Any such education as this of course calls for experts, and we are thus led on to our second point. We ask that the teachers in Negro schools and colleges should in deed and in truth be specialists. He who would teach any American youth in the new day, and certainly any Negro American youth, should be a genuine psychologist and sociologist and a large-hearted Christian man at the same time that he is a most thorough student in his own department. By "specialist" we do not mean a man who in English would count up the infinitives in Gower's poems, but one who in grammar, for instance, could bring from a broad scholarly background such a capacity for illustration as would inspire his students to be honestly more careful in their speaking or writing. The teacher of geometry would be one who could genuinely teach boys to think better; and with the true teacher of Latin, boys would have no desire to be dishonest. Whatever is taught should be dynamic; now as never before it must justify itself in terms of human life. Such instructors for our youth would call for such an outlay for education as has not yet been dreamed of. They could not be ready, however, until they had passed through a long period of preparation; and for such an investment they should later of course be adequately paid. Along with better teachers would go better equipment generally. Mr. Carnegie has given several library buildings, for instance. We wish now that somebody would give some books to put in them. More than one of the Negro colleges have no regular library appropriation. Whenever a book is bought it must be taken out of current funds and thus be stolen from some other legitimate use. And yet some people presume to sneer at what these institutions have done!
The third matter is a large and subtle one. It has to do with the whole moral and spiritual import of the schools in question. One of the amazing things about Negro education in the large in America is that one hears so much about boards and units and courses of study and so little about deeper essentials. Aside from the curriculum, what is the atmosphere that a boy breathes as soon as he sets foot on a college campus? Is he trained in honesty, in politeness, in high ideals of speech, in lofty conceptions of character? Does he have to obey orders? Is he taught to be neat, prompt, and industrious? Such questions are of things too often taken for granted, and too often lacking. We need new emphasis on the whole missionary impulse in education. In the providence of God, but through no effort of his own, the freedman in the decades after the Civil War had the benefit of the labors of consecrated men and women who served, sometimes even without pay, for his salvation. Cravath at Fisk, Graves at Morehouse, Tupper at Shaw, Ware at Atlanta, Armstrong at Hampton, and Packard and Giles at Spelman are names that should ever be recalled with thanksgiving and praise. These men and women were not people of means. They labored often with the most inadequate facilities. And yet somehow they had the key to the eternal verities. They were earnest, efficient, and true, and to them a human soul was worth more than the kingdoms of this world.
Such consecrated workers, however, have now become rarer and rarer. Materialism and commercialism are abroad in the land. Segregation and proscription and injustice abound. We plead now that in all the disappointments and distractions of the new day our teachers shall at least remember the faith and high ideals of the pioneers, and remain close to God.
To train our boys in the virtues of citizenship and at the same time in knowledge of the rights of others; to teach them respect for others at the same time that they cultivate their own self-respect; to teach them the value of scholarship and also to let them know when scholarship must become dynamic; to teach them to work, to love, to sing, to have faith, even when they see wrong all around them—this is a task calling for all one has of Christianity, of scholarship, and of delicacy.
VI
A GREAT MISSIONARY: JOANNA P. MOORE[ToC]
In the fall of 1862 a young woman who was destined to be a great missionary entered the Seminary at Rockford, Illinois. There was little to distinguish her from the other students except that she was exceedingly plainly dressed, and seemed forced to spend most of her spare time at work. Yes, there was one other difference. She was older than most of the girls—already thirty, and rich in experience. When not yet fifteen she had taught a country school in Pennsylvania. At twenty she was considered capable of managing an unusually turbulent crowd of boys and girls. When she was twenty-seven her father had died, leaving upon her very largely the care of her mother. At twenty-eight she already looked back upon a career of fourteen years as a teacher, of some work for Christ incidentally accomplished, but also upon a fading youth of wasted hopes and unfulfilled desires.