Qualitative Aspects of Negro Education

Abstract

The implication of the concept of quality is gradation, or degrees of fitness, and, therefore, desirability with reference to the values involved. For example, best is more desirable than good because it is more adequately fitted to the situation. That is what best means. Right is more desirable than wrong for the same reason. It is this functional connotation of the concept of quality which the writer has in mind in this discussion. The other concept which calls for clarification in this connection is education, but it is hardly possible to formulate a single definition which will cover satisfactorily all that is being done and called education in American schools today. Any good dictionary will give several definitions in order to make sure that the field of meaning has been adequately covered. Perhaps one of the best ways to get an adequate idea of what education means in American culture today is to get a cross-sectional view of what is being done in the various types of schools. Such a picture will reveal objectives and activities ranging all the way from the ambitious aim of the philosopher who attempts to impart knowledge of principles, sufficient to enable one to interpret correctly the meaning of the cosmic process, and of human life in relation to that process to the more moderate aim of the dietitian whose objective is to prepare one to cook a good meal, or the beauty culturist, who seeks to enable one to make curly hair straight and straight hair curly. With such a wide range of aims and activities listed under the concept of education one can define in only vague and general terms. John Dewey has defined education as the continuous reconstruction of experience. This is vague and general enough, for it makes of education a never-ending process, involving, perhaps, the individual's total environment. For the purpose of this discussion the writer is thinking of it as the process in which specific knowledge is acquired and skills developed which enable the possessor to do certain things in a better way than would otherwise be possible. One is hardly satisfied with such a definition, however, even though it appears to fit what is being done in the schools, for it leaves out of the picture, or unnoticed in it, an element or factor which has, it appears to the writer, significant bearing on one phase of the qualitative consideration of education. Emotion is neither knowledge nor skill, but if the educative process does not do something to the emotions or the feeling resources of the individual, one may, with reason, question the value of the education, when looked at through the eyes of the social thinker. Mere knowledge and skill may be used to destroy rather than help people. What Germany is doing for Europe at the present time is a good illustration of that fact. It is important therefore, that those possessing this knowledge and skill shall have social interests and sentiments sufficiently strong to insure