The weekly Anglo-African. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1859-1861, 1860-04-28
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/ SCHOOLS with view TO 0Her greater cuucd-
tional advantages to the colored youth of
our city, yet they cannot believe that any
such advantages will accrue simply by q
change of teachers; and this probability
will be renderded less likely if the newly
appointed teachers shall be of such diff
ferent caste in society, as to remove them
from that intimate social sympathy with
their scholars that ought always to exist
between teachers and those who are taught
by them.
Your memorialists think that the most
casual observer only needs to read the re-
cent address of d. G. Gilman, Esq, the
acting school visitor, published by request
of your Board, on the subject of education,
together with his remarks on graded schools,
appended to your last annual report, and
then to examine the actual provisions that
have been made for the colored public
schools of this city, in order to be con-
WINGED that their wretched condition in
every respect emenate from cause too
deep to be simply rectifed by a mere
change of teachers. This fact must be so
apparent to all that it is needless for your
memorialists to enter into specification of
this deeper cause of the wretchedness of
the colored public schools. On this point,
let it suffice, to say that the poor schoolac-
commodations provided for colored chill
dren, their promiscuous and ungraded char
acter, and the individual isolation of the
teachers in charge of so many separate
apologies for schools, indicate that while
these evils remain, there can be no remedy
for the consequent wretchedness that has
resulted from this state of things by
mere change of teachers. Surrounded by
the monotonous gloom of an indefinite and
aimless task, with nothing to call forth the
ambition of the scholars or stimulate the
devotion of the isolated teacher, it is no
wonder that the colored public schools of
this city have become SO Intellectually de-
moralized that parents esteem it no privi-
lege to send their children to schools 80
barren in educational results. And to
charge these pernicious consequences to
the teachers, who have struggled for a
quarter of century against the adverse
circumstances in which they were placed,
is simply to make them martyrs to the vi
cious system that your Board has SO long
tolerated in respect to the provisions made
for the education of colored children. We
do not believe that any teachers can do
better under the same circumstances than
the teachers you have dismissed. But, on
the contrary, your memorialists believe
that the Generalization of the school will
go on with increased rapidity by mere
change of teachers, especially if of differ
ent caste fromthe scholars, unless more ra-
dical reform in our colored public schoolsys-
tenn is speedily inaugurated by your Board.
Your memorialists do not believe it is
necessary for them to specify to your in
telligent body what this reform should be.
You can appreciate our needs in this re-
spect better than we can indicate them, as
the speciality of your official functions
makes you conversant with the whole
minuti@ of education in more eminent
degree than your memorialists, who are not
SO engaged. Let it, however, suffice for
your memorialists to hint at this needed
reform.
We need one GRADED public school for
colored children, with at least two depart
ments, taught by at least four teachers, two
in each department, and one of whom
should be male teacher. And for the
accommodation of this school, substantial
and well-furnished school house should be
provided, situated in some eligible loca-
ton, as convenient as may be to the differ
emit neighborhoods where the colored peo-
pie dwell in this city. And the teachers
who maybe placed in charge of this school
should be encouraged by the Board in
maintaining rigid state of discipline, in
regard to the regular attendance and gen.
eral behavior of the scholars, even though
for time it excluded one-half of the chill
dren eligible to its privileges. The Board
should always inspire the teachers with
the idea that it is the qaality rather than
the quantity of their scholars that it most
regards. Your memorialists suggest this
idea as very important consideration in
any attempted reform to raise the tone of
colored public schools from the demoralized
state in which they have been allowed to
degenerate under your supervision, and
because the dismissed teachers have al
ways had the quantity rather than quality
of their scholars filling their seats, held out
before them as the most important desider-
alum required at their hands by your Board.
Your memorialists believe that with
such liberal provision on the part of your
Board for one good colored school, and
with such strict discipline, both parents
and children will be awakened to proper
appreciation of such real school privileges
conferred upon them; meanwhile, the
teachers will become ardent and jealous by
a concentrated emulation, without having
to select them from social caste different
from the scholars, and the fourishing con-
dition of the school generally will inaugu-
rate new era in the education of colored
children in this city. Your memorialists
can speak confidently in making these
prospective assertions, because of the sue
cessful operation of such colored schools in
New York, Philadelphia, and other cities,
under colored teachers, where they have
been as carefully provided for as schools
for any other class Of children.