given much systematic effort to book study in the usual sense. When
interruptions come such as we have just had, taking you away from your
regular routine work and study, and the preparation of routine lessons
is interrupted, the first thought to some may be that this time is
lost, in so far as it relates to education in the ordinary sense; that
it is so much time taken away from that part of one's life that should
be devoted to acquiring education. I suppose that during the last few
days the questions have come to many of you: "What are we gaining? What
are we getting from the irregularity that has characterized the school
grounds within the last week, that will in any degree compensate for
the amount of book study that we have lost?"
To my mind I do not believe that you have lost anything by the
interruption. On the other hand, I am convinced that you have got the
best kind of education. I do not mean to say that we can depend upon
it for all time to come for systematic training of the mind, but so far
as real education, so far as development of the mind and heart and body
are concerned, I do not believe that a single student has lost anything
by the irregularity of the last week or more.
You have gained in this respect: in preparing for the reception and
entertainment of the President of the United States and his Cabinet,
and the distinguished persons who accompanied the party, you have had
to do an amount of original thinking which you, perhaps, have never had
to do before in your lives. You have been compelled to think; you have
been compelled to put more than your bodily strength into what you have
been doing. You could not have made the magnificent exhibition of our
work which you have made if you had not been compelled to do original
thinking and execution. Most of you never saw such an exhibition
before; I never did. Those of you who had to construct floats that
would illustrate our agricultural work and our mechanical and academic
work, had to put a certain amount of original thought into the planning
of these floats, in order to make them show the work to the best
advantage; and two-thirds of you--yes, practically all of you--had
never seen anything of the kind before. For this reason it was a matter
that had to be thought out by you and planned out by you, and then put
into visible shape.
Now compare that kind of education with the mere committing to memory
of certain rules, or something which some one else thought out and
executed a thousand years ago perhaps--and that is what a large part
of our education really is. Education in the usual sense of the word
is the mere committing to memory of something which has been known
before us. Now during the last ten days we have had to solve problems
of our own, not problems and puzzles that some one else originated
for us. I do not believe that there is a person connected with the
institution who is not stronger in mind, who is not more self-confident
and self-reliant, so far as the qualities relate to what he is able
to do with his mind or his hands, than he was ten or twelve days ago.
There is the benefit that came to all of us. It put us to thinking and
planning; it brought us in to contact with things that are out of the
ordinary; and there is no education that surpasses this. I see more and
more every year that the world is to be brought to the study of men
and of things, rather than to the study of mere books. You will find
more and more as the years go by, that people will gradually lay aside
books, and study the nature of man in a way they have never done as
yet. I tell you, then, that in this interruption of the regular school
work you have not lost anything:--you have gained; you have had your
minds awakened, your faculties strengthened, and your hands guided.
I do not wish to speak of this matter egotistically, but it is true
that I have heard a great many persons from elsewhere mention the
pleasure which they have received in meeting Tuskegee students, because
when they come in contact with a student who has been here, they are
impressed with the fact that he or she does not seem to be dead or
sleepy. They say that when they meet a Tuskegee boy or girl they find a
person who has had contact with real life. The education that you have
been getting during the last few days, you will find, as the years go
by, has been of a kind that will serve you in good stead all through
your lives.
Just in proportion as we learn to execute something, to put our
education into tangible form--as we have been doing during the last
few days--in just the same proportion will we find ourselves of value
as individuals and as a race. Those people who came here to visit us
knew perfectly well that we could commit to memory certain lines of
poetry, they knew we were able to solve certain problems in algebra
and geometry, they understood that we could learn certain rules in
chemistry and agriculture; but what interested them most was to see us
put into visible form the results of our education. Just in proportion
as an individual is able to do that, he is of value to the world. That
is the object of the work which we are trying to do here. We are trying
to turn out men and women who are able to do something that the world
wants done, that the world needs to have done. Just in proportion as
you can comply with that demand you will find that there is a place for
you--there is going to be standing room. By the training we are giving
you here we are preparing you for a place in the world. We are going to
train you so that when you get to that place, if you fail in it, the
failure will not be our fault.
It is a great satisfaction to have connected with a race men and women
who are able to do something, not merely to talk about doing it, not
merely to theorize about doing it, but actually to do something that
makes the world better to live in, something that enhances the comforts
and conveniences of life. I had a good example of this last week. I
wanted something done in my office which required a practical knowledge
of electricity. It was a great satisfaction when I called upon one
of the teachers, to have him do the work in a careful, praiseworthy
manner. It is very well to talk or lecture about electricity, but it
is better to be able to do something of value with one's knowledge of
electricity.
And so, as you go on, increasing your ability to do things of value,
you will find that the problem which often now-a-days looks more and
more difficult of solution will gradually become easier. One of the
Cabinet members who were here a few days ago said, after witnessing the
exhibition which you made here, that the islands which this country
had taken into its possession during the recent war are soon going to
require the service of every man and woman we can turn out from this
institution. You will find it true, not only in this country but in
other countries, that the demand will be more and more for people who
can do something. Just in proportion as we can, as a race, get the
reputation which I spoke to you about a few days ago, you will find
there will be places for us. Regardless of colour or condition, the
world is going to give the places of trust and remuneration to the men
and women who can do a certain thing as well as anybody else or better.
This is the whole problem. Shall we prepare ourselves to do something
as well as anybody else or better? Just in proportion as we do this,
you will find that nothing under the sun will keep us back.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This talk was given soon after the visit of President McKinley to
Tuskegee Institute in the fall of 1898.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING RELIABLE.
I am going to call your attention this evening to a tendency of the
people of our race which I had occasion to notice in the course of a
visit recently made to certain portions of North Carolina and South
Carolina.
I find that with persons who are the employers or who might be the
employers of numbers of our people, there is a very general impression
that as a race we lack steadiness--that we lack steadiness as
labourers. Now you may say that this is not true, and you may cite any
number of instances to show that we are not unreliable in that respect;
whether it is true or not, the results are the same;--it works against
us in the matter of securing paying employment.
Almost without exception, in talking with persons who are in a position
to employ us, or who have been employing us, or who are thinking of
employing us, I have found that this objection has been very largely in
their minds,--that we cannot be depended upon, that we are unsteady
and unreliable in matters of labour. I am speaking, of course, of
that class of people of our race who depend mainly upon a day's
work--working by the day, as we call it--for their living. These men
with whom I talked gave several illustrations of this tendency. In the
first place, I think they mentioned, without exception, this fact--that
if the coloured people are employed in a factory, they work well and
steadily for a few days, say until Saturday night comes, and they are
paid their week's wages. Then they cannot be depended upon to put in an
appearance the following Monday morning.
That special criticism was made without exception. The coloured people,
these men said, would work earnestly, and give good satisfaction until
they got a little money ahead, and got food enough assured to last them
two or three weeks; then they would give up the job, or simply remain
away from the factory until others had been put in their places. That
was one of the statements that was made to me over and over again.
People also mentioned to me as an unfavourable tendency the inclination
which the people of our race have to go on excursions. They said that
if an excursion were going to Wilmington or Greensboro, or Charleston,
and the coloured people had a little money on hand, you could not
depend on their going to work instead of going on the excursion; that
people would say that they must go on this or that excursion, and that
nothing should stop them. A great many people lose employment and money
because of this tendency to go on excursions.
Another thing that was mentioned to me was the Sunday dinners. Our
people are too likely to starve all through the week, and then on
Sunday invite all the neighbours to come in and eat up what they have
made through the week. People say that we take our week's earnings
on Saturday night, and go to the market and spend it all, and then
invite all of our kindred and neighbours to come in on Sunday to have
a great party. Then by Monday morning we have made ourselves so ill by
overeating that we are unfit for work. This was given as one of the
reasons which cause people to complain of our race for unsteadiness.
Then there was complaint of a general lack of perseverance, of an
unwillingness to be steady, to put money into the bank, to begin at
the bottom and gradually work toward the top. You can easily see some
of the results of such a reputation as this. I have noticed some of
the results in many of the places where our people have been securing
paying employment. One result is a general distrust of the entire race
in matters pertaining to industry. Another is that people are not going
to employ persons on whom they cannot depend, to fill responsible
positions. Employers are not likely to employ for responsible positions
persons who are likely to go away unexpectedly on excursions.
Another result is loss of money. You will find many of our people
in poverty simply because, in so large a measure, we have got this
reputation of being unsteady and unreliable. Wherever our people are
not getting regular, paying employment, it is largely on account
of these things of which I have been speaking; and gradually the
opportunities for employment are slipping into the hands of the people
of other races. You can easily understand that where people are not
getting steady employment--but a job this week and a job next week, and
perhaps nothing the week after--it is impossible for them to put money
in the bank, impossible to acquire homes and property, and to settle
down as reliable, prosperous citizens.
Now, how are we going to change all these things? I do not see any
hope unless we can depend upon you to change them, you young men and
young women who are being educated in institutions of learning. It
rests largely with you to change public sentiment among our people in
all these directions, to a point where we shall feel that we must be
as reliable and as responsible as it is possible for the people of any
other race to be. But in order to do this it is necessary for you to
learn how to control yourselves in these respects. Young men come here
and want to work at this industry or that, for a while, and then get
tired and want to change to something else. Some come with a strong
determination to work, and stay until something happens that is not
quite pleasant, and then they want to leave and go to some other school
or go back home. Now we cannot make the leaders and the examples of
our people that we should make, if we are going to be guilty of these
same weaknesses in these institutions. Let each of you take control of
himself or herself, and determine that whatever you plan to be you are
going to be; you are going to keep driving away, pegging away, moving
on and on each hour, each day, until you have accomplished the purpose
for which you came here.
Such are the persons, the men and women, that the world is looking for.
These are the men and women we want to send to North Carolina and South
Carolina, to Georgia, to Mississippi, and about in our own State of
Alabama, to reach hundreds and thousands of our people, and to bring
about such a sentiment that these people can control themselves in the
directions I have mentioned and become steady and reliable along all
the avenues of industry.
I have spoken very plainly about these things, because I believe that
they are matters to which as a race we ought to give more attention.
No race can thrive and prosper and grow strong if it is living on the
outer edges of the industrial world, is jumping here and there after a
job that somebody else has given up. At the risk of repeating myself,
I say that we must give attention to this matter,--we must be more
trustworthy and more reliable in matters of labour. As you go home,
and go into your churches, your schools and your families, preach,
teach and talk from day to day the doctrine that our people must become
steady and reliable, must become worthy of confidence in all their
occupations.
I am sorry to say that it is too often true of young people that they
overlook these matters in their conversation. We are always ready to
talk about Mars and Jupiter, about the sun and moon, and about things
under the earth and over the earth--in fact about everything except
these little matters that have so much to do with our real living.
Now if we cannot put a spirit of determination into you to go out and
change public sentiment, then the future for us as a race is not very
bright.
But I have faith in you to believe that you are going to set a high
standard for yourselves in all these matters, and that if you can stay
here two, four, five years, some of you will control yourselves in all
these respects, and will bring yourselves to be examples of what we
hope and expect the people whom you are going to teach are to become.
If you will do this you will find that in a few years there will be a
decided change for the better in the things of which I have spoken, a
change in regard to these matters that will make us as a race firmer
and stronger in these important directions.
THE HIGHEST EDUCATION
It may seem to some of you that I am continually talking to you about
education--the right kind of education, how to get an education, and
such kindred subjects--but surely no subject could be more pertinent,
since the object for which you all are here is to get an education; and
if you are to do this, you wish to get the best kind possible.
You will understand, then, I am sure, if I speak often about this,
or refer to the subject frequently, that it is because I am very
anxious that all of you go out from here with a definite and correct
idea of what is meant by education, of what an education is meant to
accomplish, what it may be expected to do for one.
We are very apt to get the idea that education means the memorizing
of a number of dates, of being able to state when a certain battle
took place, of being able to recall with accuracy this event or that
event. We are likely to get the impression that education consists in
being able to commit to memory a certain number of rules in grammar,
a certain number of rules in arithmetic, and in being able to locate
correctly on the earth's surface this mountain or that river, and to
name this lake and that gulf.
Now I do not mean to disparage the value of this kind of training,
because among the things that education should do for us is to give us
strong, orderly and well developed minds. I do not wish to have you
get the idea that I undervalue or overlook the strengthening of the
mind. If there is one person more than another who is to be pitied, it
is the individual who is all heart and no head. You will see numbers
of persons going through the world whose hearts are full of good
things--running over with the wish to do something to make somebody
better, or the desire to make somebody happier--but they have made the
sad mistake of being absolutely without development of mind to go with
this willingness of heart. We want development of mind and we want
strengthening of the mind.
I have often said to you that one of the best things that education can
do for an individual is to teach that individual to get hold of what
he wants, rather than to teach him how to commit to memory a number
of facts in history or a number of names in geography. I wish you to
feel that we can give you here orderliness of mind--I mean a trained
mind--that will enable you to find dates in history or to put your
finger on names in geography when you want them. I wish to give you
an education that will enable you to construct rules in grammar and
arithmetic for yourselves. That is the highest kind of training.
But, after all, this kind of thing is not the end of education. What,
then, do we mean by education? I would say that education is meant to
give us an idea of truth. Whatever we get out of text books, whatever
we get out of industry, whatever we get here and there from any
sources, if we do not get the idea of truth at the end, we do not get
education. I do not care how much you get out of history, or geography,
or algebra, or literature, I do not care how much you have got out of
all your text books:--unless you have got truth, you have failed in
your purpose to be educated. Unless you get the idea of truth so pure
that you cannot be false in anything, your education is a failure.
Then education is meant to make us just in our dealings with our fellow
men. The man or woman who has learned to be absolutely just, so far as
he can interpret, has, in that degree, an education, is to that degree
an educated man or woman. Education is meant to make us change for the
better, to make us more thoughtful, to make us so broad that we will
not seek to help one man because he belongs to this race or that race
of people, and seek to hinder another man because he does not belong to
this race or that race of people.
Education in the broadest and truest sense will make an individual
seek to help all people, regardless of race, regardless of colour,
regardless of condition. And you will find that the person who is most
truly educated is the one who is going to be kindest, and is going to
act in the gentlest manner toward persons who are unfortunate, toward
the race or the individual that is most despised. The highly educated
person is the one who is the most considerate of those individuals
who are less fortunate. I hope that when you go out from here, and
meet persons who are afflicted by poverty, whether of mind or body,
or persons who are unfortunate in any way, that you will show your
education by being just as kind and just as considerate toward those
persons as it is possible for you to be. That is the way to test a
person with education. You may see ignorant persons, who, perhaps,
think themselves educated, going about the street, who, when they meet
an individual who is unfortunate--lame, or with a defect of body, mind
or speech--are inclined to laugh at and make sport of that individual.
But the highly educated person, the one who is really cultivated, is
gentle and sympathetic to everyone.
Education is meant to make us absolutely honest in dealing with our
fellows. I don't care how much arithmetic we have, or how many cities
we can locate;--it all is useless unless we have an education that
makes us absolutely honest.
Education is meant to make us give satisfaction, and to get
satisfaction out of giving it. It is meant to make us get happiness out
of service for our fellows. And until we get to the point where we can
get happiness and supreme satisfaction out of helping our fellows, we
are not truly educated. Education is meant to make us generous. In this
connection let me say that I very much hope that when you go out from
here you will show that you have learned this lesson of being generous
in all charitable objects, in the support of your churches, your Sunday
schools, your hospitals, and in being generous in giving help to the
poor.
I hope, for instance, that a large proportion of you--in fact all
of you--will make it a practice to give something yearly to this
institution. If you cannot give but twenty-five cents, fifty cents, or
a dollar a year, I hope you will put it down as a thing that you will
not forget, to give something to this institution every year. We want
to show to our friends who have done so much for us, who have supported
this school so generously, how much interest we take in the institution
that has given us so nearly all that we possess. I hope that every
senior, in particular, will keep this in mind. I am glad to say that
we have many graduates who send us such sums, even if small, and one
graduate who for the last eight or ten years has sent us ten dollars
annually. I hope a number of you in the senior class that I see before
me will do the same thing.
Education is meant to make us appreciate the things that are beautiful
in nature. A person is never educated until he is able to go into the
swamps and woods and see something that is beautiful in the trees
and shrubs there, is able to see something beautiful in the grass
and flowers that surround him, is, in short, able to see something
beautiful, elevating and inspiring in everything that God has created.
Not only should education enable us to see the beauty in these objects
which God has put about us, but it is meant to influence us to bring
beautiful objects about us. I hope that each one of you, after you
graduate, will surround himself at home with what is beautiful,
inspiring and elevating. I do not believe that any person is educated
so long as he lives in a dirty, miserable shanty. I do not believe
that any person is educated until he has learned to want to live in
a clean room made attractive with pictures and books, and with such
surroundings as are elevating.
In a word, I wish to say again, that education is meant to give us that
culture, that refinement, that taste which will make us deal truthfully
with our fellow men, and will make us see what is beautiful, elevating
and inspiring in what God has created. I want you to bear in mind that
your text books, with all their contents, are not an end, but a means
to an end, a means to help us get the highest, the best, the purest and
the most beautiful things out of life.
UNIMPROVED OPPORTUNITIES
Several of the things which I shall say to you to-night may not sound
very agreeable or encouraging to many of you, yet I think you will
agree with me that they are facts that cannot be denied.