Report of the Commissioner of Education Made to the Secretary of the Interior for the Year ... with Accompanying Papers

The management of these schools is not in many cases what it should be. The men charged with it are not always wisely selected. They are inexperienced and have only a very imperfect knowledge of what constitutes a good school and of the functions and duty of trustees. They are easily biased by persuasion of friends and neighborhoods in the selection of teachers and disposed to interfere unwisely in the management of the schools.

Such warnings from an educator so competent and experienced in school work were timely, not only for the mission, but in the administration of the public schools in the South for this race. A great deal of the inefficiency complained of in the common schools for colored youth in all the Southern States is due to a mistaken policy by public boards of education in giving their administration entirely into the hands of the colored members. While it would seem that this policy was dictated, as it doubtless often is, by a desire to treat the colored population fairly, yet the practical result is the same—almost inevitably plunging the entire administration of the colored school department into the vortex of petty jealousies and exasperating contentions that so largely interfere with the proper influence of their churches. It would seem to be the duty of such boards, while giving the colored race a fair representation through their wisest and best men and women, to insist that the schools shall not fall under the control of a group of contentious preachers or politicians, but that the children and youth should be defended, often against the inexperience and even more destructive defects that still characterize the administrative work of this people.

Attention was also called to the fact that in all these schools it should be impressed on the pupils that every year there should be sent forth an increasing number of young people who in some useful way could be missionaries of a true American civilization to their own families and neighborhoods, which often at great sacrifices and with greater expectations had given to their young what were to them extraordinary opportunities for superior training and culture. It was also shown that the 5,000 students in all these schools, one-half of whom were in the professional classes, were being instructed at a sum many hundred dollars less than the one city of Baltimore paid its teachers in either one of its high or large grammar schools.

The superintendent answers the question of the Eastern contributors whether the chief responsibility of superintendency and management in these schools should be placed upon the colored public teacher, by a decided "No." With all the encouraging signs in the material and other development of this people he declares that this policy would surely result in a rapid retrograde movement and lead to the ultimate ruin of the schools. The weak point of the colored people, even in the better educated class, is the lack of executive capacity and the danger from perpetual jealousy and contention fatal to the success of educational affairs. He returns to his former topic concerning the conditions of the masses of the freedmen after thirty years of liberty and a quarter of a century of American citizenship. It would seem that no argument was required on this point to any fair-minded educator after a careful observation of the entire field. It was always necessary to meet the persistent demand of a growing party among the colored people that this great amount of school property and appliances should be committed altogether to themselves. But here is the problem which, before another thirty years have passed, will tax the seamanship of these great educational bodies to keep this splendid fleet of educational craft afloat in the open sea. The State industrial and normal colleges will avoid this peril, from the fact that the entire public school system is under the superintendence of State and local boards which will be largely composed of white persons in all these States of the South.

But all these matters of administration fall into comparative insignificance before the previous question of the colored support of this sphere of education by

the Baptist Church. This church had ten years ago a colored membership of 1,400,000, more than one-third of the entire number of the denomination in the United States. In the fifteen years of the service of Dr. McVicker as corresponding secretary the schools had increased from 8 to 34, from 38 teachers to 200, from an attendance of 1,191 to 5,000 or 6,000 pupils. Thirty-five substantial buildings had been reared and a school property of $1,000,000 placed on the ground. The schools had greatly improved in quality and the cost of their maintenance had accordingly increased. At least 7 of the larger schools put in an immediate demand for a stronger corps of instruction. In five years $150,000 would be needed for the annual expenditure. The powerful competition of the schools of other churches would leave the schools of this sect in the background when left to the test of respective merits. The Home Mission Society has already found it impossible to meet this demand except by the sacrifice of important missionary and educational enterprises.

The society is steadily falling behind in pecuniary affairs. A reduction of 40 or 50 per cent in missionary appropriations should be made, if the schools in the South are kept up. It is safe only to appropriate $50,000 a year for this important work. A permanent fund of $1,000,000 is imperatively needed, as the present expenditure requires the income of $2,000,000 at 5 per cent interest. In view of these facts, Superintendent McVicker urges the impossibility of supporting schools of any save the superior class. The training of leaders should be the chief if not the only work of the schools of the society. The graduates should be not only prepared as teachers and ministers, but trained for leadership in every department of life, industrial, social, civil, private, and public. All theological work should be confined to the school at Richmond, Va. Only a limited number of schools should be allowed to do proper college work, seven at the most, and not more than two schools be permitted to give a full professional training for which a normal diploma should be granted. A careful system of examination and inspection should be inaugurated in all the schools and the quality as well as quantity of the teaching force should be strictly considered. A large portion of the report deals with a bad condition of affairs in one of the institutions in Texas, and the burning by incendiary fires of several of their school buildings in Arkansas, Texas, and South Carolina.

In 1895 the Baptist church had made a hopeful advance toward the improvement of the school work in the appointment of an advisory committee in connection with the schools for colored people in the South supported by the Home Mission Society. The committee was to be only advisory, with no general or educational authority, but to have access to all schools and invited to present the results of their investigation to the two Home Mission Boards and the acting authorities of the institutions. This was a favorable movement toward what must inevitably come, the practical union and cooperation for all general purposes of the great educational missionary bodies, especially of the Protestant evangelical churches in both sections of the Union. Indeed, the practical beginning of this outward advancement toward some union of the sort is to-day evident to all observers competent to hold in one view the past experience and the inevitable burden that will fall upon these denominations if they continue the purely sectarian policy of expansion that has already brought the richest and most zealous of them to the brink of a financial crisis.

The amount expended in 1895 for schools was $117,480.50, with a total expenditure of $134,554.83. There were 232 teachers, of whom 130 were colored, with 4,358 students. The report for 1897 shows a singular condition of affairs in the work of schooling the colored race in the South. The 29 schools were supported at an expense of $108,869.75. A gratifying feature in the case was the fact that the colored people, represented by the 5,000 students, supplied for teachers $20,137.32, and the board, $64,079.57. This sum, increased by other gifts to $22,591.31, made

a total of $106,808.20. There seemed yet to be no response to the call for the general endowment, regarded essential to the continued existence of the higher schools, although the secondary seminaries were aided by special gifts.

Beside this large expenditure now during forty years in behalf of the colored children and youth in the South by the churches of every sect in the Northern States, there has been a large amount of money contributed and a great deal of good work done by personal and private effort. Indeed, one of the most philanthropic divisions of the religious public, including the Unitarian and Universalist denominations, and perhaps the larger bodies of the Christian connection may be added, with a great number of semireligious benevolent associations, has never followed the example of other sects in establishing schools, although in proportion to its numbers and means it is probable that as much has been contributed, especially to Hampton, Tuskegee, and a variety of smaller enterprises, as by the great organized educational and missionary boards. Numbers of faithful men and devoted women, some of the best in the land, have through all these years kept alive, in the more destitute districts of the Southern States, schools, missions, churches, along with an amount of private charity which has done much to supplement the public efforts of the communities to which their beneficence has been directed.

Here ends the account of the special movement which for the past forty years has wrought every year in a growing connection with the greater labors of the Southern people, directly and indirectly, in building their first general system of common schools. It was essential to the truth of history and to a fair estimation of the interest by the North and the nation in the civilization and education of millions of the new colored citizenship that this should be put in permanent record. All this has been done by these educational boards in a spirit as praiseworthy as has often been found in the similar work of the Christian church in any age or land; and every year it has been better appreciated by the superior class in the States which have been the great field of their operation. Indeed, the time has already passed when this remarkable movement in behalf of the colored people is regarded with disparagement by any considerable class of people anywhere. There will still be inevitable differences of opinion concerning the best methods of educating a people in a condition so peculiar. It may be that at times and in special places the school instruction has been too far above the capacity of the majority of pupils to be thoroughly or very largely incorporated into the character and living, especially of large numbers who were too young and remained too short a time in school to be permanently affected thereby. But in the great rivalry of the educational agencies now at work all methods have an opportunity of being tested, and a general drawing together of the superior educational workers in these schools will inevitably bring to the front the most valuable elements and forces developed by the entire movement. The churches have still a great work before them; first of all, "to settle up" all their differences which refer to the past, especially those connected with the period of sectarian contention and sectional hostility, through the twenty years from 1860 to 1880. There is certainly, ahead, in the opening century, a vast field of effort among the destitute places of our own population at home and in our new possessions around the world in which the united energies of the National Government, the churches, and the whole people may be brought to bear for the extirpation of the illiteracy of the millions who bear the name of American citizen or aspire to the possession of American citizenship. And when the people are lifted above the deplorable strife of partisan politics and sectarian ecclesiasticism it may be revealed to them that there is no grander work than the training of our twenty millions still involved in the great national slough of illiteracy toward the broad upland of that American citizenship which is the loftiest position yet offered to a whole people in the history of mankind.

CHAPTER VI.

LAWS RELATING TO TEMPERANCE INSTRUCTION.

A COMPILATION OF THE LAWS OF THE SEVERAL STATES AND TERRITORIES RELATING TO COMPULSORY INSTRUCTION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN PHYSIOLOGY AND HYGIENE, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOLIC DRINKS AND NARCOTICS UPON THE HUMAN SYSTEM.

ALABAMA.

[From General Public School Laws of Alabama, 1901.]

3546. Duties of superintendent of education.—The duties of superintendent of education shall be as follows: *

3. He shall make provision for instructing all pupils in all schools and colleges supported, in whole or in part, by public money, or under State control, in hygiene and physiology, with special reference to the effects of alcoholic drinks, stimulants, and narcotics upon the human system. (Page 6.)

3578. Instruction as to the nature of alcoholic drinks and narcotics.--Every teacher shall give instruction as to the nature of alcoholic drinks and narcotics and their effects upon the human system, and such subject shall be taught as regularly as any other in the public schools, and in every grade thereof. (Page 20.)

ALASKA.

See District of Columbia.

ARIZONA.

[From Public School Laws of Arizona, 1901.]

AN ACT to revise and codify the laws of Arizona, approved March 15, 1901, title 17: Education. SEC. 13. Every applicant for a first-grade Territorial certificate must be examined by written and oral questions in algebra, geography, history and civics, physiology, hygiene, with special reference to the nature and the effects of alcoholic drinks and other narcotics and stimulants upon the human system, * * *. (Page 8.)

SEC. 85. Instruction must be given in the following branches, viz: Reading, writing, orthography, arithmetic, geography, grammar, history of the United States, elements of physiology, hygiene, including the nature of alcoholic drinks and narcotics and special instruction as to their effect upon the human system, * * *. (Page 31.)

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Report of the Commissioner of Education Made to the Secretary of ..., Volumen1