And finally, by
1900, some thirty-four had one year or more of studies of
college grade. This development was reached with different
degrees of speed in different institutions: Hampton is still a
high school, while Fisk University started her college in
1871, and Spelman Seminary about 1896. In all cases the aim
was identical,--to maintain the standards of the lower train-
ing by giving teachers and leaders the best practicable train-
ing; and above all, to furnish the black world with adequate
standards of human culture and lofty ideals of life. It was not
enough that the teachers of teachers should be trained in
technical normal methods; they must also, so far as possible,
be broad-minded, cultured men and women, to scatter civili-
zation among a people whose ignorance was not simply of
letters, but of life itself.
It can thus be seen that the work of education in the South
began with higher institutions of training, which threw off as
their foliage common schools, and later industrial schools,
and at the same time strove to shoot their roots ever deeper
toward college and university training. That this was an
inevitable and necessary development, sooner or later, goes
without saying; but there has been, and still is, a question in
many minds if the natural growth was not forced, and if the
higher training was not either overdone or done with cheap
and unsound methods.
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