Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1886-10-31
The Education of the Negro.

The Education of the Negro.
In the November number CT the North
American Review Mr.. Edmund kirke
discusses the question of the education of
the negro, and his article can hardly fail
to attract considerable attention, particu-
larly in the South. The conclusion which
he reaches is that the present method OF
educating the negro is radically wrong,
aud is calculated to make him a loater
and avagabond rather than a good cti-
zen. He cites the experience OF Miss
Austin, OF Knoxville, Tenn, a highly
cultivated white woman from the North
who went to that state with the intention
OF devoting her life and future to the
education OF negroes. She modelled her
school upon the white schools OF the
North, and taught her pupils the common
and higher branches of an English educa-
ton. After twelve years she took a sur
vev Of her work and found that she had
accomplished almost nothing. The girls,
in most instances. feeling themselves
| above sucn work as they could get to do,
turned out badly, and the boys, with a
few exceptions, developed into idlers and
| loafers.
Miss Austin, realizing that she had
made mistake, was prompt to apply the
remedy. She saw that she could do the
colored children greater service by max
ing them efficient bread winners than by
| attempting to make them proficient in
the higher branches of education. She
therefore determined to cOnfne their
mental training to reading, writing
and arithmetic, and to require
| them to devote the greater
| part of their time to learning how to be-
come good servants and mechanics. Her
ming. The children were better satisfied
and the results achieved were gratifying.
The girls in Miss Austin's school are now
taught now to cook and to do all kinds of
| homework, and the boys are taught how
to handle tools and to make themselves
| generally useful.
The great need In Southern, as in North
ern, cities is good servants. In this city,
for instance, the complaint of the unre-
liability, responsibility and worthless
| ness of servants is general. The negro
| girls of the present generation know little
or nothing about cooking, and cannot be
| depended upon to do general Homework
as it ought to be done. They are not in
dustrious and obedient, and neither they
nor the men who act as house servants
| are neat in their work or their appear
ance. AS rule, the men who are house
servants are inattentive and inefficient.
| Ihair aI 10 ~ a hi
and there are very few OF them who can
give, or care to give, satisfaction.
There is no dou bit that the colored peo-
pie are capable of being educated into
good servants. 1t is necessary, however,
that their training shall begin early, and
that they shall be firmly impressed with
the idea at the outset that they are to be
workers and not idlers. If colored SER
wants were what they might be trained to
be, housewives would be relieved of the
annoyance and worry which now make
life almost burde n to them.
1t is about impossible to train men and
women to be good servants after they
have reached the years of maturity. The
habits they have formed in the years from
childhood to maturity will remain with
them through life. They may be modified
somewhat, but they cannot he got rid of
entirely, however Objectionable they may
be.
Under the present system of educating
colored children it IS a question whether
servants are not all the time growing less
reliable and efficient. If they are, is il
not time that something was being done
to change the system under which they
are being educated? Would it not be
much better to apply a portion OF the
money now used IN giving them a knOwl-
edge of books to fitting them for the work
which they will have to do to earn a liv
ing.