This programme, however, we are
sorely puzzled in carrying out through that part of the land
where the blight of slavery fell hardest, and where we are
dealing with two backward peoples. To make here in human
education that ever necessary combination of the permanent
and the contingent--of the ideal and the practical in workable
equilibrium--has been there, as it ever must be in every age
and place, a matter of infinite experiment and frequent mistakes.
In rough approximation we may point out four varying
decades of work in Southern education since the Civil War.
From the close of the war until 1876, was the period of
uncertain groping and temporary relief. There were army
schools, mission schools, and schools of the Freedmen's
Bureau in chaotic disarrangement seeking system and co-
operation. Then followed ten years of constructive definite
effort toward the building of complete school systems in the
South. Normal schools and colleges were founded for the
freedmen, and teachers trained there to man the public schools.
There was the inevitable tendency of war to underestimate the
prejudices of the master and the ignorance of the slave, and
all seemed clear sailing out of the wreckage of the storm.
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