The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-04-25

Now that the question of illiteraey in Alabama is being seriously considered, one feels particularly interested in a school that. for almost two decades has been earnestly working on this very matter and that has done much to prevent more illiteracy in the state. This is the school known as the Southern In- dustrial institute at Camp Hill.
 The history of the school is inseparably connected with the life work of a splendid man, Lyman Ward Seventeen years ago Mir. Ward became vitally interested in the subject of illiteracy in Alabama, na- tive white illiteracy. He was a pioneer in the work that Is now being agitated all through the southern states. Indeed. one now hears so much of this work that he thinks little of it. Mr. Ward has de- voted r years to it's study and better still to hard. hard work to improve con ditons by training and educating country girls and boys
 To realize what that means, one must do more than compare statistics on i- literacy. He must recall memory of some old man whom he has known, whose life has been nothing but toll and who might have lived a broad, useful life, improving his entire community in
 
 ability that education would have given him. He must remember some boy who is advancing to that same life of toll and narrow existence, with no comprehension of what his life might be, and then this agitation for the education of these boys and of such girls has some meaning for him, and figures on illiteracy and attend- anco at schools become the story of chil- dren who are not having a fair chance. Of course, there are those whose natures do not demand nor crave better things, but they are few, and for the sake of their state and community they ought to be educated into higher ideals so that there may be none of that class. There are those, it is true; but the others, those whc know what it is to suffer because they are uneducated, who realize that they are lincouth and Incapable of ex- pressing their better selves in full rounded lives, who feel their handicap and their inability to cope with all that confronts then-those are the ones who havo silently brought about the crusade against iliteracy, unproSltable farming, isolated living, and all that makes coun- try life unattractive.
 One pities so deeply the old person who Is physically crippled, and the child who is beginning his life with some phy eical defect; but that is really not nearly so great misfortune s is that of hav- ing one's spiritual and mental develop
 
 the work of a man who is trying to give these girls and boys their chance to de- velop the powers of mind soul and body that are already theirs, we should give 1t more than passing thought and shoulc judge 1t as being a fine, strong na- tures striving to make lives grow into something better and more complete than they could have ever been without that help.
 For example. these are some of the people with whom MT Ward has come into contact since the school was founded. It was cases of this kind that caused it's existence. Not long ago a father and mother drove to Camp Hill from g. distahce of 10 or 12 miles. The school nearest their home is across fields and through woods, with five barbed wire fences between. The next school is three miles away and there their children at- tend. The oldest child is 15 years old, and the teacher had told him she was not sufficiently far advanced to teach him any longer These parents are poor. and the question of educating their chill dren, even through the grammar grades, is no small consideration; yet what help arc they getting in their efforts to pro- vide for the education of theif boys and girls? In that community there are more than 5G children who are unable to attend school, because of the long dis tances they have to walk. Where tho children were situated so that they might attend school, they found very lit- tlc inducement to go for who can deny that the poorer country schools, particu- larly 15 or even five years ago offered very, very little in the way of education