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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 41. The Negro School - 5. “Industrial” versus “Classical” Education of Negroes
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Chapter 41. The Negro School 897
former type of Negro education is mainly motivated by the interests of
preserving the caste order. ^^Industrial” education for Negroes is the
formula upon which Southern whites have been able to strike a compromise
between their belief in education, which stems from the American Creed,
and their interests as white Southerners in preserving the caste order of the
region.
The argument runs: The Negroes are, and must be, servants, farm
laborers, and industrial workers 5
they should, however, be trained to do
their work better j
then, in their ‘^place,” they would be better citizens too.
What is needed, consequently, is a Negro education which bothers less with
bookish learning and more with life in a humble status, daily duties, and
the building up of character 5
the Negroes have to begin at the bottom and
they will probably stay low, but they should be given the chance of moving
upward slowly. The advocate of improved industrial training of Negroes
also stresses the very material interest of the better class of white people
to have more efficient servants. The play of these arguments can be ob-
served today, when, for instance, one accompanies the State Agent for
Negro Education in a rural county trying to persuade the local white
leaders to spend money to improve Negro education.
The formula, “industrial education for Negroes,” thus has a different
meaning for different white people. There are some who have a genuine
belief in the superiority generally of a practical stress in all public education.
There are many more who see strong particular reasons for this educational
goal in the actual situation of Southern Negroes. Many have their primary
interest in improving Negro education as such and know that it is politically
much more feasible if it is proposed in this way. To many the formula is,
however, only a rationalization for discrimination and for holding appro-
priations low for Negro schools.®
Industrial education becomes a byword. In the mind of one man it meant that the
negro should be taught only to know the relative distance between two rows of cotton
or corn, and how to deport himself with becoming behavior behind the chair while
his white lord and master sits at meat; while, in the mind of another it stood for the
awakening of the best powers and possibilities. To the white man of the South it
may have meant that the negro was to be made more serviceable to him and more
easily amenable to his imperious will. To the white man of the North it may have
meant that the black man was to be made a competent worker, equipped with
intelligence and skill such as are demanded of Northern workmen. However variant
may have been the interpretations of the meaning of industrial education, there was
a general agreement to discredit the higher culture of the race.^®
This has, among other things, the implication that in the South the ’problem
of ^HndustriaV^ versus ^^classicaV^ education for Negroes is not, and has
* Although, as we shall presently observe, true vocational education actually is more
expensive.
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