NATIONAL AID FOR NATIONAL EDUCATION.
The title is its own argument. It is the instinct of self-preservation. If one member suffer, the whole body suffers. Congress has adjourned without passing the proposed law. It was to appropriate $10,000,000 annually for five years, and to distribute the same among the States and Territories in the proportion of illiteracy. There is no doubt that some such bill will yet be passed. At this ratio, the former slave States would receive seven and a half millions out of the ten. That the North heartily agrees to this has been a grateful surprise to the South. The scheme would not have been thought of, except for the need of it in that section.
The question may, then, be raised: What would be the relation of such aid to the work of this Association? It would greatly increase the demand for the training of common school teachers in our normal schools and colleges. The three months of country schools would be raised to six. The increased facilities would tend to lead the people to call for a better quality of teachers. Dr. Barnas Sears, the late Secretary of the Peabody Fund, learned that one competent teacher introduced, led to the displacement of a half-dozen incompetents. The training of the teachers is the wholesale business in the process of education. Then, it is of the utmost importance that these teachers of the millions should themselves have that moral and religious preparation which our missionary institutions seek to impart, so that the lessons of morality, and virtue and piety shall be taught, along with the elements of a common education. The House committee, in their report, state that, according to the census of 1880, 4,715,395 persons at the South over ten years of age, or 70.56 per cent., are not able to write. To raise up the qualified teachers for this illiterate mass will tax the resources of all the institutions founded in that region by the benevolence of the North.
Government aid will still leave another demand upon our style of schools, viz., that which shall furnish industrial training. The old-time colored mechanics, who had been taught trades, which greatly increased their value in the market, are passing away. Scarcely any of the young men are now learning trades, for the reasons that white mechanics will not take them, that the colored tradesmen have not capital enough to employ them, and that too many of them have seen enough of working for board and clothes in the case of father and mother, not taking into the account the large and steady wages to come by and by. As it is going now, let the old colored mechanics pass away, and the skilled artisans coming from Europe will press in to fill the demand; and then the Africo-American citizens will be driven to the wall and forced back to be mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. The first demand upon our schools was to open the doors of knowledge to millions of starving intellects; but now, more and more, must we push industrial training to help the people in the coming crisis, which they do not forecast as readily as do their friends who have studied the problem of their bondage and their freedom. So then, along with books and the art of school teaching, we must train the girls to the trades of cooking, of dressmaking, of nursing, of type-setting, of running knitting and sewing machines; we must teach the boys carpentry, blacksmithing, shoe and harness making, agriculture, the raising of improved stock and the running of machinery.
National aid for public schools will still leave upon our institutions and the like the great business of the higher education. For a portion of the people this is demanded. If they are to maintain themselves in their citizenship they must have the first quality of education in their preachers, professors, lawyers, doctors, journalists, scientists. In their general advancement they are already requiring more and more of cultivation in their preachers. With some congregations even now only the most thorough classical and professional training can satisfy the demands of their pulpits, while in the other professions nothing else can succeed. The public schools will prepare the material, and make the greater demand for the higher institutions, such as we are developing. And so we find that national aid, if granted, will only be a national call for our scheme of advanced education. Then, if such a law is passed, it is proposed to run only five years. And yet the generations of children will still be sweeping on and we must make our patriotic and missionary propagandism to keep up with them.
An important meeting of the National Education Assembly was held at Ocean Grove, N.J., Aug. 8, 9. The audiences were large, and many prominent educators were present from various parts of the country. The opening address was by Hon. John Eaton, U.S. Commissioner of Education, in which it was held that the national government is the only agency able to cope with illiteracy in the country. A feature of special interest was the showing of the work of the Northern churches in the South since the war. Dr. Strieby, of New York, represented the Congregationalists; Rev. Dr. J. M. Gregory, of Illinois, the Baptists; Rev. Dr. R. H. Allen, of Pennsylvania, the Presbyterians; and Rev. Dr. J. C. Hartzell, of Louisiana, the Methodists. It appeared that more than $10,000,000 have been spent by this agency, and that more than 15,000 students are now in schools of higher grade, thus supported. Bishop Simpson, Dr. H. A. Butz, president of Drew Theological Seminary, and Senator Blair of New Hampshire, made addresses. The sentiments of the Assembly were formulated in a memorial to Congress. A National Education Committee was organized to continue the effort to secure national aid. The secretary of the committee will reside in Washington, and efforts to influence public opinion in favor of the end in view will be earnestly prosecuted.
The following is an extract from a letter sent to the president of the Assembly, Rev. J. C. Hartzell, D.D., from Hon. H. M. Teller, Secretary of the Interior:
“The great mass of the people must depend on the public school system for the education of their children. An efficient public school system, extending to all the State, and affording equal facilities for education to all classes of children, free from rate bills, cannot be too highly prized. * * * I recognize it to be the duty of the State to provide for the education of the children within its borders; but if the State neglects or refuses so to do, I think it is clearly within the power of the general government to provide such school facilities. But, fortunately, there is no State in which no provision for public education is made, and therefore the occasion for the exercise of this power does not exist, except as auxiliary to that of the State. I believe that in all the States the sentiment in favor of educating the children is so strong that the action required by the general government would be simply to make and wisely disburse proper appropriations, so as to encourage and stimulate the States that are the least able to carry on the work by themselves. To do this without seeming to discriminate in favor of certain States, such appropriations ought to be based on the degree of illiteracy as shown by the last census.