GEORGIA’S NEED OF TEACHERS.
B. M. Zettler, Supt. of Public Schools, Macon, Ga., expresses himself in favor of the Blair Bill, in the following, which we take from the Atlanta Constitution. It should be remembered that the colored teachers to whom Mr. Zettler refers come largely from the A. M. A. schools, and especially from the Atlanta University:
“For fifteen years Georgia has been struggling with her public school system, and owing to lack of means but little progress has been made towards efficiency and thoroughness. Outside of our principal cities and towns the people are literally without school-houses, and the State ought to spend not less than a hundred thousand dollars annually for five years in providing suitable school-houses. But with a school fund not sufficient to keep the schools open three months in the year it is utterly useless to talk about appropriating a dime for such a purpose.
“Then, too, we need at least a dozen well-equipped normal or training schools for teachers in different sections of the State, or, perhaps, which would suit our immediate needs better, fifty summer institutes to introduce modern methods of teaching, and prepare persons to teach in the schools. It is a fact, sir, to-day in Georgia, that most of the white public schools of our rural districts are taught (?) by broken-down preachers, doctors and lawyers, men who not only know little about teaching, but who are ‘worn out’ and are physically unequal to the work of teaching. And just here let me call your attention to the difference in the white and the colored schools in this respect. The latter are, almost without exception, in the hands of young men and women as teachers, and these bring to their work the enthusiasm and freshness of youth. Scores of them come, too, from the training schools, not only instructed in modern methods, but overflowing with zeal in the cause of popular education. They become, in every sense of the word, ‘missionaries of education’ to their people, and when their State association convenes in annual session they come up by the hundred to report results and compare ideas, not forgetting to send words of greeting to the score or two of white teachers assembled in the same capacity. Is the contrast a pleasant one for the white people of our State? I think not.
“But I need not go beyond the borders of our own county to prove that we need the aid offered by the Blair Bill. Right here in Bibb we ought to spend ten thousand dollars a year for five years in building and equipping school-houses. We need, right now, thirty additional school-houses in the country districts, and at least two more in the city, and with the addition to our school fund of the eight to twelve thousand dollars a year for eight years that would fall to our share under the provisions of the Blair Bill, as it passed the Senate, we could afford to spend at least five thousand dollars a year of our county appropriation in these greatly needed school buildings.”