Miss Sarah Burr, of New York, bequeathed $95,000 for educational purposes in connection with institutions already established and $60,000 towards founding new ones.
During the past twelve months we have recorded under the head of “Benefactions” $9,118,500 to different educational institutions in the United States. The greater part of this was given for endowments and permanent educational facilities——a portion of it had been provided by donors during previous years, and a part still remains unpaid. Of the grand total only $66,500 was for Freedmen——the money for their support having for the most part come through the contribution boxes.
CONCERNING ENDOWMENTS.
The success already achieved by the institutions of this Association and the favor already won by them among all classes of the Southern people, amply justify the work hitherto carried on. It is believed that the time has fully come when this work should be put upon a more substantial basis. Permanent endowments are needed that these institutions may achieve that larger success which is rightly expected of them.
Certain phases of our work, sometimes overlooked, greatly emphasize this need. Careful attention is invited to the following points:
1. The unusual difficulties attending the successful prosecution of our work. It is no ordinary school teaching that we have undertaken to carry on in the South. Our pupils bring to the class-room absolutely no inheritance of scholarly mind. Only two or three generations separate them from the heathenism of the most uncivilized continent in the world. Some of them come with the most meagre vocabulary——a few hundred tattered and torn remnants of English words. Many of them have no equipment of general information, such as other children absorb from their parents. But worse than all is the evil inheritance which many of our pupils bring from centuries of heathenism and slavery. Let us be frank and add that even the great boon of freedom, so righteously conferred, has, by the very suddenness of its bestowal, unavoidably brought peculiar peril and damage to many of the freedmen.
It is not a light task to deal with such material as this. Moral character must be developed at the outset and carefully nurtured all along. The rubbish of incorrect speech must be cleared away, and a correct and copious vocabulary formed. The commonest facts of general information must be imparted. Of course, in our higher institutions there is less of such work to be done; but a still more responsible and difficult task takes its place——that of preparing college and normal students to perform this same arduous primary work as teachers and leaders of their own people. Never was such a mass of ignorance thrown so suddenly upon the educational resources of a civilized people. But there is a brighter side.
2. The unprecedented facilities now available for the prosecution of our work. Never was a civilized people so well prepared as our nation now is to meet this great emergency. The progress made in the science of education was never so great as it has been in recent years. The adaptation of methods of teaching to the varying necessities of pupils was never so well understood as now. Text-books and school apparatus, juvenile literature and helps for Biblical study were never so excellent as at present. The value of industrial training, even as an element in the most liberal culture, is receiving unwonted emphasis. In short, the accumulated wisdom of the latest and best century stands ready to serve us, if we only summon its aid. Much of it is in service already; but far more is needed than our present financial resources can command.