The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-04-10
ADDRESS DELIVERED BY VIM. F. FEAGIN

liam r. F'eagin was the first speaker It
 last nights session of the Alabama Edu- oational association, held at the orpheum
 pr. J. II. Phillips. His address in part
 foliows
 Someone has said that God first made
 idiots for practice and then made-school
 teachers. The immemorial tradition that
 school teachers are impractical, one
 sided, deluded, misguided, pitiable cranks
 has blocked the progress of education all
 these years The world has thought of
 us too, as an ilI-tempered class.
 Let me say that any fair survey of
 what has been accomplished along edu-
 cational lines in Alabama will show that
 progress in this field has been remark
 able when interpreted in the light of
 conditions that have attended her his tory. Her wonderful natural and mate
 rial resources have made her progress in recent years most phenomenal and have added to the complexity of the prob lem of adjusting her educational scheme to her expanding wealth and ideals
 Again, education like theology and law, has always been so circumscribed by precedent that the problem of keeping
 her educational machinery apace with
 her industrial institutions has been fur tner complicated.
 We must remember that education is
 an corresponding, mobile active, living, l, dynamic thing, and that the machinery
 and the policies of yesterday must un-
 dergo the white-hot temperature of pub
 lie opinion and criticism, public need and
 national good. if it is to serve efficiently
 the world in it's day. And it is the veriest ! display Of selfish concet on the one hand
 or confession of the grossest ignorance on the other for us as teachers and
 school officials to be satisfied with any
 thing short of the most efficient system
 that can be worked out in the light of educational history and progress.
 The newest word in education today is
 survey and I am going to ask you now
 to join me, if you please, in a survey of the real conditions that prevail in Ala
 bama' in order that we may have some, definite -,Goliy ietiens ss.begsr the need for
 more revenue.
 Ih1nk 1t over as we will, the funda-
 mental condition of improving our schools
 is first of all better teaching force h. stead of q barren profession, teaching
 must become real calling, service, if
 you please, much more diginfied in char
 acter, much more permanent in tenure,
 and much more remunerative in returns.
 This means better salaries, longer
 terms, higher social station, and the utter
 rout and undoing If the itinerant tramp
 teacher Better salaries-yes. Any ex-
 haustive stuoy of teachers salaries will | tDaxr h.Iy heaf.
 and purposes decreased since the begin hing of this century. A position which 15
 years ago paid s60 is paying in purchas- } ing power today the equivalent of S4i6 } Dr. Robert C. Brooks, the executive sec
 retary of the National Educa tional asso- ciation committee, which prepared re- port for the United States bureau of edu- cation, has shown that based upon prices
 In lSyI, wholesale prices in 1911 had in , creased A per cent over the year 19O7 . while retail prices in the same time had , increased 50 per cent, and that there has been total increase in retail prices
 since 1877 of 62 per cent. Suffice it to say that if we cannot fill our schoolhouses with better teachers and better paid l teachers, we might as well nail up the doors.
 "A second Fundamental need that more revenue will relieve, is better attendance. ) For all these years we have relied upon voluntary patronage, the whims and . caprices Of parents, and We have vivid l picture of its results in our annual rec ) ords. Of the 727,297 pupils of school age 3 in Alabama, 42S. 625 were enrolled in our
 public schools last year, with an average
 daily attendance of 259,76S. Looking a lit
 tie more carefully into these figures, we find that one out of every four of our White children was not in school for a single day, and the three enrolled at
 tended for an equivalent of only s5 of the lS3 days that the schools were open and that one out of every two of our nee%o children was not in school for a single day, and the ane enrolled attended only 6l days out of the 97 days the schools were open to him. These figures go a long way toyard explaining our standing , In the report of the Russell Sage founda-
 tion, which has been published from one end of the continent to the other, to our own embarrassment and humiliation. : T have an unbounded faith that the very slow but steady progress we are making from year to year in the light of an enlightened public sentiment will soon-
 CT or later, somewhere and sometime solve this problem for us In fact if
 Alabama should continue to decrease her 5 fllfteracy ir the coming decades by just
 the same number she has reduced 1t in :. the last census period from 1900 to 1910, : we would get rid of our illterates in just 60 years. but to depend upon such loHk ucldySu Itlel, l tHlIik you Will agree, Is suicidal to the state and fatal to children unfortunate enough to have irr different, sordid or grasping parents There are still those who would ques-
 ton the states right to compel attend
 ance. The state has no right to levy and collect the three-mlll constitutional tax
 and make additional appropriations for
 the purpose of educating her children and
 then permit that purpose to be defeated by indifferent and selfish parents. The
 parent has rights-yes. but the helpless child has rights too, society has rights and the state has rights. No one denies that the state has the right to compel , the parent to feed and c!othe his child and to compel the parent to fight for his
 country and shoot him if he should de- 7 sert. No one questions the right of the
 state to carry the law-breaiing child to
 the reformatory or to the jail to protect
 society. Has not the state as much right 2 to carry the child to the schoolhouss to } save him from that reformatory or that ; jail and to train him to be a producer , rather than a consumer in his relations ? to society?
 '1t is true that we would not have : enough schcolhouses and teachers to take } 'care of the increased attendance should