HIGHER EDUCATION.
PRES. E. A. WARE.
This paper, recognizing the importance of normal and industrial education, claims for higher education simply the place accorded to it in other sections in the educational system for the South. Its right to that place is widely questioned. The Journal of Education recently had the following: “In spite of the youthfulness of colored education, some of their schools are graced with a reprint of a Northern College curriculum. What nine-tenths of the pupils in these classes want of Latin and Greek, fails of our comprehension.” We are constantly hearing about “educating them out of their place.” It will hardly be claimed that the colored man cannot be educated, when several have graduated with honor from Northern colleges; when one has passed the fiery ordeal of West Point; when one, below the middle of a class of six in a Southern school, graduated above the middle of a class of thirty at Andover Seminary; and when a Southern examining board say: “We were impressed with the fact that the colored people, whether of pure or mixed blood, can receive the education usually given in such schools.”
Perhaps the frequent remark about “their place” means that they ought not to be educated. Now and then we see what might have been a good barber spoiled by the attempt to make him a minister, and a hasty generalization leads many to say: “They, instead of he, ought not to be educated.” Allowing for this folly, this talk about “their place” raises several questions. Who determines and assigns the place for six millions of American citizens? Who will keep them in their assigned places? Are our Declaration of Independence and Constitution “glittering generalities?” Are the life and teachings of Christ a vain thing? Pres. Woolsey thanked God for the war to rid us of slavery before it had so sapped the virtue of the whole people that we should not be worth saving. Surely He sent it none too soon. How few are color-blind; how many are color-blinded!
Higher education is needed because time is required for the mental, and especially the moral, development and furnishing of pupils, who neither inherit nor receive from home and church such furnishing. It is needed to continue the work to which it has already contributed so much, of the adjustment of the former owner and property to their new relations of brother and man, of fellow-citizens. The owner could not see the citizen till the man was developed. He needs higher education that he may take some part, other than with pick and shovel in, and may have his share of, the rich benefits of the development of the vast resources of the South. Again, it is often asked, “Would it not be well for the negro to keep out of politics?” Would it not be well for Niagara to run up-hill? He has the ballot, and the duty presses not simply to fit him to read it, but to furnish leaders who will teach him the sacredness of that ballot; who will teach him that the interests of labor and capital are one; the duty of debt paying, personal, state and national; the sacredness of law and the duty to obey it; that the United States is a nation and not a confederacy. The law and medicine should be open to him. The need of thoroughly educated physicians for these people can hardly be overestimated, and is second only, if indeed it be second, to the need of ministers. Higher education should be open to him, that here, if nowhere else, he may feel that he is like other people; that there may be one door that is not forever shut in his face with the words, “This is for white folks.”
Finally, an educated ministry is needed. Pres. Gillman says: “There is no greater curse to a community than an ignorant ministry.” Dr. Haygood, in “Our Brother in Black,” says: “The hope of their race in this country is largely in its pulpit. How urgent the need, how sacred the duty, of preparing those whom God has called to preach to this people!” The few ministers who have received partial training, and others who are making heroic efforts at self-culture that they may aid their people, are worthy of all praise; but their number is pitifully small, serving by their light to make the surrounding darkness visible and to show the need of the best training. This is needed to remove the mass of crude notions and superstitions that almost hide the truth. It is often harder to bring a benighted Christian than a heathen to the light. It is needed to remove the bitter sectarianism which usurps the place of the Gospel. This feeding upon ignorance can only be removed by those whose minds and hearts, broadened by generous culture, hold the great common truths of Christianity superior to the petty differences of sects. It is needed to ward off skepticism, which is to be feared from two sources: the memory of the injuries of centuries, and the continued experience of many evils, even at the hands of professed Christians; and, second, the revelation, as they grow in knowledge, of the emptiness of what is preached as religion and the ignorance and ofttimes wickedness of their ministers leading them to loss of respect, to ridicule and to unbelief. There is abundant testimony to the growth of these evils.
What machinery is needed? In the towns, the three months’ free school should be so supplemented as to continue nine months. In the larger towns and cities there should be high and preparatory schools, with normal classes. At convenient points should be boarding schools, with preparatory, normal and industrial instruction. Then, supported and fed by, and inspiring all below, should be the college, the school of higher education. Justice to a race long oppressed, obligation to meet more than half way those states that make generous appropriations to this end, and safety to the nation, demand that these should be liberally furnished with such buildings and grounds as health and comfort require, with libraries and apparatus equal to the best, and an efficient corps of teachers, so paid that their best energies may be given to instruction.