Booker T. Washington, Builder of a CivilizationScott, Emmett J. (Emmett Jay)
History
Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization
Scott, Emmett J. (Emmett Jay)
African Americans -- Biography; Educators -- United States -- Biography; Washington, Booker T., 1856-1915
The correlation between the work of farm, shop, and classroom, first
applied by General Armstrong at Hampton, was developed on an even
larger scale by his one-time student, Booker Washington. The students
at Tuskegee are divided into two groups: the day students who work in
the classroom half the week and the other half on the farm and in the
shops, and the night students who work all day on the farm or in the
shops and then attend school at night. The day school students pay a
small fee in cash toward their expenses, while the night school
students not only pay no fee but by good and diligent work gradually
accumulate a credit at the school bank which, when it becomes
sufficiently large, enables them to become day school students. In
fact, the great majority of the day students have thus fought their
way in from the night school. But all students of both groups thus
receive in the course of a week a fairly even balance between theory
and practice.
[Illustration: An academic class. A problem in brick masonry. Mr.
Washington always insisted upon correlation; that is, drawing the
problem from the various shops and laboratories.]
In a corner of each of the shops, in which are carried on the forty or
more different trades, is a blackboard on which are worked out the
actual problems which arise in the course of the work. After school
hours one always finds in the shops a certain number of the teachers
from the Academic Department looking up problems for their classes for
the next day. A physics teacher may be found in the blacksmithing shop
digging up problems about the tractive strength of wires and the
expansion and contraction of metals under heat and cold. A teacher of
chemistry may be found in the kitchen of the cooking school unearthing
problems relating to the chemistry of food for her class the next
day. If, on the other hand, you go into a classroom you will find the
shop is brought into the classroom just as the classroom has been
brought into the shop. For instance, in a certain English class the
topic assigned for papers was "a model house" instead of "bravery" or
"the increase of crime in cities," or "the landing of the Pilgrims."
The boys of the class had prepared papers on the architecture and
construction of a model house, while the girls' papers were devoted to
its interior decoration and furnishing. One of the girls described a
meal for six which she had actually prepared and the six had actually
consumed. The meal cost seventy-five cents. The discussion and
criticism which followed each paper had all the zest which vitally
practical and near-at-hand questions always arouse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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