A boys' life of Booker T. WashingtonJackson, Walter Clinton
History
A boys' life of Booker T. Washington
Jackson, Walter Clinton
African American educators -- Biography -- Juvenile literature; Washington, Booker T., 1856-1915 -- Juvenile literature
One other feature of the kind of education that Tuskegee stands for
ought to be mentioned, and that is the extension work. This work has
become a very large part of the Institute. The extension work is not so
much a matter of teaching, of education in the usual sense, as it is an
effort to give direct and practical help to people outside the college
walls. Most of this extension work has been done in Macon and adjoining
counties. From the first month of his school, Washington began to go
into the country round about and mingle with his people. He went to
their homes, their churches, their schools. He saw their poor farms,
their lean stock, their dilapidated houses, their lack of the comforts
and necessities of good living. The homes, the churches, the
schoolhouses were in bad condition. Washington had the greatest sympathy
for these people, knowing why they were in poverty and ignorance, and he
had a great desire to help them. And it is through this extension work
that these people are helped.
[Illustration:
The students’ band of this rural school is instructed by a band
student of Tuskegee Institute.
]
The Institute sends its workers throughout the surrounding country to
show the farmers improved farm machinery, better methods of farming,
better breeds of live stock of all kinds, better methods of dairying,
and better ways of preparing food, keeping house, and caring for the
children. They insist on improving the school buildings, the churches,
and the homes. As a result of this work, there are now in Macon County a
number of neat new schoolhouses, with a teacher’s house alongside each
school, several acres of land adjoining, and a good church close by.
Thus clean, pleasant, and thoroughly happy communities are created. In
such communities there is the smallest amount of crime, and there is the
largest amount of prosperity and contentment and enjoyment.
All the graduates of Tuskegee are enthusiasts for education and
community builders. Wherever they go, they stand for the best in life.
They are devoted to Tuskegee and its spirit and its ideals. It is this
devotion which makes them industrious and capable and law-abiding and
helpful in every possible way in the communities in which they live.
Hundreds of small schools have been established all over the South by
these graduates, patterned on Tuskegee. It is impossible to overestimate
the good they have done.
[Illustration:
TAILORING DIVISION, TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE
]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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