Any such education as this of course calls for experts, and we are
thus led on to our second point. We ask that the teachers in Negro
schools and colleges should in deed and in truth be specialists. He
who would teach any American youth in the new day, and certainly any
Negro American youth, should be a genuine psychologist and sociologist
and a large-hearted Christian man at the same time that he is a most
thorough student in his own department. By "specialist" we do not mean
a man who in English would count up the infinitives in Gower's poems,
but one who in grammar, for instance, could bring from a broad
scholarly background such a capacity for illustration as would inspire
his students to be honestly more careful in their speaking or writing.
The teacher of geometry would be one who could genuinely teach boys to
think better; and with the true teacher of Latin, boys would have no
desire to be dishonest. Whatever is taught should be dynamic; now as
never before it must justify itself in terms of human life. Such
instructors for our youth would call for such an outlay for education
as has not yet been dreamed of. They could not be ready, however,
until they had passed through a long period of preparation; and for
such an investment they should later of course be adequately paid.
Along with better teachers would go better equipment generally. Mr.
Carnegie has given several library buildings, for instance. We wish
now that somebody would give some books to put in them. More than one
of the Negro colleges have no regular library appropriation. Whenever
a book is bought it must be taken out of current funds and thus be
stolen from some other legitimate use. And yet some people presume to
sneer at what these institutions have done!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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