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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 41. The Negro School - 2. Education in American Thought and Life
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Chapter 41. The Negro School 883
philosophy . . . the whole philosophic problem of the origin, nature, and function
of knowledge is a live issue in education, not just a problem for exercise of intel-
lectual dialectic gymnastics.®
At least since the time of Horace Mann, Americans have been leading
in the development of pedagogical thinking. The marriage between phi-
losophy and pedagogy in Dewey and his followers has given America the
most perfected educational theory developed in modern times. Under the
slogan ^^education for a changing world” and supported by a whole science
of ^^educational sociology,” it requires that education be set in relation to
the society in which the individual lives. The introduction of this value
relation into discussions of educational goals and means is a paramount
contribution of America. And this has remained not only an achievement
of academic speculation and research but has, to a large extent, come to
influence policy-making agencies in the educational field. America has,
therefore, seen more of enterprising and experimental progressive redirect-
ing of schools than has any other country.
The duty of society to provide for public education was early established
in America, and private endowments for educational purposes have been
magnificent. America spends more money and provides its youth, on the
average, with more schooling than any other country in the world. America
has also succeeded in a relatively higher degree than any other country in
making real the old democratic principle that the complete educational
ladder should be held open to the most intelligent and industrious youths,
independent of private means and support from their family. Education
has been, and is increasingly becoming, a chief means of climbing the
social status scale. It is entirely within this great American tradition when
white people, who have wanted to help the Negroes, have concentrated
their main efforts on improving Negro education.
American Negroes have taken over the American faith in education.
Booker T. Washington’s picture of the freedmen^s drive for education is
classical:
Few people who were not right In the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea
of the intense desire which the people of my race showed for education. It was a
whole race trying to go to school. Few were too young, and none too old, to make
the attempt to learn. As fast as any kind of teachers could be secured, not only were
day-schools filled, but night-schools as well. The great ambition of the older people
was to try to learn to read the Bible before they died. With this end in view, men
and women who were fifty or seventy-five years old, would be found in the night-
schools. Sunday-schools were formed soon after freedom, but the principal book
studied in the Sunday-school was the spelling-book. Day-school, night-school, and
Sunday-school were always crowded, and pften many had to be turned away fot
want of room.,’*
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