Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization

by Emmett J. Scott; Lyman Beecher Stowe

In a corner of each of the shops, in which are carried on the forty or more different trades, is a blackboard on which are worked out the actual problems which arise in the course of the work. After school hours one always finds in the shops a certain number of the teachers from the Academic Department looking up problems for their classes for the next day. A physics teacher may be found in the blacksmithing shop digging up problems about the tractive strength of wires and the expansion and contraction of metals under heat and cold. A teacher of chemistry may be found in the kitchen of the cooking school unearthing problems relating to the chemistry of food for her class the next day. If, on the other hand, you go into a classroom you will find the shop is brought into the classroom just as the classroom has been brought into the shop. For instance, in a certain English class the topic assigned for papers was "a model house" instead of "bravery" or "the increase of crime in cities," or "the landing of the Pilgrims." The boys of the class had prepared papers on the architecture and construction of a model house, while the girls' papers were devoted to its interior decoration and furnishing. One of the girls described a meal for six which she had actually prepared and the six had actually consumed. The meal cost seventy-five cents. The discussion and criticism which followed each paper had all the zest which vitally practical and near-at-hand questions always arouse.

When the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association met in Atlanta, Ga., in 1904, many of the delegates, after adjournment, visited the Tuskegee Institute. Among these delegates was Prof. Paul Monroe of the Department of History and Principles of Education of the Teachers' College of Columbia University. In recording his impressions of his visit, Professor Monroe says: "My interest in Tuskegee and a few similar institutions is founded on the fact that here I find illustrated the two most marked tendencies which are being formulated in the most advanced educational thought, but are being worked out slowly and with great difficulty. These tendencies are: first, the endeavor to draw the subject matter of education, or the 'stuff' of schoolroom work, directly from the life of the pupils; and second, to relate the outcome of education to life's activities, occupations, and duties of the pupil in such a way that the connection is made directly and immediately between schoolroom work and the other activities of the person being educated. This is the ideal at Tuskegee, and, to a much greater extent than in any other institution I know of, the practice; so that the institution is working along not only the lines of practical endeavor, but of the most advanced educational thought. To such an extent is this true that Tuskegee and Hampton are of quite as great interest to the student of education on account of the illumination they are giving to educational theory as they are to those interested practically in the elevation of the Negro people and in the solution of a serious social problem. May I give just one illustration of a concrete nature coming under my observation while at the school, that will indicate the difference between the work of the school and that which was typical under old conditions, or is yet typical where the newer ideas, as so well grasped by Mr. Washington, are not accepted? In a class in English composition two boys, among others, had placed their written work upon the board, one having written upon 'Honor' in the most stilted language, with various historical references which meant nothing to himself or to his classmates—the whole paragraph evidently being drawn from some outside source; the other wrote upon 'My Trade—Blacksmithing'—and told in a simple and direct way of his day's work, the nature of the general course of training, and the use he expected to make of his training when completed. No better contrast could be found between the old ideas of formal language work, dominated by books and cast into forms not understood or at least not natural to the youth, and the newer ideas of simplicity, directness, and forcefulness in presenting the account of one's own experience. Not only was this contrast an illustration of the ideal of the entire education offered at Tuskegee in opposition to that of the old, formal, 'literary' education as imposed upon the colored race, but it gave in a nutshell a concept of the new education. This one experience drawn from the life of the boy and related directly to his life's duration and circumstances was education in the truest sense; the other was not save as Mr. Washington made it so in its failure...."

Among the delegates was also Mr. A.L. Rafter, the Assistant Superintendent of Schools of Boston, who in speaking at Tuskegee said: "What Tuskegee is doing for you we are going to take on home to the North. You are doing what we are talking about." In general, these foremost educational experts of the dominant race looked to Booker Washington and Tuskegee for leadership instead of expecting him or his school to follow them.

Booker Washington not only practised at Tuskegee this close relation between school life and real life—and it is being continued now that he is gone—but preached it whenever and wherever opportunity offered. Some years ago, in addressing himself to those of his own students who expected to become teachers, he said on this subject among other things: "... colored parents depend upon seeing the results of education in ways not true of the white parent. It is important that the colored teacher on this account give special attention to bringing school life into closer touch with real life. Any education is to my mind 'high' which enables the individual to do the very best work for the people by whom he is surrounded. Any education is 'low' which does not make for character and effective service.

"The average teacher in the public schools is very likely to yield to the temptation of thinking that he is educating an individual when he is teaching him to reason out examples in arithmetic, to prove propositions in geometry, and to recite pages of history. He conceives this to be the end of education. Herein is the sad deficiency in many teachers who are not able to use history, arithmetic, and geometry as means to an end. They get the idea that the student who has mastered a certain number of pages in a textbook is educated, forgetting that textbooks are at best but tools, and in many cases ineffective tools, for the development of man....

"The average parent cannot appreciate how many examples Johnny has worked out that day, how many questions in history he has answered; but when he says, 'Mother, I cannot go back to that school until all the buttons are sewed on my coat,' the parent will at once become conscious of school influence in the home. This will be the best kind of advertisement. The button propaganda tends to make the teacher a power in the community. A few lessons in applied chemistry will not be amiss. Take grease spots, for example. The teacher who with tact can teach his pupils to keep even threadbare clothes neatly brushed and free from grease spots is extending the school influence into the home and is adding immeasurably to the self-respect of the home."[2]

The idea that education is a matter of personal habits of cleanliness, industry, integrity, and right conduct while of course not original with Booker Washington was perhaps further developed and more effectively emphasized by him than by any other American educator. Just as Matthew Arnold insisted that religion was a matter of conduct rather than forms and dogmas so Booker Washington held that education is a matter of character and not forms. He concluded one of his Sunday night talks to his students with these words: "I want every Tuskegee student as he finds his place in the surging industrial life about him to give heed to the things which are 'honest and just and pure and of good report,' for these things make for character, which is the only thing worth fighting for...." In another of these talks he said: "A student should not be satisfied with himself until he has grown to the point where, when simply sweeping a room, he can go into the corners and crevices and remove the hidden trash which, although it should be left, would not be seen. It is not very hard to find people who will thoroughly clean a room which is going to be occupied, or wash a dish which is to be handled by strangers; but it is hard to find a person who will do a thing right when the eyes of the world are not likely to look upon what has been done. The cleaning of rooms and the washing of dishes have much to do with forming characters."[3]

This recalls Booker Washington's own experience when as a ragged and penniless youth he applied for admission to Hampton and was given a room to sweep by way of an entrance examination. Indeed, one of Booker Washington's greatest sources of strength as a teacher lay in the fact that his own life not only illustrated the truth of his assertions, but illustrated it in a striking and dramatic manner. His life was, in fact, an epitome of the hardships, struggles, and triumphs of the successful members of his race from the days of slavery to the present time. A great believer in the power of example he lived a life which gave him that power in its highest degree. Because of his inherent modesty and good taste he never referred to himself or his achievements as examples to be emulated, and this merely further enhanced their power.

In concluding another Sunday night talk he said: "As a race we are inclined, I fear, to make too much of the day of judgment. We have the idea that in some far-off period there is going to be a great and final day of judgment, when every individual will be called up, and all his bad deeds will be read out before him and all his good deeds made known. I believe that every day is a day of judgment, that we reap our rewards daily, and that whenever we sin we are punished by mental and physical anxiety and by a weakened character that separates us from God. Every day is, I take it, a day of judgment, and as we learn God's laws and grow into His likeness we shall find our reward in this world in a life of usefulness and honor. To do this is to have found the kingdom of God, which is the kingdom of character and righteousness and peace."[4]

To quote once more from these Sunday night talks, in another he said: "There is, then, opportunity for the colored people to enrich the material life of their adopted country by doing what their hands find to do, minor duties though they be, so well that nobody of any race can do them better. This is the aim that the Tuskegee student should keep steadily before him. If he remembers that all service, however lowly, is true service, an important step will have been taken in the solution of what we term 'the race problem.'"