The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1903-12-12
ooMpuLsoRY EDUCATION.

AT the annual meeting of the Association of
School Commissioners and Examiners of
Maryland, held in the State Normal School
building last week, much interest centered
around resolution which was offered by Mr..
e. Stanley Gary, Of Baltimore county, pro-
vidipg for compulsory education.
After the resolution had been read Mr.. Gary
in discussing it said that the higher education
of negroes tended to make them worthless and
less desirable for such services as are natural
to the colored race.
II desire to make myself distinctly under
Stood" he said. II am in favor of primary
education for all negroes. After they get TIL
have no objection to them going to Harvard
or elsewhere. The one great need in this
State is compulsory primary education. do
not believe the State should expend one cent
toward advanced education until every child
between the ages of and IL has been provided
proper school accommodations and required
to make use of them, except so far as may be
necessary to prepare teachers for the schools.
| cannot conceive of any higher or more direct
duty of our Board of Education or the several
county school boards. If there is to be sound
Commonwealth and a healthy community
growing up around US, capable of weighing
properly questions OF public concern, we must
eliminate ignorance and bring every growing
child into the educated class. The lack of APP
probation of the necessity of simple schooling
should be overcome by the proper use of State
authority.
"Our local conditions as l see them, are
fret, the great difficulty of transportation
along our water bordering counties where the
rivers make long detours necessary. would
overcome this by permanent boarding schools,
where children could live for a short time each
year at mere nominal expense. This would
necessitate State aid, but in no way, in my
judgment, could public money be spent better
or where it would reap richer harvest than in
the advancement of the general welfare of the
people.
Another plan am sure could be arranged
whereby the Federal Government could aid
without expense to it. The rural mail service
now covers large part of the State and in
many places its schedule could be so arranged
that the mail-carriers could carry several chill
dren to the schools.
Another point is the question of the edu-
cation of the negro. | am honestly convinced
that primary education to these people is the
only way we can make them good citizens: /
am strongly opposed to giving them public
education beyond the primary course, as
more worthless part of our community does
not exist than the over-educated negro of our
cities and towns. He knows just enough to
spoil him for useful life, where his gifts as
God gave them to him could be used to the
greatest advantage to himself and those around
him.
"To overeducate is to ruin, not only the
negro, but the white child, as it only gives
them insight into life way beyond their
mental abilities to attain, making them dis
satisfied, unhappy, whose whole life has been
crowded and ruined by an education that they
had not the ability to use. In this great Re-
public it has become the fashion for parents
not to be satisfied with the professions of their
fathers, but they must be moved up, so to
speak, to higher seats, taking no thought of
the material to be fashioned, with the result
that there is a beautiful model wrought in
inferior and selfdestructive MATERIAL