ck world with adequate standards of human culture and
lofty ideals of life. It was not enough that the teachers of teachers
should be trained in technical normal methods; they must also, so far
as possible, be broad-minded, cultured men and women, to scatter
civilization among a people whose ignorance was not simply of letters,
but of life itself.

It can thus be seen that the work of education in the South began with
higher institutions of training, which threw off as their foliage
common schools, and later industrial schools, and at the same time
strove to shoot their roots ever deeper toward college and university
training. That this was an inevitable and necessary development,
sooner or later, goes without saying; but there has been, and still is,
a question in many minds if the natural growth was not forced, and if
the higher training was not either overdone or done with cheap and
unsound methods. Among white Southerners this feeling is widespread
and positive. A prominent Southern journal voiced this in a recent
editorial.

"The experiment that has been made to give the colored students
classical training has not been satisfactory. Even though many were
able to pursue the course, most of them did so in a parrot-like way,
learning what was taught, but not seeming to appropriate the truth and
import of their instruction, and graduating without sensible aim or
valuable occupation for their future. The whole scheme has proved a
waste of time, efforts, and the money of the state."

While most fair-minded men would recognize this as extreme and
overdrawn, still without doubt many are asking, Are there a sufficient
number of Negroes ready for college training to warrant the
undertaking? Are not too many students prematurely forced into this
work? Does it not have the effect of dissatisfying the young Negro
with his environment? And do these graduates succeed in real life?
Such natural questions cannot be evaded, nor on the other hand must a
Nation naturally skeptical as to Negro ability assume an unfavorable
answer without careful inquiry and patient openness to conviction. We
must not forget that most Americans answer all queries regarding the
Negro a priori, and that the least that human courtesy can do is to
listen to evidence.

The advocates of the higher education of the Negro would be the last to
deny the incompleteness and glaring defects of the present system: too
many institutions have attempted t