OUR SCHOOLS AND THE COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM.
The settlers of New England showed their uncommon common sense by the early establishment of Harvard and Yale—the nursing mothers of the common school system which has made these States what they are. These colleges are not the ripened fruit of the common schools, but the creators of them. For these colleges, we are indebted to a class of men among the Pilgrim Fathers, educated in the universities of the old world, a class not to be found among the colored people of the South, and because of which alone, if for no other reason, their condition differs immensely from that of the Freedmen, who have no ability to create the instruments by which they can be lifted up from the degraded condition in which slavery left them.
The deep-seated prejudice of the Southern white against the fact of negro education, his bitter unwillingness to see the experiment tried, coupled with his scornful incredulity that anything worth the effort could be accomplished, made it certain that those most deeply concerned, because of the new relation these people sustained to them, in the elevation, through schools, of the negro, would originate no efforts to this end. This gospel, like every other, must be sent to those who are to be specially benefited by it, and must be sustained, like all missionary enterprises, by those who know its value, until it can vindicate itself to those to whom it is sent.
It is not rash to say that, but for outside pressure, few, if any, of the Southern States would now have a system of common schools, provided for by State legislation, even for the whites; even less bold is the assertion that, but for the proved results of missionary schools for the education of the colored people, the South, and a large proportion of those in the North, would be utterly incredulous as to the possibility of making scholars of the negroes; and that the common schools forced upon the unwilling South by the constitutions formed by conventions in which the Southern sentiment found no expression, would never have gained favor as they have with the people, but for the trained teachers which our schools and the schools of other societies have furnished. As in New England, so in the South, the trained teacher makes the schools, which are thus the children of the colleges and normal schools.
Wherever we have been able to send competent colored teachers, the whites are in favor of sustaining the common school system; and it may with modesty be said, that the A.M.A., perhaps more than any other agency, has won for it a place in the future of these States, ten of which, according to the latest reports, appropriate $49,829 for normal instruction in colored schools, a large share of which goes to institutions established by Northern charity, to carry on a work the value of which had been fully proven by these schools before these States contributed a dollar for such a purpose.
In 1878, out of a total school population in the recent slave States, including the District of Columbia, of 5,187,584, 2,711,096 were enrolled, being nearly 62 per cent. of the whites, and something more than 47 per cent. of the blacks. Nearly twelve millions of dollars was expended upon the schools for that year, and for the most part it has been very equitably divided between the races, except in Kentucky and Delaware, in which States the school tax collected from the colored people alone is appropriated to colored schools.
Thus the teachers of negro schools have fought a great fight, and have won substantial victories, for a system of education which is to regenerate the South, and, more than any other and all other agencies, is to convert elements of danger, which, neglected, would soon have proved the ruin of our republic, into elements of strength and greatness.