Southern States -- Social conditions; United States -- Race relations
the learned associations they take their places as well-equipped and
productive men.
Professional education has also made great strides in the South. Many of
the most promising young men are sent to Northern law and medical schools,
not only because of their supposed educational advantages, but because it
is thought well for a young man to have a double horizon; but the greater
number find instruction in nearby professional schools either established
by practitioners or attached to some university. For the medical students
the hospitals which are springing up everywhere furnish clinical material.
Theological education is less systematized; the older and more settled
denominations have good schools, but too many preachers in the back
country have no other training than a natural "gift of the gab." In the
agricultural and mechanical colleges, and the engineering departments of
the endowed public universities, the South is educating her future
engineers and scientific men.
The educative effects of travel and intercourse with other people are
making themselves felt. In ante-bellum times few Southerners traveled
widely, except the comparatively small number of the richer young men who
found their way to Northern colleges, or abroad. Until ten years ago it
was difficult to hold Southern conventions and gatherings of intellectual
men of kindred aims because people could not afford to travel. Now there
is more circulation, more knowledge of the world, more willingness to see
in what respects the South lags behind, a greater spirit of coöperation
between Southern states, and with some people of other sections. The norms
of common schools, secondary schools, and higher institutions are now laid
down on about the same principles as in the North, and it remains to
develop them, to make paper systems actual, to get more of the school
children registered, more of the registered children in attendance, more
months of school for those who attend, better teachers for the longer
sessions, new buildings to accommodate the larger numbers, more students
to fill the little colleges and to enlarge the universities. White
education in the South is in a progressive and hopeful condition.
In the means of education outside of schools and colleges the South is
still much behind the richer North, and still more behind foreign
countries. Museums and picture galleries are few, aside from private
collections in Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, and New Orleans. The fine
old paintings that one sees in clubs and public buildings come from an
earlier age, for there are few Southern artists. Nevertheless, the
architectural standard is quite as high as in the North, and the tradition
of wide spaces and colonnades persists. In its public buildings the South
is in general superior to the North; even in remote county seats one may
find buildings old and new of classic proportions, dignified and stately.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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