Birmingham state herald. (Birmingham, Ala.) 1895-1897, 1896-12-22
OUR LETTER BOX.
NORMA. SCHOOLS Er AL.


Editor state Herald.
In answer to my article in your paper
on "Our Public Schools" by President ].
K. Powers. in my reply 1 have to thank
him for the kind feelings therein ex-
pressed and hereby fully reciprocate the
same.
The subject is an important one and
ought to be discussed in friendly spirit.
| am not mistaken, as he thinks, when
| say that a large majority of the people
OF Alabama are opposed to normal and
agricultural schools.
am willing tO say that IL the members
of the legislature now at home will make
the investigat ton and fail to find nine
tenths of the people opposed to these
schools, the writer will never open his
mouth or employ his pen again on the
subject.
My fri. nd, in reply to the statement that
we now have five times as many good
teachers as can find employment, says
that most of the unemployed teachers
come from other than normal colleges.
Now let us see. I now have before me
a statement from one of our superinten-
dents of education in one of our largest
cities. He had in his jurisdiction during
the years 1855 one hundred and eighty
two teachers, and of that number only
seven were educated at normal schools.
How is this, my brother?
Again, your writer has a school agency
that has brought him in contact with the
best educators in the land, and they have,
with one consent, besought him not to
recommend to them d man or woman
who has been educated at a normal col
lege. And yet, in spite of all this, 1 am
constrained to, believe that some good
work is done in our normal schools, and
the college at Florence is included in the
number, and yet you must pardon me for
expressing 1t as my unfaltering belief
that this So, 600 given to that institution by
the state annually would do more good to
the cause of general education II it were
given to the thousands of illiterate chill
dren living in townships not able to run a
school two months in the year. And the
same Is true of all the rest.
Just here let me make this point: In
all our state schools, boys and girls are
taught by tibet most approved methods.
In receiving such tuition by well-trained
teachers, why can't they learn how to
teach quite as well as they can under
men and women how to teach. chow
TO TEACH
If they wish to teach, and are worth
a cent, they can, Just as they do in the
largest public school in the state, where
teachers are made by the hundred, and
we'll made, and employed in the school
that made them; and for thoroughness
of instruction that school can challenge
comparison with any other in the state.
l. &c
we will have no use for the useless out
lay of money in the support of normal
schools.
My friend thinks am not at heart a
friend to public education. And yet
every line have ever written on the
subject Is an earnest plea for primary
education by the state.
I ann not in favor. of normal schools
for reasons given.
1 am not in favor of paying out $751;
900 to build and equip Girls Indus
trial School," to teach our girls how to
sew and cook.
Many of our daughters graduated in
that school twenty-five yetrs ago.
am not in favor of agricultural
schools, so-calIed. For 1t is we'll known
that into most of them, the agricultural
feature does not enter at all. They SIM
ply give free tuition to the towns where
located My friend thinks 1 am for
building up one class of schools and tear
ing down another class. Not at all.
That Is the very thing l am opposing.
Look at our state university. A redun-
dancy of the schoolssI am opposing has
SO completely supplied its foundations
that it has only name to live.
Well endowed, well equipped and well
differed, II stands as monument to the
folly of unwise legislation ia the multi