THE SOUTH FOR THE NEW EDUCATION
I A Dream of Empire
A keen Atlanta business man leaned forward on his chair and spoke eagerly. “Yes, sir,” he exclaimed, “the world is ours. We have the biggest, finest batch of undeveloped resources in the country—perhaps on the planet. Iron, coal, stone, timber, power—our hills are full of them, so full that we have never even inventoried our treasure-house. Our possibilities are beyond the power of words, and we’ve got to live up to them.”
This man knew Georgia and the South. He had helped, and still is helping to convert the iron, coal, timber, and water-power into Southern prosperity. He was still unsatisfied.
“The trouble with us is, we can’t go fast enough,” he admitted. “Do you know why? Do you know the biggest burden we have to carry—the most determined enemy we have to fight? Well, sir, [it’s] ignorance—the ignorance of the common man about his farm or his trade; the ignorance of the business man about outside things; the ignorance of the teachers who are supposed to enlighten us.” He leaned forward again. “That sounds strong, doesn’t it? But it’s gospel.”
I reminded him of the rapidity with which the South was forging ahead in its educational activities. He threw his head back proudly. “Of course,” he cried, “the experiment stations, the colleges, the high schools, the club movement, and all that—of course we’re going ahead. I’m not speaking of that. My point is that we must wake up to two things. First of all, we must never make the mistakes that you did in the North when you built up your educational system. That means no pedantry, or classical snobbery. We mustn’t go that way. Our way is plain though. I see it more clearly every time I think the matter over—we must train the intelligence of the Southern people.”
He continued, in his enthusiastic mood. “Yes, there is a great future for the South. Its resources make a future possible; but unless those resources are intelligently used, our prosperity will not go very deep, or reach very far. We must take the people with us.”
This man’s view typifies the educational vision that is sweeping over the South. “We must take the people with us,” he said. There is nothing novel in the idea; but coming as it did from a representative business man, it carried weight and conviction.
Another thing he said in the same connection enforced his argument. “They talk about the race problem in the South,” he said. “That is, the old generation does. We younger men are not so much concerned about the race problem as we are concerned about efficiency in industry and in agriculture. The races are here to stay; we cannot change that if we would. Meanwhile, all of us, whites as well as blacks, are slovenly in our farming, indifferent in our business transactions, and hopelessly behind in our methods of conducting affairs. From top to bottom we need trained intelligence. That, more than anything else, will solve the South’s problems.”