THE PRIZE ESSAY
In looking for the cause of so many improvements I found that the
Bureau of Public Utility had been of great service to the country in
bringing about such a happy solution of the Negro problem. Among other
novel methods adopted I found they had established public boarding
schools. I was astonished to learn that they were based on some
suggestions made by a Negro of my own times, in an essay which had won
a prize of $100 offered by a Northern philanthropist. The writer was a
Southern Negro from the state of North Carolina. His ideas were carried
out in a general scheme of education for the Negro.
The good results of this course have proved their wisdom; in fact the
results were of such importance as to warrant my reproducing part of
what he wrote:
THE KIND OF EDUCATION THE NEGRO NEEDS
“I have noticed a growing tendency in the writings of those whites who
discuss the racial question, in the newspapers, towards helpfulness and
kindness to the Negro race. Some articles are very bitter, abusive, and
unfair, the writers seeming to be either playing to the galleries of a
maudlin sentiment or venting personal spleen--but in the main this is
not so. The Negroes, who withal had rather love than hate white people,
are generally thankful for all expressions favorable to themselves.
They realize as a mass that there has grown up within the last thirty
years an idle, vicious class of Negroes whose acts and habits are of
such a nature as to make them objectionable to their own race, as
well as to the whites. What to do with this class is a problem that
perplexes the better element of Negroes, more, possibly, than it does
the whites; since their shortcomings are generally credited to the
whole Negro race, which is wrong as a fact and unjust in theory.
“This vicious element in the race is a constant subject of discussion
in Negro churches and in private conversation. It is a mistake to say
that crime is not condemned by the better class of Negroes. There may
be a class that attend the courts when their ‘pals’ are in jeopardy
and who rejoice to see them exonerated, but the real substantial Negro
man is seldom seen ‘warming the benches’ of court rooms. Unlike the
white spectators, who are men of leisure and spend their time there
out of interest in what is going on, and often to earn a _per diem_ as
jurors,--the leisure class in the Negro race is generally composed of
those who have ‘served time’ in prison or of their associates.
“The Negro problem, as now considered, seems, so far as the discussion
of it is concerned, to be entirely in the hands of white people for
solution, and the Negro himself is supposed to have no part in it,
other than to ‘wait and tend’ on the bidding of those engaged at the
job. He is ‘a looker on in Venice.’ I therefore offer my suggestion as
to method or plan with fear of being asked to stand aside. Yet, in my
zeal for the work and in my anxiety to have it accomplished as speedily
and correctly as possible, I venture a few suggestions, the result of
twenty years’ observation and experience in teaching, which appear to
my mind as the best way to go at this Herculean task.
“In the first place I suggest that the boarding school is the only
one fitted for the final needs of the young of the race--a school
where culture and civility would be taught hand in hand with labor
and letters. The main object in education is training for usefulness.
‘Leading out’ is the meaning of the term education, and what the young
of the race needs is to be lead out, and kept out of vice, until the
danger period is passed. The public schools turn out the child just at
that period when temptations are most alluring. From the age of puberty
to twenty-one is the danger time, and the time of forming character.
The kind of character then formed remains. If the child can be steered
over this period, under right influences and associations, the problem
of his future is comparatively settled for good, otherwise for bad. Too
much is expected of the public schools as now constituted, if it is
presumed that they can mould both the mind and the heart of the child;
when they usually drop him just at the period that he begins to learn
he has a heart and a mind! He is mostly an animal during the period
allotted to him in the public schools. Many are fortunate enough to
have parents who have the leisure and ability to train them properly.
Some follow up the course in the public schools with a season in a
boarding school--these are fortunate, but where is the great mass? They
became boot-blacks, runaways, ‘dudes,’ or temporary domestics, in which
calling they earn money more to satisfy their youthful propensities
than for any settled purpose for the future of their lives.
“Out of six hundred pupils who had left one public school in Virginia
I found only 85 who had settled down with any seemingly fixed purpose.
I counted 196 who had become domestics, and, either married or single,
are making orderly citizens. The rest have become mere bilge water and
are unknown. Among the girls fourteen are of the _demirep_ order. The
public schools are doing some work it is true--a great work, all things
considered--but their ‘reach’ is not far enough. What the young of the
Negro race needs, beyond all things, is training--not only of the head,
but of the heart and hand as well. The boarding school would meet the
requirements, if properly conducted. The girl and boy should remain at
useful employment under refined influences until the habit of doing
things right and acting right is formed. How can the public schools
mould character in a child whom they have for five hours, while the
street gamins have him for the rest of the day? And further, as before
stated, when the child leaves the public schools at the time when most
of all he is likely to get into bad habits?
“Good home training is the salvation of any people. Many Negro children
are necessarily lacking in this respect, for the reason that their
parents are called off to their places of labor during the day and the
children are left to shift for themselves. Too often when the parents
are at home the influence is not of the most wholesome, thus there is
a double necessity for the inauguration of a system of training that
will eliminate this evil. The majority of working people do not earn
sufficient wages to hire governesses for their children,--if they
should quit work and attempt the task for themselves the children
would suffer for bread, and soon the state would be called upon to
support them as paupers. The state is unable in the present condition
of public sentiment to pass upon the sufficiency of wages from employer
to employee, but it _can_ dictate the policy of the school system.
All selfish or partisan scruples should be eliminated and the subject
should be approached with wisdom and foresight, looking solely to
accomplishing the best results possible.
“My idea is to supplement the term of the public schools, which might
be reduced to four years, by a three years’ term in a public boarding
school in which the pupil could do all the work and produce enough in
vacation to make the school self-sustaining; except the item of the
salaries of the teachers, who would be employed by the state. Make
three years in these schools compulsory on all who are not able to or
do not, select a school of their own choice. Three years’ military
service is demanded of the adults in most of the European states, which
is time almost thrown away so far as the individual is concerned, but a
three years’ service in schools of this kind would be of the greatest
advantage of the child and state as well.
“_How it can be done_
“There is idle land enough to be used for the establishment of such
schools in every township in the South, and with the proper training
in them, the pupils from such institutions would come out and build up
hundreds of places that are now going to waste for lack of attention.
The solution of the race problem cannot be effected by talk alone,
nor by a reckless expenditure of public funds, but if the state is
to undertake the education of its children with good citizenship in
view--thus becoming as it were the _parens patriæ_, then let the job
be undertaken as a parent would be likely to go at it for his own
children. In well regulated communities wayward children are placed in
homes which the wisdom of experience has found to be the best place for
them, and they come out useful citizens. If the youth of the colored
race is incorrigible because of instinct or environment, or both, the
place for them is in some kind of home where they can be protected
against themselves and society, and trained and developed. Let them
have four years of training in the public schools and emerge from these
into ‘a boarding and working school.’ This would be far better than
furnishing a chain gang system for them to go into after bad character
has been formed.
“‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ right here, and is
a cheaper and a more substantial investment. Experience shows that
the vicious become _more vicious_ by confinement in the chain gangs,
and it not infrequently happens that individuals, after having been
degraded by a first sentence, become outcasts and spend from a half
to two-thirds of their lives thereafter in prison. The chain gang
system can hardly be urged in any sense as a reformatory, and from the
frequent returns thereto of the criminal class can be hardly styled as
a first-class preventive of crime. It is simply an institution in which
criminals can be kept out of their usual occupations. While they are so
confined crime is that much decreased, but it opens up again on their
exit.
“The value of the boarding school idea as a supplement to the public
school system is borne out by the statistics of the boarding schools
already established for colored people by private funds. The pupils
turned out by these schools are a credit to the race and the state.
They are good citizens, they accumulate property, they are industrious
and upright. There is not one case in a thousand where you find them on
the court records. They are the genuine ‘salt of the earth,’ so far as
the product of the schools for the freedmen is concerned. The public
schools have been the feeders in a large measure of these private
schools, but only a small percentage of those who leave the public
schools ever reach private schools. Under the plan above suggested all
pupils will spend three years in a private school, or a school of that
nature which will accomplish the same end.
“If the Negro has a greater native tendency to crime than the other
races, as is urged by some, then it is necessary to take more care
in protecting him against it. If his disease is of a more malignant
type than ordinary when it attacks him, then the more heroic should
be the remedy. It is as illogical to apply a system of education to
a child who is not prepared for it as it would be to treat a patient
for appendicitis when he has the eczema. _Results_ are what the state
wants, and if the schools now established are not giving them, the
system should be changed to one that for thirty years has been a
success. The money sent South by Northern charity has not been wasted.
Some people think it has destroyed some farm hands--this may be true,
but it has created larger producers in other lines fully as beneficial
to the state as farming.
“The state is suffering because of its criminal class both white and
black, and it will continue to do so until this cloud is removed, and
in undertaking the education of its citizens, the state is not working
for the farmers especially (as some seem to imply by their arguments on
this subject) but for a higher type of citizenship along _all_ lines.
‘More intelligence in farming, mining, manufacturing, and business’ is
the motto, a general uplift in which all shall be benefited. Neither
the farmer, the miner nor the manufacturer can hope to build up a
serf class for his special benefit. The state has not established the
school system for that purpose, and should the theory once obtain that
it was so established, the handwriting would at once appear on the
wall. The ideal school system is that in which each citizen claims his
part with all the rest. No line should be drawn in the division of the
funds to the schools, and as a fit corollary to this, they should not
be established to foster the financial interests of any one class of
citizens as against another. _Pro bono publico_ is their motto and may
it ever remain so!”
* * * * *
I might add that as a substantial proof of the great success of the new
system of Negro education the Southern states have joined in preparing
a great Negro Exposition, open to Negroes all over the world, in which,
it is expected, a fine showing will be made by members of the race in
almost every field of human endeavor.