reat movements: first, the best of the existent colleges must
not be abandoned to slow atrophy and death, as the tendency is to-day;
secondly, systematic attempt must be made to organize secondary
education. Below the colleges and connected with them must come the
normal and high schools, judiciously distributed and carefully manned.
In no essential particular should this system of common and secondary
schools differ from educational systems the world over. Their chief
function is the quickening and training of human intelligence; they can
do much in the teaching of morals and manners incidentally, but they
cannot and ought not to replace the home as the chief moral teacher;
they can teach valuable lessons as to the meaning of work in the world,
but they cannot replace technical schools and apprenticeship in actual
life, which are the real schools of work. Manual training can and ought
to be used in these schools, but as a means and not as an end--to
quicken intelligence and self-knowledge and not to teach carpentry; just
as arithmetic is used to train minds and not skilled accountants.

Whence, now, is the money coming for this educational system? For the
common schools the support should come from local communities, the State
governments, and the United States Government; for secondary education,
support should come from local and State governments and private
philanthropy; for the colleges, from private philanthropy and the United
States Government. I make no apology for bringing the United States
Government in thus conspicuously. The General Government must give aid
to Southern education if illiteracy and ignorance are to cease
threatening the very foundations of civilization within any reasonable
time. Aid to common school education could be appropriated to the
different States on the basis of illiteracy. The fund could be
administered by State officials, and the results and needs reported upon
by United States educational inspectors under the Bureau of Education.
The States could easily distribute the funds so as to encourage local
taxation and enterprise and not result in pauperizing the communities.
As to higher training, it must be remembered that the cost of a single
battle-ship like the Massachusetts would endow all the distinctively
college work necessary for Negroes during the next half-century; and it
is without doubt true that the unpaid balance from bounties withheld
from Negroes in the Civil War would, w