The American Missionary — Volume 36, No. 10, October, 1882 — John Shaqi
The American Missionary — Volume 36, No. 10, October, 1882Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 36, No. 10, October, 1882
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
Government aid will still leave another demand upon our style of
schools, viz., that which shall furnish industrial training. The
old-time colored mechanics, who had been taught trades, which
greatly increased their value in the market, are passing away.
Scarcely any of the young men are now learning trades, for the
reasons that white mechanics will not take them, that the colored
tradesmen have not capital enough to employ them, and that too
many of them have seen enough of working for board and clothes in
the case of father and mother, not taking into the account the
large and steady wages to come by and by. As it is going now, let
the old colored mechanics pass away, and the skilled artisans
coming from Europe will press in to fill the demand; and then the
Africo-American citizens will be driven to the wall and forced
back to be mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. The first
demand upon our schools was to open the doors of knowledge to
millions of starving intellects; but now, more and more, must we
push industrial training to help the people in the coming crisis,
which they do not forecast as readily as do their friends who have
studied the problem of their bondage and their freedom. So then,
along with books and the art of school teaching, we must train
the girls to the trades of cooking, of dressmaking, of nursing,
of type-setting, of running knitting and sewing machines; we must
teach the boys carpentry, blacksmithing, shoe and harness making,
agriculture, the raising of improved stock and the running of
machinery.
National aid for public schools will still leave upon our
institutions and the like the great business of the higher
education. For a portion of the people this is demanded. If they
are to maintain themselves in their citizenship they must have the
first quality of education in their preachers, professors, lawyers,
doctors, journalists, scientists. In their general advancement
they are already requiring more and more of cultivation in their
preachers. With some congregations even now only the most thorough
classical and professional training can satisfy the demands of
their pulpits, while in the other professions nothing else can
succeed. The public schools will prepare the material, and make
the greater demand for the higher institutions, such as we are
developing. And so we find that national aid, if granted, will only
be a national call for our scheme of advanced education. Then, if
such a law is passed, it is proposed to run only five years. And
yet the generations of children will still be sweeping on and we
must make our patriotic and missionary propagandism to keep up with
them.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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