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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 41. The Negro School - 7. Trends and Problems
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9o6 An American Dilemma
are essential. By this we did not want to discount altogether the problem
of the direction of Negro education but only to retain true proportions.
The main fault with Negro education is that it is undernourished and
inadequate. As it is improved, however, the problem of its direction becomes
important. Even when Negro education is on a low level, as in most rural
districts at present, it is, of course, important not to have it misdirected.
But the choice seems, for the most part, still to be between an antediluvian
^^ndustrial” education and an equally antediluvian ^‘classical” education.**®
The Jeanes teacher movement and other constructive attempts in South-
ern Negro education have tried to work out a makeshift policy in which
the emphasis is laid upon maintaining and enriching the relations of the
student to his community.**^ This is all very well, and entirely in line with
modern educational theory as it has been developed in America. But one
main point seems forgotten. With the present trends in Southern agricul-
ture and American agricultural policy, it is fairly certain that many of the
children born in a cotton county today are going to live and work not in
cotton districts but in Northern and Southern cities. Many of the children
born in a Southern city are going to live in the different environment of
the Northern metropolis. If the American economy and economic policy
are not going to stagnate, Negroes are going to work in new occupations
within the next generation. What is needed is an education which makes the
Negro child adaptable to and movable in the American culture at large.
Even the Negro child who will stay in Southern agriculture will need
to use various types of machinery, to follow popular journals in his field, to
deal with credit institutions and government agencies, and successfully to
take part in organizations. He needs to be able to read, write, and reckon,
and to be lifted so high above illiteracy that he actually participates in
modern American society. Before all, he needs not to be specialized, but
to be changeable, "educable.” And he needs it more than the white child,
because life will be more difficult for him.
The right balance between ‘industrial” and “classical” education can be
struck if due weight is given to the prospect of mobility and change. The
masses of Negro children are going to be laborers on the farms and in
industries 5
some are going to be skilled laborers. We do not know where
and in what occupation they are going to work, but we know there is going
to be much moving around. They need to be taught skills 5
but the value
of any vocational training should be judged in terms of the extent to which
the skills acquired are transferable into skills in other trades. They need
to be familiarized with the printed word and culture that is found in books,
and, indeed, to get as much of the general American culture as they possibly
can.
Meanwhile, Southern Negro schools are going to remain inadequate.
The North will continue for many decades to get untutored and crude
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