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tion in the South, will reveal the unanimity with which we have adopted the system and the liberality with which we are supporting it.

In 1870, 32 per cent. of the children in the Southern states between five and eighteen years of age were in the public schools. In 1880 this had risen to 48 per cent., in 1890 to 60 per cent. and in 1900 to 66 per cent.

In the North Atlantic states the percentage had dropped from 78 in 1870 to 71 in 1900. As the wealth of the South has gradually recovered from the ravages of war the expenditure for public schools per capita of total population has increased. This was $0.68 in 1870, $0.62 in 1880, $0.98 in 1890, $1.16 in 1900, and $1.45 in 1906. The per capita is still low but is increasing steadily.

In proportion to its wealth, the South now compares very favorably with other sections of the country in its expenditures for public schools. The average for the United States in 1904 was 25 cents on every $100; the average of the South was 20 cents.

The average length of the school term in the South has increased from 94 days in 1870 to 115 days in 1906. The average for the United States is 150 days. The status of the elementary school in the South still leaves much to be desired, but every year marks a substantial advance. No man would now dare to seek a public office in the South on a platform of hostility to the public school or of retrenchment in its support; every Southern state now has an efficient, well-organized department of education, every state has its Normal School or schools for the training of its teachers, every city or town of any importance has its graded school open nine months in the year with efficient teachers and skilled super

vision, and every state in the South is now pushing into the remotest country districts the propaganda for better schools, better school houses, better support and better teachers. Not a legislature meets in any Southern state but makes some decided forward step in school legislation. Triumphant hopefulness on the eve of glorious victory is now the attitude of friends of popular education in the South.

It is not necessary to say that our educational problem is complicated by the presence of two races whose new relations to each other have been slow in establishing themselves since the sudden destruction of the old régime. No page in our educational history reflects greater credit on the South than that which tells the story of our work in the education of the colored race. Since 1870 the South from her poverty has contributed not less than $200,000,000 to the education of the negro, and this has been done in spite of the political blunders of "reconstruction" and the misguided zeal of later days which have tended to alienate the negro and his best friends.

The South is prosecuting this work for the negro with even greater willingness and efficiency since the attitude of other sections has gradually changed from a critical superiority to a sympathetic helpfulness.

No sketch of Southern education should close without an expression of gratitude to our friends in the days of darkness-George Peabody and the Peabody Board of Trust. No other $3,000,000 ever accumulated on the earth has done so beneficent a work as has this fund, administered by this Board under the direction of Dr. Barnas Sears and Dr. J. L. M. Curry. It was an immeasurable stimulus in the development of our present city and state school

systems and in the training of our teachers. The George Peabody College for Teachers at Nashville, endowed by the Board as an educational West Point for the whole South, will be the fitting consummation of its beneficent work and the enduring monument to our greatest benefactor.

I can close this paper in no better way than by quoting the educational creed of the South, adopted on a recent 4th of July by the two thousand teachers composing that great educational camp-meeting, the Summer School of the South at Knoxville:

"We, teachers and citizens, students of the Summer School of the South, representatives of every Southern state and of every phase of educational service, assembled to celebrate this day of our national independence, desire to voice our sense of gratitude for the heritage handed down to us by our fathers and to express our sense of responsibility to the generations that are to come. As an expression of our patriotism and of a courage born of the consciousness of power to enlarge the freedom which we this day celebrate, we unite in the following declaration:

"I. That the genius of democracy implies opportunity made universal; opportunity given to every man to live according to his capacity the life of highest meaning to himself and of largest service to humanity.

"II. That the mutual relations of individual and collective interests in our society are such that the ignorance of one individual or of one class becomes a menace to the security of the social whole and a handicap to its every member, while the intelligence and efficiency of each individual contributes to the wealth and opportunity of all; that every child born in the state thus becomes at once a social asset and a social charge; that the education of all the children of all the people into the highest degree of efficiency is the chief problem and the supreme duty of our democracy.

"III. That since more than 80 per cent. of our people live in the country and for generations to come must continue to live under rural conditions, we express our gratitude for the steady progress of the rural school and pledge our continued coöperation with the forces now at work for the increase of local taxation for schools, the lengthening of terms, and the improvement of houses and equipment.

IV. That we commend the policy which seeks to consolidate and centralize schools and to make these consolidated schools vital centres of community life.

"V. That the rural library is an essential instrumentality in overcoming the isolation of rural life and in bringing the child and the community into relation with the larger life of humanity.

"VI. That, to the traditional curriculum which educated the child away from his environment and prepared him for leisure or for the

learned professions, should be added the sciences and the modes of expression which will give him mastery over nature and over himself-this to the end that he may honor labor and find joy in productive activity; that his surroundings may be made his instruments, and that the plot of earth upon which he lives may become at once the fit environment and the fit expression of a worthy life.

"VII. That the consolidated school with its reconstructed curriculum and improved machinery is after all so much dead material which must be quickened by the personality of the teacher. Our progress in material facilities emphasizes the call for educated teachers, and we appeal to our states to meet this need by the more adequate provision and equipment of high schools and normal schools. "VIII. That the fine educational enthusiasm, the passion for service now so manifest throughout the South calls for an adequately trained leadership to direct it into the channels of constructive activity. The greatest educational need of the hour is educational statesmanship and directive capacity in the office of superintendent, supervisor and principal. To supply this need we appeal to our states for a more generous support of our state universities now entering upon a career of larger life and greater efficiency.

"IX. That for the adequate training of leadership the South is in need of an educational West Point. In the Summer School of the South we find a suggestion of the possibilities of a central teachers' college permanently endowed and adequately equipped. Such an institution would supplement and reinforce local endeavor at every point and would perform a function which no state institution can undertake."'

In this creed is a New South of conserved and developed resources, of fertile fields and busy workshops, where personal morality and civic righteousness prevail, and the races dwell together in the unity of mutual service; a South in which achievement and leisure bring to perfect flower the literature and art which are potent in her history and traditions, and whose statesmanship once more takes its proper place in the councils of a reunited Republic.

WILLIAM KNOX TATE,

Principal Memminger Normal School, Charleston, S. C.

CHAPTER IX.

NORMAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.

HOMAS JEFFERSON introduced into the General Assembly of the State of Virginia as early as 1779 a bill looking to the foundation of common schools "for the free training of all free children, male and female, for three years, in reading, writing and arithmetic." This proposed admission of girls preceded by ten years the admission of girls to the common schools of Boston, thus placing the South, represented by Jefferson, as the pioneer in this field of female education.

Far-seeing and patriotic citizens of South Carolina from its earliest settlement pointed out the necessity for public schools and advocated their establishment. "An act for the founding and erecting of a free school for the use of the inhabitants of South Carolina" was passed by the South Carolina Assembly April 8, 1710.

But the South as a whole was slow to follow these and other great examples. The peculiar social conditions at the South and the prejudice against the education of the masses inherited from England by the ruling classes prevented the establishment of any adequate system of free public education for the children before the war. Being slow to make proper provision for schools for the children the South was, of course, still more backward in realizing the importance of training schools for teachers, and no school of that kind was established in the Southern states until long after they were in successful operation in other parts of the United States. There were leaders in the South who clearly saw the necessity

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