FLORIDA.
Letter from Rev. Geo. Henry.
Dear Sir: I opened last Monday a day-school in addition to our Sunday-school. The necessity of this step will be apparent when I tell you that there are fifty children in this place who wish to attend school, but have been unable heretofore to do so, as the distance to the nearest colored school is from four to seven miles from their homes. Only a few of the larger ones have been able to attend.
In my school I have dull and bright, lazy and industrious children, as you have in all other schools, but taking them altogether, they study as well and learn as quickly as any set of pupils I have ever seen. I have one little girl who did not know the alphabet last Monday, but by the end of the week was able to read little stories from a Reader rapidly and accurately. I have never anywhere seen such progress made by a young child.
In view of the capability of the children to learn, there can scarcely be reason to doubt that the deplorable mental condition of the adult Freedmen is due to that institution which has been such a curse both to the slave and his owner. The public schools are open from three to four months each year; but so far they have been of very little use to the colored children, as they have been, as a rule, taught by incompetent persons. Most of the colored schools have colored teachers, and very few of them are either morally or intellectually qualified for the position. For example, the man who taught the school nearest to this place last winter used to bring his bottle with him to school. A woman of bad character and only rudimentary education has the same school this winter; yet this is one of the largest schools in the county. In a conversation which I had with Judge B——, a member of the Board of Public Instruction, he said that “the school money which had been spent for colored schools had been thrown away, for the children had not learned anything.” This is very nearly a correct statement of the case, for a bright child ten years of age would learn more in two months than boys 19 or 20 years old know who have attended these schools for years. Understand me, I think this is the fault of the teachers and not of the pupils.
I believe that in my week-day school I shall be able to do as much for the improvement of the condition of the Freedmen as in any other way, and I am sure if you were here to look over the field you would agree with me.
Our work in the Sunday-school is also very encouraging; not that the scholars are uniting with the church—for nearly all the older ones are members of churches now—but they are learning from the word of God those truths which are calculated to prepare them for useful lives in the earth and eternal happiness in the world to come.