The third matter is a large and subtle one. It has to do with the
whole moral and spiritual import of the schools in question. One of
the amazing things about Negro education in the large in America is
that one hears so much about boards and units and courses of study and
so little about deeper essentials. Aside from the curriculum, what is
the atmosphere that a boy breathes as soon as he sets foot on a
college campus? Is he trained in honesty, in politeness, in high
ideals of speech, in lofty conceptions of character? Does he have to
obey orders? Is he taught to be neat, prompt, and industrious? Such
questions are of things too often taken for granted, and too often
lacking. We need new emphasis on the whole missionary impulse in
education. In the providence of God, but through no effort of his own,
the freedman in the decades after the Civil War had the benefit of
the labors of consecrated men and women who served, sometimes even
without pay, for his salvation. Cravath at Fisk, Graves at Morehouse,
Tupper at Shaw, Ware at Atlanta, Armstrong at Hampton, and Packard and
Giles at Spelman are names that should ever be recalled with
thanksgiving and praise. These men and women were not people of means.
They labored often with the most inadequate facilities. And yet
somehow they had the key to the eternal verities. They were earnest,
efficient, and true, and to them a human soul was worth more than the
kingdoms of this world.
Such consecrated workers, however, have now become rarer and rarer.
Materialism and commercialism are abroad in the land. Segregation and
proscription and injustice abound. We plead now that in all the
disappointments and distractions of the new day our teachers shall at
least remember the faith and high ideals of the pioneers, and remain
close to God.
To train our boys in the virtues of citizenship and at the same time
in knowledge of the rights of others; to teach them respect for others
at the same time that they cultivate their own self-respect; to teach
them the value of scholarship and also to let them know when
scholarship must become dynamic; to teach them to work, to love, to
sing, to have faith, even when they see wrong all around them--this is
a task calling for all one has of Christianity, of scholarship, and of
delicacy.
VI
A GREAT MISSIONARY: JOANNA P. MOORE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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