Norwich bulletin., 1910-04-20
FOR PRACTICAL TEACHING.

In an address made at Birming- ham, Ala, to the largest number of teachers that ever met together in that state. Booker T. Washington crit icised the present day educational sys- tenn as follows:
 We want to see to it that education is made to concern itself with the common, ordinary things of life and not with the extraordinary things of life.
 'I will guarantee to say that the av- craze negro child in Alabama hears more about the city of Pekin in China or the desert of Sahara in Africa than that child does about the kind of pigs or the kind of cows, or the kind of vegetables that will best grow in the community where that child is. have seen many negro girls who have learned in the, school how to locate successfully on an artificial globe the city of Calcutta. or the Congro Free State, but who could not locate for; the life of them on an actual dinner table the proper place for the meat and vegeta bles, or the proper place for the carving knife and fork.
 'I am sure that it will pay three fourtls of the teachers who are here gathered to dismiss their school for a week after their return home,S so far as he old style of teaching is con- cerned, and let teachers and pupils occupy themselves in cleaning and beautifying the inside of the school room, in whitewashing or painting the outside of the school room, in putting the palings on the broken down fence in putting new hinges on the gate, in cleaning up all trash and rubbish around the school house, in planting some flowers and vines and vegetables near the school house. It will pay them to occupy a week in putting in the old broken window panes. in mak- ing the desks and ta ab1es in the school room attractive and decent, in teach ing the boys and girls how to keer themselves clean, to clean their teeth to properly patch and darn theil clothing.
 "Education should fit one, as have stated, to live successfully in the en- vironments in which he is placed. Tn our case, the negro child in the south is surrounded by another race of g different color. with different his tory. We are not exceptional in that respect There is scarcely any portion of the world that is occupied wholly by one single race. Where two races different in language different ir color, different in antecedents dwell together. it is mighty important that each child be taught that he must be liberal, broad. generous, sympathetic in relation to the other race. Nothing would more quickly dam and fettel and injure for all time the negro child than for him to grow up with a spirit of racial hatred in Alabama. Teach him on every occasion that love is better than hatred, that sympathy and good will are better than selfshness and i'll will. Teach the negro child that the nine millions of black people in our southland are getting on better in proportion to their numbers than any nine millions of black people ir any part of the world who are sur rounded by so large a number of white people. There is no other man, with 8 white face, who is more patient, more long suffering and more interested ir the elevation of the negro than is true of the white man in Alabama"
 pr. Washington recognizes that util- ity and a spirit of kind1iness if per- sisted in will elevate and save any race.