The New Education Part 23

He continued, in his enthusiastic mood. "Yes, there is a great future for the South. Its resources make a future possible; but unless those resources are intelligently used, our prosperity will not go very deep, or reach very far. We must take the people with us."

This man's view typifies the educational vision that is sweeping over the South. "We must take the people with us," he said. There is nothing novel in the idea; but coming as it did from a representative business man, it carried weight and conviction.

Another thing he said in the same connection enforced his argument.

"They talk about the race problem in the South," he said. "That is, the old generation does. We younger men are not so much concerned about the race problem as we are concerned about efficiency in industry and in agriculture. The races are here to stay; we cannot change that if we would. Meanwhile, all of us, whites as well as blacks, are slovenly in our farming, indifferent in our business transactions, and hopelessly behind in our methods of conducting affairs. From top to bottom we need trained intelligence. That, more than anything else, will solve the South's problems."

II Finding the Way

The step is a short one from a vision of trained intelligence to a demand for effective education. Throughout the South, the will to progress is everywhere in evidence, and with unerring accuracy, one community after another is turning to this as the way.

There is no Southern city in which the agitation for increased educational activity is not being pushed with vigor and intensity. On all hands there appears the result of a conviction that the only means by which the effectiveness of the South can be maintained and increased, lie along the path of increased educational opportunities. The South, if it is to fulfill the greatness of its promise, must remodel its educational system in the interests of a larger South, as the West has remodeled its educational system in the interest of a larger West. The notable State universities of the Middle and Far West, the Normal Schools, the prevalent system of education, have been felt, and are now being felt, in the progressive, efficient, Western population. Nothing less than a generally educated public could have made the West in the brief years that have elapsed since it was a wilderness. Nothing save general education can make the resources of the South yield up their greatest advantage to the Southern people.

The time for traditional formalism has pa.s.sed in the South, as it has pa.s.sed in every other progressive community. Whatever the needs of the community may be, those needs must be met through some form of public education. In the South the most pressing need appears in the demand for intelligent farming. For decades the tenant farmers, largely negroes, cultivated their farms as their fathers had cultivated. They raised cotton because the raising of cotton offered the path of least resistance. Farm animals were scarce, because the farm animals only came with surplus cash, and surplus cash was scarce indeed in districts where the tenant farmers lived through the year on the credit obtained from the prospective cotton crops. There was little corn raised, because the people did not understand the need for raising corn, nor did they realize the financial possibilities of the Southern corn crop. In a word, the agricultural South lacked the knowledge which modern scientific agriculture has brought.

The past generation has seen a revolution in Southern agriculture, because of the revolution which has occurred in Southern agricultural education. Led by the experiment stations and universities, the South has undertaken to reorganize its system of living from the land.

The Atlanta banker fully realized the need for culture. He was himself a cultured gentleman; but he also saw that before the people of the South could have culture, they must have an economic system directed with sufficient intelligence to supply the necessaries of life, which must always be taken for granted before the possibilities of culture are realized. Cultural education comes after, and not before, education for intelligent and direct vocational activity.

During the educational revolution of the past twenty-five years, no section of the country has thrown itself into the foreground of educational progress with more vigor and with greater earnestness and zeal than that displayed in the South. In certain directions the South has proved a leader in the inauguration and administration of new activities. In other directions the Southern States have followed actively and energetically.

A traveler through the New South stumbles unavoidably upon countless ill.u.s.trations of the part which modern education is playing in Southern life. Individuals, families, communities, are being re-made by the new education.

III Jem's Father

Jem wasn't a good boy, but he was interested in his school. He was one of those fortunate boys who lived in a county that had been possessed by the corn club idea, and the corn club was the thing which had given Jem his school interest.

Jem never took to studies. Each year he had told his mother that "there weren't no use in goin' back to that there school again." Persistently she had sent him back, until one year when Jem found a reason for going.

A new teacher came to Jem's school--a young man fresh from normal school, full of enthusiasm, energy, and new ideas. The boys felt from the start that he was their friend, and before many weeks had elapsed, the community began to feel his presence. This new teacher was particularly enthusiastic over the "club idea." "We must get the boys and girls doing something together" he kept saying to his cla.s.ses.

The year wore on, but interest in the school did not flag, because all through the winter months there were entertainments, parents' meetings, literary meetings, spelling bees, reading hours, and other evening activities. In fact, the time came when there was a light in the school-house three or four nights in each week.

Toward spring the new teacher began to push the "club idea." He started with the boys, and, as luck would have it, picked out Jem. "Jem," he said one day, "I want you to stay after school, I want to speak to you a minute." Jem stayed, not knowing exactly what was coming. When the rest of the pupils had tumbled out of the school door, and disappeared along the muddy road, the teacher and Jem sat down together.

"Jem," said the teacher, "we ought to have a corn club in this school."

Jem looked up doggedly, but gave no sign of interest or enthusiasm.

"You see," the teacher said, "it's this way. Farming isn't all that it might be around here. People raise things the way they have always been raised. Our county superintendent has an idea. He proposes to teach the farmers in this county how to raise corn."

Jem looked skeptical. "Are you to do the teaching?" he asked.

"No," was the answer, "you are."

"I?" said Jem.

"Yes," said the teacher, "you and the other boys in the school."

Jem scratched his head. "I ain't never taught no one nothing in my life," he commented.

"It's this way," the teacher went on. "Up at Was.h.i.+ngton and out at the State College they have been doing a lot of thinking and working with corn. They found, for instance, that if you pick seed corn carefully, you get a better crop than if you are careless in seed selection. They have also found that if you follow certain rules about planting and cultivation you get a better crop. For years the men at the Experiment Station and at Was.h.i.+ngton talked about these things in Farmers'

Bulletins. They established experiment farms, and demonstration farms, too. Lately they have been doing something more, and something which I think is better than anything so far--they have decided to have the boys teach their fathers how to raise corn."

"Do you mean to say," asked Jem, "that I could teach Dad anything about corn-raisin'?"

"Yes," said the teacher, "you can, and, what is more, you will, won't you?"

"Well," said Jem, "I dunno."

"Here is what we have to do," said the teacher. "This year the county superintendent is going to offer prizes for the boy with the best acre of corn. He sends out rules. You have to plough a certain way, plant a certain way, and cultivate a certain way. If you do not follow the rules you are not allowed to stay in the contest. Now I'll tell you what I want to do. The boys in this school are as smart, if not smarter, than the boys in any other school in the country; so I guess it is up to us to get some of those prizes right here at home."

Jem was visibly interested. "Money prizes?" he asked.

"Yes, money prizes," said the teacher. "The first prize will be fifty dollars."

Jem's eyes opened wide. "I'm in for that," he said with conviction.

That night, when Jem sat down to supper, he broached the corn proposition to his father.

"Shucks," his father exclaimed. "You raise an acre of corn? Why you wouldn't get twenty-five bushels!"

"Twenty-five," said Jem, contemptuously. "I'd get a hundred."

"A hundred," said his father. "Here, look here, boy, I have been farming this land for thirty odd years, and the best I ever done on an acre of corn was seventy bushels. I'll tell you what, though," he added conclusively, "this here talk about corn clubs makes me tired. You and your hundred bushels! I was looking over the paper when it came in this noon, and I saw a piece about a chap over by Southport with over a hundred bushels to the acre. Do you know what I'm goin' to do tonight?

I'm goin' to write that editor a letter, and tell him that any paper that publishes lies like that ain't fit for my family to see. This year's subscription ain't run out, but they don't need to send me the rest. I'll get a paper somewhere else."

Despite home opposition, Jem persisted and prevailed. His father gave him an acre grudgingly, but it was a good acre. And when, following the rules which he and the other boys who had agreed to enter the contest read over with the teacher, he disked his land and ploughed his narrow, deep furrows, he listened, not without misgivings, to the remarks which his elder brother pa.s.sed at his expense.

"Say, Jem," this brother remarked, "you have spent three times as much time on that acre as any acre of corn raised in this county was ever worth. Are you diggin' graves for 'possums?"

When, later in the season, Jem cultivated with persistent regularity, he was forced to listen to similar comments. Jem wasn't good at repartee; so he said nothing; but, sustained by the encouragement of the new teacher, who came to see his acre every week, Jem followed the rules to the letter.

He had his reward at harvest time. When the ears first set it became apparent that Jem had a good crop. As they developed, the goodness of the crop became more manifest; but when the acre had been harvested, put through the sh.e.l.ler and bagged, and Jem had stowed in his pocket a certificate of "ninety-six bushels on one acre," it was time for some explanations.

"Jem," said his father at the supper table on the evening of that memorable day when Jem's corn went through the sh.e.l.ler, and his certificate showed ninety-six bushels, "I wrote a letter to that editor, and sent him next year's subscription in advance."

IV Club Life Militant

The experience of Jem's father has been duplicated many times by parents and communities during the past ten years of club growth in the South.

The school, working through the children, has educated fathers, mothers, villages, and whole counties.

All of the agencies of government,--local, State, and national,--have cooperated to make the children's clubs one of the leading agencies in developing that trained intelligence which is so great an a.s.set in the prosperity of any community. Thanks to the tireless efforts of men like William H. Smith, the children's clubs have become one of the most aggressive factors in educating rural communities to higher standards of efficiency. There are many kinds of clubs--corn clubs, potato clubs, tomato clubs, pig clubs. Anything which the children can raise is a legitimate object of club activity. The work in the South started with corn clubs.

The corn-club idea in Mississippi grew out of an educational experience of Professor William H. Smith.[24] For years Professor Smith had taught, in a mildly progressive way, the time-honored subjects which were included in the study-course of the rural school. Two of Professor Smith's students, a boy of twenty and a girl of seventeen, left school; and they left, as the boy told Professor Smith very frankly, because the school taught them very little that would be of use later on in the work which they would be called upon to do. This boy expected to grow cotton; the girl expected to marry the boy, manage his domestic affairs and attend to the many duties which fall to the lot of women on a farm.