498 



The Heview ef Reviews. 



Jioveinber 1, 1906. 



THE EDUCATION OF AMERICAN NEGROES. 



By Dr. Albert Shaw. 



The Editor of the American Review of Reviews 

 contributes to its September number an elaborate, 

 comprehensive, and copiously illustrated paper, en- 

 titled " What Hampton Means by Education." 



THE NEW SOUTH. 

 Dr. Shaw says : — 



In no other part of the country are there just now Buch 

 marks of a varied and rapid progress as in the South. 

 The towns are taking on new and modern forms through 

 the awakenine touch of manufacturing capital, and the 

 country is changing through the application of better 

 methods in agriculture. Forests and mines are yielding 

 larger returns of we.^lth every year, and prosperity is far 

 more widely diffused than ever before. 



Yet those acquainted with the resources of the South are 

 well aware that this new economic movement is only in its 

 be^nnlngs. But a mere fraction of tlie water-power of the 

 streams flowing frcm the Appalachian highlands has been 

 utilised as yet for operating factories and generating elec- 

 tric power. The supplies of iron and coal are inexhaustible 

 and will be drawn upon in ever-increasing quantities. As 

 for agricultural possibilities, present results are not one- 

 fifth of what may be reasonably expected in a future not 

 very distant. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF HAMPTON. 



How free, and how fast, and how solid will be the 

 progress of the South depends upon the education 

 of its people, notably of the ten millions who are 

 coloured. Hence Dr. Shaw bespeaks the — 



earnest attention of intelligent Southen people for the re- 

 markable w^ork carried on at the Hampton Normal and 

 Agricultural Institute, located near old Point Comfort, at 

 Hampton. Virginia. In its shops and mills, and on it« 

 farms, in its dairies and in its varied industrial depart- 

 ments , Hampton is year by year training hundreds of 

 young negroes for fitness to jvarticipate in the work of 

 Southern developmant. But it is performing a more im- 

 portant task than the training of skilled farmers or arti- 

 sans, for it is training a generation of splendid teachers, 

 each one of whom can go out and take charge of a negro 

 school and make that school the centre for improvement in 

 the surrounding negro community. 



WHAT HAMPTON MEANS BY EDUCATION. 



What Hampton mesns by education is the fitting of young 

 people for the work tliey have to do in life; and the method 

 it uses is that of going straight at the desired end without 

 wasting a day. For the Hampton Institute is a life, rather 

 than a school. Its students are at work as well as at study. 

 They are building up luibits of order and self-control and 

 steady industry. On the farm lands of Hampton or in the 

 varied shops, where practical trades are both taught and 

 worked at. tlie boys face all the conditions of practical 

 toil. But they also learn that when the day's work is done 

 it is feasible to use plenty of soap and water, and to turn 

 the mind to other useful, interesting things. 



THE METHODS OF HAMPTON. 

 The method iised in teaching arithmetic is characteristic 

 of the way in which all subjects are taught at Hampton. 

 It is not merely textbook or blackboard work in abstract 

 numbers, but it is the practical arithmetic of daily life. 

 Liquid measure is taught in connection with the practical 

 business of the d.xiry, which sells milk to the great hotels 

 of the region. Land measure is taught upon the ground 

 itself, and the pupil does not merely read and write the 

 word acre, but stakes an acre out upon the actual ground. 

 The girls learn arithmetic in connection with the measure- 

 ments in dressmaking or cooking. There is a mathemati- 

 cal side to the work of every practical trade, and so all the 

 problems of arithmetic, in so far as it is desirable to teach 

 that subject, are given a practical character. Thus, the 

 boy who learns to lay bricks learns to make the necessary 

 calculations that go with the mason's trade. Newspapers 

 and periodicals are constantly used as furnishing facts to 

 supply problems in arithmetic, geography, and the various 

 other general subjects of instruction. 



HOW THEY TEACH FARMING. 



In the Agricultural Department the training in- 

 cludes a thirty-minute recitation on agricultural 

 subjects four davs in the week and a review of the 

 week's work out of doors with his instructor one 

 day in the week. At night he has three periods of 

 regular academic work, including agriculture : — 



In December he goes to the Trade School and takes a 

 month of practical carpentry so as to learn the use of 

 tools and be able to do his own repair work on the farm, 

 build a poultry house, etc. In January he goes to the 

 wheelwright and blacksmith shops and gets acquainted with 

 plain repair work on waggons. In February at the paint- 

 shop he learns how to mix paints and spread them on plain 

 work, and in the mason's department how fo mix and lay 

 a cement floor for stalls or barn, and how to lay brick in 

 a pier or chimney. One week is spent in the harness shop, 

 learning how to mend a harness without strings and wire, 

 that rainy days on the farm may be busy ones. Mechanical 

 drawing is also given, that he may not only read but make 

 simple plans. 



Spring work begins outside in March, and the student 

 comes back to agriculture work in the garden, continuing 

 through the summer, learning how to plant, grow, gather, 

 and store or prepare for market all the vegetables that can 

 be grown at Hampton. 



At the beginning of the second year he takes up further 

 garden work: (1) the cultivation of fruits in orchards, in- 

 cluding pruning and spraying; and (2) tbe handling of crops 

 under glass — cold frame, forcing house and greenhouse 

 work. 



The third year he will study animal husbandry, the care 

 of stock in the dairy and horse barns and the care of 

 poultry and bees in summer. 



Mr. H. C. Foxcroft contributes to the Fortnightly 

 Revirw of September an enthusiastic article in praise 

 of Booker Washington, under the title " A Negro on 

 Efficiency.' 



One of the most efficient among living Americans is a 

 man of colour. To the appreciative judgment which grasps 

 and weighs the suggestions of more original minds, he 

 joins the organising talent which can embody them on a 

 large scale; the personality aJid the oratorical powers 

 which can excite, the robust common-sense which can 

 guide, the genial good humour which can retain the en- 

 tliusiasm of his susceptible race. In breadth and balance 

 of mind he may be said to embody Bagehot's "Animated 

 Moderation." Rarely do we meet with so perfect a blend of 

 the enthusiast and the man of affairs; the unbiassed 

 student of facts who is blind to no evils, and the devoted 

 optimist whom no evils can daunt. 



Mr. Foxcroft recalls the fact that he owed all this 

 to the influence of a New England woman : — 



A simple experience left on him its mark for life. The 

 wife of the mine-owners New Englander, wealthy and 

 cultivated— had " a high respect for manual labour." Her 

 requirements, if rigid, were simple. Truthfulness and 

 promptitude— ?leanlines6, order and method — in a word, 

 thoroughness, proved essential. " Excuses and explana- 

 tions," she warned him, " could never . . . take . , 

 the place of results." Charming is his account of the strug- 

 gles which, under her watchful superintendence, trans- 

 formed the neglected garden into a paradise of order; and 

 of the ."sudden realisation that he hail created tliis. "My 

 whole nature began to change. I felt a self-respect . . . 

 a satisfaction ' hitherto unknown. Never again could phy- 

 sical toil appear a degradation ; never again could he fear 

 the lady he still reveres as one of" his "greatest 

 teachers ' ^ 



Students of Ballad Poetry will be glad to read Mr. 

 C. H. Firth's article, in the Scottish Historical Re- 

 view for April, on the Ballads of the Bishops' Wars, 

 1638-1640. The ballad-makers who wrote in favour 

 of the Scots were, naturally, against the English Go- 

 vernment, and were consequentlv suppressed. They 

 suffered the same penalties as the pamphleteers, but 

 a good many of their ballads have surN-ived, and in 

 1834 a selection of them was published from the col- 

 lections of Sir James Balfour. Martin Parker wat 

 the most prolific ballad-writer. 



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