The Hazel Green herald. [volume] (Hazel Green, Wolfe County, Ky.) 1885-19??, 1909-11-11
Statistics and Facts.

COhOOOO Will IhC OlllOLChO SldbbCo
of people in each of several states,
the position assigned to Kentucky
in the scale of literacy was unbe-
lievable. Kentuckians who had
had such experience, we're disposed
to doubt the truth of the state
ment; others than Kentuckians
voiced similar doubt, and even
went so far as to say that the av-
erage of intelligence and education
in Kentucky is not inferior to that
of some of the northern states
noted for their educational sys-
tenn. Finally, the editor of the
Southern School Journal, being
harassed by doubt and distressed
by what seemed to him a misrep-
resentation of the condition of the
state, wrote the United States
Commissioner of Education for
information concerning the COM
parative literacy of the several
states of the union. A letter
from the Bureau of Education,
Department of the Interior, at
Washington, bearing date of Feb
ruary %, 1908, and signed by Low
lex Pierce, chief clerk, was receiv-
ed, and read as follows:
'In response to your request of
the 18th INST, | am instructed by
the Commissioner of Education
to send you, under separate cover,
some chapters relative to the per-
centage of illiteracy in the United
States. As this office does not
collect statistics of this character,
it's publications upon the subject
are dependent entirely on the fig
ures furnished by the United
States Census office. There are
no data on this subject available
later than the census report for
1900"
In estimating the general intel
ligence of state or nation, in our
Judgment it is impossible to reach
a just conclusion if guided solely
by the census-taker's report. The
question asked by the census-taker
is, Can you read and writer" The
person who can scrawI some HER
oglyphic and afterward interpret
it as ''Johu Smith" or "Bill Jones"
is pronounced by the statistical
record of the census-taker as "a
literate;" a learned individual.
And, so far as the record will
show, this man who could merely
write his name and could possibly
not read as we'll as most seven
year-old children, is the equal in
attainment, in judgment, and in
scholarship of the well-informed
business man, the professional
man, or the author. By the sta
tistlcs they are equally literate,
equally desirable citizens, equally
competent as wielders of the bal
lot, equally capable of deciding
the nations destiny; and those
who depend upon the figures in
statistical reports will so regard
them and will fail to recognize
the individual ability or disability
of the persons thus classed to-
gether, and will fail to note the
ease with which such figures can
be "juggled" to prove certain state
ments.
The statistics are equally unfair
to the illiterate. There are midi
viduals unable to read and write,
as vicious as the worshiper at the
statistical shrine would have us
believe them to be; but there are
others, deprived in their youth of
the most meager advantages, aud
80 pressed by circumstances after
maturity that they have failed to
take advantage of opportunities
for such training, who are igno-
rant mainly of book lore, and are
not in any sense depraved or vi.
cious. The writer has in mind one
of the heaviest taxpayers in one
of the Blue Grass counties; a man
who lived to the age of seventy
two years, and never knew how to |
write his name. By untiring en-
ergy, good judgment and frugality,
he had earned competency. His
three sons and one daughter we're
given advantages their father new
or had. Kentucky at that time
was not paying $500 per capita
for the education of the children.
Schoolhouses were built by popu-
lar subscription, and teachers were
paid, largely, in the same manner.
This man largely furnished the
material, and paid the carpenters
for the erection Of a schoolhouse.
and afterward supplemented the
salary in an amount sufficient to
obtain the best talent available.
that not only his own children.
but every other child in the dis
trict, might derive the benefit af-
fOrded bv such inatructi.,D Til,