The Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education: A Critical Comment

Abstract

As one reads the contributions of the different authors in this Yearbook one has the discouraging feeling which commonly comes from the study of nearly all the current writings in the field of education. There is an abstractness, an absence of tangible planning, a lack of indication of the direction in which reform is to move if it is to be effective which leave the reader with the conviction that there is a sharp difference between the ability to recognize problems and the genius to solve them. One author of an article in this Yearbook wants federal money for Negro schools, another wants the teaching profession lifted to a new level, another wants political inefficiency and corruption eliminated from American life, another would appeal to the democratic desires of the people of this country to improve conditions-as if the people really were ideal democrats-another wants the curriculum improved; another wants rural schools consolidated. Mixed with these positive demands there is a great deal of complaint about present conditions. Negro schoolhouses are described as dog houses, Negroes are described as victims of the rashness of reconstruction or as suppressed by the assumed superiority of white people. Complaint becomes at some points bitter and even vituperative. Certainly there is much justification for complaint and much need for new idealism in civilized communities. Taken one by one, most of the contentions in this Yearbook are convincing. After reading an article one almost decides to go out and carry on a vigorous campaign for the measures advocated. On sober second thought, however, one sees that most of the panaceas suggested will not accomplish what the authors want. There is one all-pervasive condition which none of the articles seem to stress, that is human inertia. Why do most of the authors fail to recognize the fact that after all the only way in which improvement will really be achieved is through the proper employment of existing people and equipment? Why does the world have to wait until politicians become angels or dog houses are replaced by palaces? If the Negroes, or the white people, of this country are going to improve education there will have to be a start made from the point where the country now is. Why is it not possible for the Negroes to see that they ought to begin, not next month or next year, but this very afternoon to undertake the tasks which lie nearest at hand? Why is it difficult to see that Negroes will have to improve what Negroes are now doing if the high ambitions which are eloquently set forth in this Yearbook are to be attained? Is it not very doubtful whether Negroes or their white neighbors would know what to do with a well-equipped school if one