia, 16 boys averaged 82 bushels. Fifteen boys in the vicinity of Memphis, Tenn., where the business men contributed about $3,000 to aid the work, averaged 127.4 bushels at an average cost of 28 cents per bushel. Many other records in other States were equally good in view of the fact that a drought prevailed very generally throughout the South in 1911.[">[26]
Such returns challenge the attention of the most hidebound. These boys got results that exceeded anything that had ever been heard of in their communities. The old folks who had scoffed; the wise-acres whose advice was not taken; and the “I told you so” farmers who had uttered their predictions, all stood aside, while the boys, pointer in hand, taught their respective communities one of the best lessons they had ever learned.
V Canning Clubs
Parallel with the boys’ corn clubs are the girls’ canning clubs. If the boys could grow corn (in a number of cases the corn contests were won by girls), why might it not be possible to have the girls do something along parallel lines? The idea found expression in the girls’ tomato clubs and similar organizations. During 1910, three hundred and twenty-five girls were enrolled in such clubs in Virginia and South Carolina. Dr. Knapp and his fellow workers decided that one-tenth of an acre would be enough for a good garden. Each girl was urged to plant some other kind of vegetable in addition to her tomatoes, and to can surplus fruit. In 1911, more than three thousand girls, in eight different States, had joined clubs and planted their gardens. By 1912 the number had grown to twenty-three thousand girls in twelve States. Many of the girls put up more than five hundred quart cans of tomatoes from their plots, besides ketchup, pickles, chow-chow, preserves, and other products. Quite a number of girls put up more than a thousand quart cans, and one girl put up fifteen hundred quart cans. Some of the girls, in addition to the prizes, had a net profit of as much as a hundred dollars on their gardens.
The United States Bureau of Plant Industry sets forth the object of the girls’ demonstration work as follows:
“(1) To encourage rural families to provide purer and better food at a lower cost, and utilize the surplus and otherwise waste products of the orchard and garden, and make the poultry yard an effective part of the farm economy.
(2) To stimulate interest and wholesome cooperation among members of the family in the home.
(3) To provide some means by which girls may earn money at home, and, at the same time, get the education and viewpoint necessary for the ideal farm life.
(4) To open the way for practical demonstrations in home economics.
(5) To furnish earnest teachers a plan for aiding their pupils and helping their communities.”[27]
VI Recognition Day for Boys and Girls
The most astonishing thing about the club activity is the recognition which it has won wherever it has been worked out on an extensive basis. The reason for this general recognition is quite obvious, and its effect is no less stimulating.
Public officials and business men have vied with one another in their efforts to reward the winners of county and State club contests. The same bulletin which records the astonishing figures on corn yields, tells about the things that were done for the 56,840 boys who were members of corn clubs. Fifty-two Georgia boys received diplomas signed by the governor of the State and other officials, for producing more than a hundred bushels per acre each, at an average cost of less than thirty cents per bushel. Business men and citizens generally subscribed liberally money, free railroad transportation, and trips to State capitals. In 1911 the total value of the prizes offered in the South to the boys’ corn clubs approximated fifty thousand dollars. In Oklahoma, one thousand dollars in gold was offered to the one hundred and twenty boys making the best record in that State. The State prize winners were sent to Washington for a week, where they were received at the White House by the President, and at the Capitol by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. They were presented with special cards of admission to the Senate and House of Representatives, and, when visiting Congress, they were presented to their Senators and Congressmen. By special invitation these distinguished visitors appeared before the Committee on Agriculture at the House of Representatives. They also visited the office of the Secretary of Agriculture. They were photographed, and large diplomas bearing the seal of the Department and the signature of the Secretary were awarded to them.
One does not wonder at the widespread recognition accorded these boys, in view of the fact that their efforts have been responsible for an immense increase in the business prosperity of their respective States. Once more have educators demonstrated the possibilities of teaching parents through the education of children.
VII Teaching Grown-Ups to Read
The educational work which is being done in the uplands of the South has already received widespread recognition. The slogan, “Down with the moonshine still and up with the moonlight school,” typifies the spirit of the upland community.
One might journey far before discovering a more enthusiastic people than the teachers and the scholars of the Southern uplands. The appalling extent of illiteracy among the descendants of Marion’s men finds a parallel in their pathetic desire for some form of education.
The Southern hill whites love the old and fear the new. Traditionally, they belong to a past generation; actually, they are reaching out for the better things which the new generation can offer. The moonlight schools are attended by old people and young alike. The struggling colleges, the industrial and technical schools, with their record of privation and hardship, bear eloquent testimony to the genuine efforts which the upland population is making in these early years of its educational awakening.
Every sincere effort among the hill whites meets with instant response. For the most part, they deprive themselves of the necessaries of life in order that they may send their children to school. Boys skimp and save; girls walk for miles along mountain trails and paths; communities give of the scanty means of their effort for the building and maintenance of schools. Everywhere the spirit of the new education is permeating the Southern upland communities.
VIII George Washington, Junior
One teacher, whose years of effort in the Piedmont have brought her the confidence and co-operation of the community, tells of the success of one of her earliest ventures with a boy of thirteen.
The boy’s father was bad; his mother slovenly and indifferent. The boy himself was bright and active.
When the time came for him to enter the cotton mill, the teacher protested to his family, but without success. Still there was something that she could do for him, still she saw an opportunity of serving him, and she asked him to come to her home with a number of other boys, for a couple of nights a week, when they sat together, reading, or playing games.
The boy had appeared sullen at first, but toward the end of his school term he showed an active interest. It became apparent that he was particularly clever at languages. None of his lessons troubled him, and, with the assistance of the teacher, he learned Italian readily, and during the evenings, when the other boys played games or talked, he worked over his Italian sentences with vital interest.
Just before Christmas, during the first year that this boy had spent in the mill, a friend visited his teacher, became interested in her work, and asked if there was any way in which she could help.
“You may,” said the teacher. “You may buy Andy an outfit.”
The friend went to the city with the order in her pocket,—a hat, a suit, and a complete outfit, new, as a Christmas present for Andy.
On Christmas eve, Andy alone came to the teacher’s house. She had not asked the other boys,—partly because most of them preferred to stay at home, partly because she had no such fine present for them as she had for Andy.
“Never in my life,” the teacher said, “had I seen Andy clean. I made up my mind that for once he should have a clean body as well as clean clothes.”
When Andy came that Christmas eve, the teacher took him into a room where there were towels, soap, a basin, and a new outfit of clothes.
“Andy,” she said, “this is your Christmas present from my friend, and now you are going to give me a Christmas present, too. You are going to wash up and dress up.”
Andy followed directions, and when he emerged from the room in his spick and span outfit, his hat set side-wise on his wet, newly combed hair, he stood up very straight, surveying himself as best he could from head to foot, and exclaimed,—“Gee! I feel just like George Washington.” The bath and the new suit were a realization of his highest ideal.
“Andy and I were always friends after that,” said the teacher, “and since Andy was the moving spirit among the boys in the village, the boys and I got along well together. It was my introduction to the heart of the community, and it came with Andy’s realization of an ideal which he had long cherished.”
IX A Step Toward Good Health
Having won Andy over, the teacher prepared to work her way past some of the barriers of prejudice which the community had placed between itself and civilization. The girls offered the readiest opening.
“The homes were wretched,” the teacher said. “The people did not know the simplest health rules. They were strangers to sanitation or cleanliness. Their housekeeping was primitive and their cooking miserable. I had won the boys by getting them together in something that resembled a club. I decided that my best path to the girls, and from them to the community, lay through housekeeping.”
The hypothesis was, at least, worthy of a try-out. The teacher began by keeping her own house in the most approved manner, and asking the girls to come in and help her do it.
“You’ll like to take supper with me this evening,” she would say to a group of girls at recess time. “Speak to your mothers when you go home, and you, Sadie and Annie, will stay over night and sleep in the spare bed.”
They were slow to respond at first. Long habit made them suspicious, but when the first few girls had spent their night with the teacher and had come home with the tales of her wonderful household arrangements, the others were looking eagerly for a chance to duplicate their experiences.
“Am I next?” a little girl asked anxiously one day, after the invitations to a party had been given out. The assurance that she was, made her face shine for the remainder of the afternoon.
“The school girls all came willingly,” the teacher said. “It was after I had them so interested that one of the factory hands came in. It was Saturday night, and she rapped on the door before coming in with a hesitating touch, as if she was afraid. She sat down across from me, smoothing her dress and looking unhappy.”
“You’ll not understand,” said the factory girl, apologetically. “But Mame is in your school—she’s my sister. You had her up last week to spend the night. You’ll remember?”
The teacher nodded.
“She came home, and ever since she’s been telling us about the way you did things. And I’ve been thinking,——”
She stopped and looked at the teacher, half suspiciously, half appealingly.
“I’ve been thinking how nice it would be for me, if I could do them things the same as you. You see,” she spoke rapidly, “I’m gettin’ married soon now, and when Mame came a-telling that way, and our house like it always is, and the baby crying, and nothing done exceptin’ ma a-scoldin’, and I says to myself, I says, if I could do things like that teacher can do ’em mebbe I wouldn’t make mistakes like ma makes ’em.” She paused for breath, looking expectant.
“You would like to come here to see how I do things?” the teacher asked.
The girl nodded eagerly.
“Come Monday after hours, and spend the night with me.”
“After that,” the teacher said, “it was a great deal easier. The next thing I wanted to do was to get the children examined for glasses and throat trouble. There were two second-rate country doctors there who knew little or nothing about modern medicine. The nearest man that I could trust was forty miles away. He was a specialist, too, and high priced. Still, I sat down and wrote him a letter, telling him how we were fixed. He answered by return mail, making a special rate and setting a day. I hoped to take twelve of the children, but I had car fare for only seven. Then came our windfall. I told the railroad what I was trying to do, and they made a special excursion rate and took the children at less than half fare. We were all able to go, and the extra money went for a treat to soda and the movies.”
The children went back home, singing the praises of the trip, the teacher, and the doctor. They went back, too, with expert advice and assistance, and with the good news that others would soon have a turn.
Group by group, the needy children were brought down to the specialist in the city. Some were even operated on, although at the outset the parents would not hear of operations. In the end the children won, however. Their enthusiasm for the teacher and their doctor carried the day.
“It has been slow,” the teacher said, “but at the end of it all, they see better, hear better, eat more wholesome, nourishing food, live better, and understand themselves better. On the whole it has paid.”
X Theory and Practice[28]
The rural schools of the South have no monopoly on progressive educational views. A number of Southern cities have taken up their position in the vanguard of educational progress. Notable among these cities is Columbus, Georgia,—a city of 20,554 people, in which Superintendent Roland B. Daniel has undertaken a vigorous policy of shaping the schools in the interests of the community. There were in 1913, 5,356 children of school age in Columbus. Of this number, 4,089 were in the schools. The school population is rather unevenly divided, racially,—3,348 of the children of school age are white, and 1,198 are colored. About one-quarter of the white population depends for its livelihood upon the mills. Columbus is surrounded by an agricultural district from which come many children in search of high school training. The city of Columbus presents an industrial problem of an unusually complex character, and the manner in which this problem has been handled by the schools is worthy of the highest commendation. Superintendent Daniel has laid down three definite planks in his educational platform for the city of Columbus. In the first place, he aims to provide school accommodations which are fitted to the peculiar needs of each part of the community. In the second place, he aims to shape the school system of Columbus in terms of the local environment of the children. In the third place, he has inaugurated a high school policy, which makes high school training practical as well as theoretical.
Among the mill operatives of Columbus, Superintendent Daniel estimates that there are approximately 800 children of school age. The situation presented by these children was critical in the extreme. There was an absence of compulsory education laws; few of the children attended any school, and when they did enter a school they seldom remained long enough to secure any marked educational advantage. Less than 5 per cent. of the children continued in school after they were old enough to work in the cotton mills.
Pursuant of his intention to make the schools supply the needs of all of the children of Columbus, Superintendent Daniel organized the North Highlands School in the factory district. Of this school he says: “It is not made to conform, either in course of study or hours, to the other schools of similar rank in the system, for the board desires to meet the conditions and convenience of the people for whom the school was established. Classroom work begins in the morning at 8 o’clock and continues until 11 o’clock, with a recess of 10 minutes at 9:30. The afternoon session begins at 1 o’clock, and the school closes for the day at 3:30 o’clock.”
The long intermission in the middle of the day is given in order to allow the children to take hot lunches to parents, brothers, and sisters who are working in the mill. Many of the mills are located at some distance from the school. Some of the children are called upon to walk as much as two miles during the noon hour, in order to carry the lunches. These “dinner toters,” when carrying lunch baskets for persons outside of the family, receive 25 cents per week per basket. In case several baskets are carried, the income thus earned is considerable.
The school thus organized on the basis of local needs is further specialized in a way that will appeal to the needs of the mill operative group. The academic courses are similar to the courses offered in the other schools, except that more emphasis is laid upon the “three R’s.” Superintendent Daniel says that the time is very limited in which these children will attend school, and more attention is given as to what may be regarded as fundamental. “While the prescribed course contemplates seven years, few continue after the fifth or sixth year, so strong is the call of the mills. Not more than 1 per cent finish this school and pursue their studies further.”
The three morning hours and the first hour in the afternoon are devoted to academic studies, while the last hour and a half of the day is given to practical work. The boys are required to take elementary courses in woodwork and gardening, alternating these two branches on alternate days. The girls are given work in basketry, sewing, cooking, poultry raising, and gardening.
The results of the introduction of this applied work are summed up by Superintendent Daniel in this way,—“In all of these lines of work it is now the hope of the school only to better living conditions a little among the people for whom it was especially organized. The transformation is necessarily slow. In the beginning, no doubt, the advocates of this type of school thought that many might be induced to continue in school and do more advanced work, especially along vocational lines. In this respect the school has been a disappointment to some. We are seldom able to induce pupils to finish even the limited course offered in this school.”
The North Highland School, in addition to its work for the children, has begun an organized effort to raise the standards of the local community. Every day the principal and teachers of the school visit some of the homes, giving helpful suggestions, caring for the sick, and in any other possible way contributing to home life. Superintendent Daniel reports the progress in this respect by saying,—“Confidence is now so strong that one of the teachers every Saturday morning collects the physically defective ones in the community and takes them to the free clinic for operations or treatment. At first parents would see their children die rather than permit them to be operated upon, but now they seldom decline to permit them to be taken by a teacher to the free clinic, when in the judgment of the teacher it is necessary.”
The school has made an effort to organize the older people of the community. There are entertainments and school gatherings in which parents and children alike participate. As a further help to those parents who are compelled to work in the mills, the school grounds, which are amply provided with a full play equipment, are open to all of the children at all hours of the day and all days of the week. “It is not infrequent,” says Superintendent Daniel, “that, when the mother goes to work at 6 in the morning, she sends her children to the school to enjoy the privileges of the grounds until the opening of the school at 8 o’clock.”
The work of the negro schools is similarly fitted to the industrial needs of the negro children. Boys and girls alike devote a considerable portion of their time to industrial work. The main purpose of this work for negroes is to prepare them for the line of industrial opportunity open to them. The school reports that it has developed a number of good blacksmiths, carpenters, cooks, seamstresses, and laundresses. Pupils who remain in the schools long enough to complete the course are able to earn, upon leaving school, about twice what they would be able to earn had no such training been provided.
A vigorous attempt has been made to reorganize grade work in the interests of clearness and effectiveness. As Superintendent Daniel puts the matter,—“We undertook to place before the teachers a definite problem, and to put suggestions into tangible form. We stated that all subjects could be taught with the books merely as helps and means to an end, and contend further for the doctrine that a working knowledge of books and subjects is far more desirable than accomplishing the feat of memorizing the printed page.” Many teachers will be astonished by the doctrine which Superintendent Daniel evolves from this statement of educational theory. “The teachers were asked to conduct the work in such a manner that it would not be necessary to recite or take written tests with closed books, but that school books be used as tools with which to work, and that the child should use text-books as adults do books of reference, while the teacher guides and directs in the development of thought.[">
This attempt of Superintendent Daniel to proceed with the grammar school work in a more natural way, and to relate all of it more closely to life, met with some interesting results, as may be gathered from the following test questions which were worked out by teachers in pursuance of the instructions to make text-books incidental and thought primary in the school work.
ARITHMETIC, THIRD B
Roy shops for his mother at Kirven’s. He buys 2 boxes of hair pins at $.05 each, 6 towels at $.10 each, and 5 handkerchiefs for $.25. What was his bill? If he hands the clerk $1.00, how much change will he receive?
THIRD A
If Isabel’s 2 pair of shoes cost $4, how much will shoes for all the girls in the class cost?
GEOGRAPHY THIRD B
Turn to the map on page 65 and find and write the names of seven different shore forms.
ARITHMETIC, FOURTH B
In our room are 46 pupils. The class receives 230 tablets and 138 pencils for the term. How many of each does each child receive?
GEOGRAPHY, FOURTH B
What products may be sent to us from New England? If they were shipped from Portsmouth, N. H., on what bodies of water would they travel?
GEOGRAPHY, FOURTH A
Why does the United States carry on more trade with the British Isles than with Germany? At what seaport would our vessels land in the British Isles? What would they carry and what would they bring back?
GEOGRAPHY, FIFTH A
What highways of trade will be used for shipping oranges from San Francisco to Columbus, Ga., by way of the Panama Canal? How many miles is this, approximately? (Use rule and map on page 65.)
GEOGRAPHY, FIFTH B
What is the chief industry of the people of Columbus, and why? Describe the climate of our city, tell what fruits, vegetables and farm products find a market here. What would a boat coming up the river bring to Columbus? What would it carry back?
Superintendent Daniel’s viewpoint is clear and sane. “It is not sufficient,” he says, “to maintain courses in domestic science and manual training for the grades, and to teach other subjects as if they belonged to another realm.” Consequently he has made every endeavor to bring together the forces of the community and of the school in a sympathetic whole, around which the educational life of the town must center.
The industrial high school is an integral and highly important part of the work in the Columbus schools. Side by side with the academic high school, it affords an opportunity for the children who do not intend to continue their educational work beyond high school grade to get some assistance in the direction of a training for life activity. It was originally intended to duplicate, in a measure, the conditions and hours maintained in the industrial plants of the city. Formerly the school was open for eleven calendar months; at the present time a vacation of six weeks is allowed. The school hours are from 8 o’clock in the morning until 4 o’clock in the afternoon, for five days each week. Pupils who have not maintained the required standard during the week are compelled to attend school on Saturday.
All pupils of the Industrial High School are required to take academic work of high school grade in mathematics, history, English, and science.
The introduction of manual training and domestic science into the grades of all Columbus schools has pointed many children in the direction of the Industrial High School. While it is not the intention of the school authorities to make the work of the Industrial High School final, it is hoped that those children who are enabled to continue with educational work are benefited markedly by this specialized course.
Throughout this deliberate attempt of the Columbus school administration to make the schools fit the needs of the community there is evidence of a scientific spirit which is in the last degree commendable. The community need is first ascertained. The school work is then organized in response to this community need. If, perchance, the first effort meets with little success, additional effort is continued until some measure of success is assured. The school authorities are not afraid to change their opinions or their system. They are not even afraid to fail on a given experiment. The one thing of which they are afraid is failure to provide for the educational needs of the community.
XI A People Coming to Its Own
The first great battle in the educational awakening of the South has been won. The people realize the necessity for an intelligently active population.
The second battle is well under way. The people of the South are shaping the schools to meet the peculiar educational needs which the economic and social problems of the South present.
A rallying-cry is ringing through the Southern States,—“The schools for the people; the people for the schools; and a higher standard of education and of life for the community.”
The South is in line for the New Education. School officials are working. Superintendent Daniel writes,—“Everyone connected with the system has been too intent on doing his work well and in establishing and maintaining the ideals of the system to be disturbed by petty difficulties. The teachers,” he adds, “have appeared to feel that it was rather a privilege than a burden to participate in making the Columbus system efficient through the preparation of her children for life.”[29] The public is asking for a correlation of school with life, and the schools are educating the South through the children.