The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-05-25

must be ready for delivery and the crops
are growing and the weeds getting up with
them. and experiments are all about and
your drawing board has the working plan
of a building on which your mates are
working across the way, and If the pota-
toes are neglected in the pot your table will
have its bitter word of the untitled hungry,
with the temper and appetite of youth.
Those who have attended the classroom
for days together all report that the teach
ing is fresh, original and vivid, that hard
work breeds keen minds and that these
boys and girls go through that quick find
ing oneself and that rapid growth of
trained personality which all of US have
noted when youth exchanges the formal
and artificial life of the schoolroom for the
realities of the store, shop, office and fac
tory.
ARITHMETIC THE BASIS.
In all, boy can be at Tuskegee from end
to end, from six to eight years. He begins
with fractions at the bottom of the pre-
paratory work and he goes up to geom-
etry, with other stories in proportion from
the work of primary grades to high school
grades. Much is cut away of the ordinary
course. Much is added bearing on trades.
Considered from the more academic
standpoint, the work is a skeleton. Consid-
cred as gigantic factory whose output
and product are men and women of char
acter, more is achieved in passing from raw
.
school anywhere. Ordinarily pupils learn
from object and experiment what cannot
be learned from books and by reading.
Here pupils only learn from books what
cannot be gained from work, experiment
and observation. In recorded knowledge,
this involves a great reduction. In the eX-
perience and training of real life. II brings
a great increase. For a high civilization
recorded knowledge counts. For race. al
the negro stage, which is relying on anoth-
er for its reported knowledge, Tuskegee is
evolved
needs of the race.
The race is indolent. and these students
are forced to work. 1t lacks skill, and there
boys and girls learn trades. Its leaders
have been tonguey preachers, and this
school provides as leaders self-reliant me-
chanics, farmers and teachers. Using eX-
actly the means the early monastic orders
in Europe employed, hard work, rigorous
rule and routine, the contact drill and
dsclphne OF retectory and cunicie' trades
and teaching directed both TO self-Support
and instruction, Booker I. Washington has
unconsciously followed a long line of ia
miliar historical presidents.
L speak within sober bounds and some lit
tie knowledge in saying that no educator in
the country has so created the exact tool
and. implement for the education he is i'm
parting as has Booker I. Washington at
Tuskegee.
The best of all and the crown of all is
that it is the work of negroes. There is
every type here, from the lowest Yaruba,
to the finely modelled faces of tribes, Fans
and others, in the hills back from the Afri-
can coast. The filtration of white blood
contributes its share; but only its share.
There was no hope for the negro until he
did ii himself as a negro. He has here. Drill
discipline, capacity for organization, for
managing a vast machine are all present
in this institution. Think what it means TO
keep LOO students and 123 teachers, work
ers and office staff all at work in over fifty
buildings, plying for profit and training
score of trades, running two big farms,
building ali the time and carrying these
students through not only the usual studies
from primary TO high school, but also Civ
ing practical instruction in farming. stock,
all lesser branches, bees. poultry, etc.
All is not as we would have it. Tuskegee
is not trim. Much is at as loose ends as in
a growing factory, whose business is sizes
too large for its plant. But il is efficient.
Here is a detail. leaning is hard here,
heavy grades and less road building than
one would expect; but of tWenty-fOur
mules, fine lot whose backs l examined,
only two had collar or saddle gals. and but
two or three more were twitchy. The print
ing presses are not clean one likes 10
see them. the rollers are bit pockmarked;
in typesetting the spacing might be better,
the sheets are not always folded with care;
but here, too, the work is more like a
driving Job plant whose foreman owns an
interest than the careful work of fastidi-
Gus establishments and the Tuskegee print
ing press, after all, is not printing Essex
press issues or rivaling Plantin.
Commencement at Tuskegee is OF a piece
with all the rest. Hens cackle chickens
cheep and roosters crow because they are
1
sets an unwilling hen in public-to demon
strate as her diploma thesis how hen-keep-
ing can be profitable. The boy who has in
vented new reversing gear gets up steam
on the stage and runs a little engine TO
show it. You are close 10 the actual all the
time. 1t works as always. The buildings
designed by Mr.. Wallace A. Rayfield,
graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, have sense Of proportion, and
an easy skill in using brick. Lovelier wall
surface than this Alabama Tuskegee brick.
irregular. ranging in color from a light
salmon to purplsh red you could not wish
to see Foundry brick is not lin it," by
comparison. Music has here a most sugges-
tive development. The arts have begun TO
flourish under these handwork conditions
as in the medieval monasteries have al
ready cited.
Little there is in existing education from
the voluble and vOciferous school of a Mo-
mammalian Molah on a dirt floor up TO the
modern university here and abroad which
have not personally examined.
Tuskegee is of all the most overpower-
| ing Work like this needs money. pots. lots.
! floods of money. Give il. AT Tuskegee you
can give a boy or girl year of this school