Peabody funds. In the case of Fisk University the deficit is met by contributions of Christian and philanthropic people through the American Missionary Association or given directly to the university. Other bodies interested in the work of educating the negro are the American Baptist Home Mission Society, which supports many institutions; the Presbyterian Church; the Society of Friends; the Congregational churches of the North; the Methodist Episcopal Church South. From these funds of religious corporations; from the proceeds of the invested funds of the Peabody, and especially of the Slater fund; from the fund in some States arising from the sale of lands given by the act of Congress granting lands in 1862, and, in all the States insisting on the separation of the two races, a proportional share of the fund annually given by the act of August 30, 1890–have been supported the independent schools for the education of the negro, with the exception of certain normal schools conducted by the States and State scholarships created in quasi-independent institutions. Lightly, however, as the entire cost of education is made to bear upon the colored student, he seems unable to meet it, and several expedients have been devised, two of which stand forth prominently, at least are of such a nature as to admit of being stated in a general way. These are the creation of scholarships and of labor and student aid funds, and it would seem that almost every institution has a fund at its disposal to help needy students of merit. Frequently the beneficiary is required to perform some kind of service for the amount given, while in some cases, as at Berea College, a rebate of $3 a term is allowed to 73 students of good standing. At Roger Williams and at Fisk universities the student is required to contract that he will labor one hour a day for the institution, or pay $2 in addition to the charge for board and tuition. As an instance of the necessity of the situation, the case of Storer College, at Harpers Ferry, W. Va., may be cited. About fifteen years ago it was suggested that from the beauty of its situation it might be practicable to use it as a summer resort. One of the teachers made a beginning. Visitors came, were charmed by the surroundings, pleased with the bearing of the students who waited on them, and sent for their friends, until several hundred guests came annually. The earnings of the buildings are about $900, besides "bringing into the market certain portions of the school farm." In the same line is the suggestion of the principal of the Alabama State Normal and Industrial School, who, after remarking that meritorions young people who would be willing to exchange their labor for board are turned away daily, observes that "A cotton factory or some other industry established near institutions of this [his] kind could utilize every extra hour of students, and by some humane arrangement could keep running every hour of the day, a source of income to the projectors and an aid to poor students."

The scholarships are mostly in the form of State-supported students, and merely entitle to free tuition and lodging. Others are merely scholarship funds. Such is the King scholarship fund of $5,000, the Cassedy scholarship fund of $10,000, and others of equal or less amount possessed by Atlanta University. Biddle University has a fund of $6,000, raised in Scotland, the interest of which is to be used to aid young men preparing for mission work in Africa.

The difficulty encountered by the colored student in regard to money has been partially overcome by the gift of Daniel Hand, esq., of $1,000,000 for the education of "such colored people as are needy and indigent." The fund is administered by the American Missionary Society, which, in view of the comparatively inadequate sum at its disposal, has felt the necessity of concentrating its resources, as the trustees of the two other great educational funds for the education of the people of the Southern States have felt the necessity of concentrating theirs.

Of 75 institutions reporting their resources of support, there were receiving aid from (some counted twice but some not appearing): American Missionary Association, 19; American Baptist Home Mission Society, 10; Freedmen's Aid Society Methodist Episcopal Church, 9; Methodist Epis copal Church, South 1; Presbyterian Church, 7; Protestant Episcopal Church, 2; Congregational Church, 2; Friends, 1; endowments, 4; State or municipality, 16.

As at Wayland Seminary.

ED 93-98

THE EDUCATION OF THE COLORED RACE IS ALMOST ENTIRELY ELEMENTARY.

The height of the general intellectual development of the masses is conditioned by the affluence or paucity of abstract ideas current among them, at least by the ability to quickly acquire such ideas. Unfortunately for the negro his former condition gave him no opportunity to acquire a great variety of ideas. The relation of master and slave, speaking generally, in a sparcely inhabited country gave no opening to the negro to obtain a higher order of ideas than his condition required. Thus the negro was not trained to take on rapidly that form of enlightenment called culture when the opportunity came. The school days of the negro child are not preceded by centuries of inheritable stimulus derived from racial, and, as a special case, from ancestral exertion, nor is he as yet surrounded by the refining influences of even a commonplace home. Voodoo incantations are his only natural literature and the permanent literature of the English language, still speaking for the body of the race, is without his present sphere. It therefore happens that his education has been elementary.

Many institutions for the education of the negro have high sounding names, but, with several exceptions, they are not appropriate. Prominent among these exceptions is Howard University of Washington City. No school for the colored race has better facilities for higher education. It has a collegiate, and with the exception of the post-graduate, all the professional departments of an American university. But by far the most important advantage it has over other institutions of its kind is that Washington has had for many years a very efficient system of public schools for colored children, which now enroll about 14,000 pupils. It is, therefore, natural to suppose, did any general desire exist among the rising generations of colored persons to secure a higher culture of the mind than that offered by the elementary school, irrespective of any pocuniary advantage to be derived therefrom, that the collegiate department of Howard University would be filled, especially since the tuition is free and the university buildings practically within the city limits. Yet the attendance in the college department of this national university for the African is small, being only 7 per cent of the whole attendance of 517. If any effect has been produced by the city system of public schools upon the curriculum of Howard University, it is shown by the absence of an elementary department in that institution. However it must be noted that, though the collegiate department is so neglected, the professional departments are comparatively well filled. In the normal classes are 36 per cent of the attendance, in the medical 26 per cent, while the departments of theology and law have each more students than the college department proper of this university so well supported by Congress, so well officered, and especially, from the educational side, so well located.'

The same phenomenon is shown by other colleges for the higher education of the colored race, and it seems warrantable to say that even were the race as a body at this moment capable of higher education, its poverty would not permit it, or any considerable portion of it, to spend the time necessary to acquire such an education, and that to educate to a higher degree any considerable portion of the race that portion must be supported as the students in colored theological institutions are supported. In 1885 an inquiry made of 23 of the leading institutions for the colored race developed the fact that fewer than 5 per cent of the students in those institutions were in what is called classical studies, including those preparing for college. An examination of the character of the requisites for admission to many of the more or less grandly named institutions for the education of the colored race shows that practically there are none, except the prerequisite of ability to read in a low grade reader or familiarity with the fundamental operations of arithmetic. The elementary English course, says one university, is a necessity, as the large majority of the students coming to the university have not had the opportunity to ground themselves in the common English branches.

'As far as the law and medical departments are concerned, this remark may be vitiated to some extent, as those departments, it is understood, have white students upon their rosters.

In 75 institutions for the education of the colored race, from which special reports have been received, there are nearly 20,000 students in nonprofessional courses, not quite 4 per cent of whom are reported as being of collegiate grade, 35 per cent as being of secondary grade, and 61 per cent as of elementary grade. It has been remarked above that the absence of an elementary department at Howard University may be attributed to the very efficient work of the system of public colored schools of Washington City; for the constant complaint of the universities and colleges for the colored is that they are obliged to instruct their pupils in the elementary branches, showing that if those pupils have been taught in the public schools they have been poorly taught or have failed to profit by the teaching. The probability is that the child has been poorly taught, and the whole effort of the management of two of the three great funds for the education of the populations of the South is the training of home teachers. If the efforts of the trustees of these great funds are supported by a State system of examination adequate to prevent persons more necessitous than able from being foisted upon the children, the colleges and universities for the colored race may dispense with their elementary classes, though probably with a loss of the moiety, or even more, of their present attendance. However this may be, those who support the higher named institutions for the education of the colored race are fully convinced not only of the negro's desire and of his capacity for culture, but also of the necessity. The only obstacles they can see are illiteracy and poverty, which they are striving to overcome by supporting institutions in the South as shown above.

The great majority of the students at these institutions, though pursuing an elementary course of instruction, have one of two objects in view. These are the desire to become a teacher or a minister of the gospel. In every catalogue of an institution for the higher education of the colored race there is to be found either a normal or a minister's course, most frequently both. As for the so-called normal course, it has been very accurately stated by the Hartshorn College that it is but the beginning of an education, and the instruction in the minister's course is greatly hampered by the lack of a sound elementary education. In the case of the institutions supported by the Baptist Home Mission Society, it was decided in 1892 that the instruction in theology, except in the case of the Richmond Theological Seminary, be restricted to a minister's course especially designed for those lacking an education that would permit them to take up the studies of a theological seminary proper. Yet the catalogue of the Richmond Seminary shows but 27 per cent of its 59 students in the regular theological course. In the Gammon Theological Seminary, with a single curriculum which is lower than the theological course proper of the Richmond Seminary though higher than the minister's course of that institution, about half the students are unclassified or are in special courses.

The best and highest education given the negro, as far as numbers go, is offered in the ubiquitous normal course or department. This course is merely concerned with the elements of a plain English mathematical education. The effort there is to make the student as far as possible catch the principle involved in the subject under consideration rather than to memorize the printed page. Too frequently, perhaps, the carly training of the student has not made him sufficiently familiar with the subject-matter of the elementary branches to enable him to grasp their essence, but, notwithstanding this drawback, a thoroughness is given to the instruction that is elsewhere lacking.

The length of the normal course can not be given with any special accuracy. What is called the normal course generally requires three years of study to complete. Very frequently four years are devoted to the course, and occasionally two. In fact, the arrangement given by the Avery Normal Institute, or Straight University, seems to be practically that of the great majority of the institutions with various names for the education of the colored people. At the Avery Institute the curriculum begins with the fourth grade and the normal course with the ninth grade and continues on through the twelfth and final grade; thus the institution is assimilable to a graded system of public schools. At Straight University the normal

course also begins with the ninth grade, but the eleventh grade, or year, is called the middle year of the normal course, and the twelfth grade is called the senior year. Instead of grades preparatory, normal and subnormal courses are sometimes established. Still another form of the normal course is shown by the curriculum of this Southern university, where the "normal department contains the high school, the freshman year of the college course, and an addition of a course of pedigogics, with an emphasis on practice teaching." Very frequently the normal course is or may be used as a preparatory department, while at the branch normal college of the Arkansas Industrial University the normal course is stated to be fully equivalent to the first two years of a regular college course; and further, that it is the course which most of the students content themselves with taking.

It may be a matter of surprise that institutions necessarily conducted so economically as those for the education of the colored race should not be more economical in the variety of the courses they offer; in short, that they have not consolidated their teaching. It is quite evident that the normal course at its best is merely a secondary or preparatory course of study which aims at general intellectual culture rather than professional expertness, for it has very frequently elementary Latin and Greek, which are distinctively preparatory studies. For the purposes of comparison the second and third years of a normal course may be so arranged as to bring out the points of similarity it has with the preparatory course of the same institution.

The studies of the normal course are determined by the character of the examinations for State certificates to teach. But as Latin and probably other studies of the normal course given above are not pursued far enough to give the pupil any serviceable teaching knowledge of them, it would seem that they have been introduced for the special purpose of culture, and certainly there is no better way to teach "technical” grammar than through the grammar of a synthetic language, such as that of ancient Rome.

Motives of culture, however, are not the ruling ones that induce so many to attend the normal schools or departments of the class of institutions under review. Completion of a course of study in such a school entitles the holder to a certificate and the course itself is especially arranged to meet the requirements of the State examiners. Though these institutions inculcate the elements of an education, they may therefore be looked upon as professional schools. Indeed, to illustrate this conclusion, it will suffice to quote from the catalogue of the school whose programme has just been given, where it is said that the normal course has special reference to

preparing the student to become a successful teacher, and that it is on that account that most of the students naturally turn to it. A university candidly states that a majority of its students attend its courses with the expectation of becoming teachers for a longer or shorter period.

It is clear that the opportunity opened by State aid and northern philanthropists to mature colored persons to gain entry into a field of usefulness of quasi-gentility at a small cost in money and a considerable expenditure of time is one that is particularly charming and has great effect in filling the normal schools and departments.1 "Parents, patrons, and students," says the Hartshorn Memorial College, "must remember that the completion of the normal course is but the beginning of education. Well-educated women, prepared for the best service of life, are the product of more extended and broader training. It is the desire of this college to develop the higher courses as speedily as possible. But instruction in advanced courses can be given so far only and so fast as students are prepared to receive it.

"For the successful prosecution of advanced studies, four conditions are--each and all-absolutely essential:

"(1) There must be natural ability and the love of learning on the part of the student. Not a few do well and achieve a good standing in the common-school studies, who, for lack of ability or aspiration, utterly fail in the higher.

"(2) There must be careful instruction in the elements and a mastery of them sufficient to lay a good foundation for after progress. Many pupils pass over the lower courses with so much carelessness that they fail, and for lack of preparation must needs fail as soon as they touch the higher.

"(3) Time is requisite. For the primary and grammar school studies, the normal, the college preparatory, and the collegiate many years are required. To complete long courses of study pupils must begin early and remain in school continuously. Those who begin at 16 or 18 years of age have not time to complete advanced

courses.

If the par

"(4) Means also for the payment of moderate expenses are required. ents or patrons of a student count their duty done when she becomes able to teach a country school of low grade, advancement beyond the elements becomes for her impossible.

"The pressing needs of the people wait for women of broader education and completer discipline. To meet this need Hartshorn Memorial College was founded. The time when ability, aspiration for learning, early training, and the requisite means shall meet together and render higher education possible ought not to linger. The colored people themselves should see that the time does not delay."

The foregoing remarks show the lack of higher education among the African race in America. This is particularly unfortunate for this portion of the community since it, more than any other, requires a body of cultured persons within itself to oppose those adventurous persons who, by reason of their pleasing theories or ingenious arguments, are not apt to be the best of advisers, and in a stable government are always bridled by the calm wisdom of a small but all-powerful class of thoughtful people. As before remarked, the colored race is located in the distinctively agricultural States of the Union. It therefore has neither press nor libraries, and the rank and file of the race must depend upon their leaders for their opinions. Thus is explained the pertinacious efforts of thoughtful people to provide a higher education for the negro-their efforts to remove the obstacles which his intellectual and pecuniary disabilities put in their way, and their appeals for aid. The education of the colored race, as far as it is acquired within the walls of an educational

Lest this be misconstrued into a jibe at the colored student it is well to remark that at the German universities it is stated that fully one-fourth of all the students are in needy circumstances and take advantage of the fact to demand aid and enjoy free dinners. (See p. 3€6 of this Report for 1891-92. Compare also what is said by Professor Paulsen on p. 288 of the same volume.) Monsieur Dreyfus Brisac, in his Université de Bonn et l'Enseignement Supérieur en Allemagne, says that the remis sion of fees is frequently unwarranted, and, at the University of Bonn, is modified by a system of deferred payments (stündung)-over 13 per cent of which are lost.