The first great battle in the educational awakening of the South has been won. The people realize the necessity for an intelligently active population.
The second battle is well under way. The people of the South are shaping the schools to meet the peculiar educational needs which the economic and social problems of the South present.
A rallying-cry is ringing through the Southern States,—“The schools for the people; the people for the schools; and a higher standard of education and of life for the community.”
The South is in line for the New Education. School officials are working. Superintendent Daniel writes,—“Everyone connected with the system has been too intent on doing his work well and in establishing and maintaining the ideals of the system to be disturbed by petty difficulties. The teachers,” he adds, “have appeared to feel that it was rather a privilege than a burden to participate in making the Columbus system efficient through the preparation of her children for life.”[29] The public is asking for a correlation of school with life, and the schools are educating the South through the children.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Now State Superintendent. See an article “‘Corn-Club’ Smith,” P. C. Macfarlane, Collier’s Weekly, May 17, 1913, p. 19.
[25] United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, Results of Boys’ Demonstration Work in Corn Clubs in 1911, Washington, May, 1912, p. 4.
[26] Op. cit., pp. 5-6.
[27] U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, Girls’ Demonstration Work, Washington, January, 1913, pp. 1-2.
[28] For a full statement of the work of the Columbus Schools see “Industrial Education in Columbus,["> Ga., R. B. Daniel, U. S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin 535, Government Printing Office, 1913. Also, The Annual Report of the Columbus Public Schools for the Year Ending August 1, 1913.