The Availability Of Educational Opportunities For Negroes In Leon County, Texas

Leon County, a very densely populated rural county in East Texas, apparently has an educational system equal to that of the average county of its kind. Yet it is observed that quite a few young people who should have a basic education have not advanced educationally as could be expected for the number of available schools and other educative agencies that exist in the county. Since the education of today\u27s youth is so vital in training a worth citizenry for tomorrow, and since so much depends upon this very vital factor, the writer is endeavoring to appraise the present educational system of Leon county Negro schools to see what the apparent causes are. The writer hopes to do this by investigating the educational opportunities offered by each of the several Negro schools. And after getting an objective composite picture of the findings to make recommendations that might improve the educational opportunities of Leon County. Statement of Problem When the writer was called for induction into the Armed Forces, he went along with seventy-six others from Leon County. At the Induction Center, the group was divided into two groups; those who had completed high school, and those who had not completed high school. To the writer\u27s surprise, there were only four of us in the group who had completed high school. There were seventy-three in the group who had not completed high school. All of these young men were from Leon County and, as a principal of one of the Leon County high schools, the writer was very much concerned. He knew that his community school had only graduated from two to seven graduates each of the several years he had been there, a comparative small ratio when compared with the more than three hundred scholastics of the district, but never before had this picture of illiteracy been so forcefully presented. Subsequently, the group that had not finished high school was divided into two groups; those who were literate and those who were illiterate. Here the writer received his greatest surprise noting the large number of young men who were classed illiterates. The writer\u27s first thought was whether or not this was a typical Leon County group. Convinced in the affirmative, the writer began to wonder why. Was it that the people in Leon County were not interested in the education of their children or was it the inadequacy of educational opportunities for Negroes in Leon County? The writer could not console himself with the latter idea because knowing the county as he did, he reflected that there were numerous public schools throughout the county. The writer did reflect, however, that the high schools of the county were few. Therefore, when the opportunity came to do a thesis, the writer immediately decided upon the subject, The Availability of Educational Opportunities for Negroes in Leon County