Education of the Negroes and poor whites in the South of America

The fundamental ideal of the modern public education is to provide every human being with the equal opportunity and to cultivate his abilities as far as possible, without regard to his status, class, race, and sex. But it is a formal conception in itself. We must understand that the education is largely conditioned by the social and historical situations, and has a certain social function, facing on the problems and crisis of the society. “An educational system does not exist in a vacuum. It exists always within a social system which makes its own nature and purpose the frame work within which the nature and purpose of its educational idea must function.” The public school system of America is in part a product of the democratic spirit of the American people, but in part a product of the industrial capitalism rapidly be coming dominant. It rendered assistance to industrial and financial capitalism and helped to promote the spirit of business enterprise. It was motivated by zeal for maintaining the political and social status quo. Laski says, “A capitalist democracy has never been able to overcome, in its educational programme, the initial paradox that the drive of capitalist aims is in inherent contradiction with the drive of democratic aims.” The public education in the South of America is very poor and backward. No Southern state had enacted a compulsory-attendance law before 1900 ; less than 60 percent of the school population of the South was enrolled in school ; and less than 40 percent was in average daily attendance. Considerably, more than one fourth of the white population, and about 70 percent of the colored population, was illiterate. This fact has a vital meaning. In the South the presence of the institution of slavery tended to retard the growth of an educational consiousness, and sectional struggles prevented the organization of schools. The institution of slavery was the fundamental basis of the plantation system. By a plantation is ment “a large agricultural unit in which the laboring force,generally of a large size and in boundage, worked under supervision in the production of a staple commodity for sale.” A few planters had the privileges in every social and political affair. They exploited ruthlessly the slaves and poor whites, and put a heavy pressure upon them in order to keep them in their desperate conditions. In these situations, democracy and freedom of thought was understressed, therefore public school system had never developed. By the Civil War, the slaves were emancipated from slavery and given civil right as citizens and voters. But the main purpose of the Republican Party was not the extirpation of slavery, but permanent victory of the Republicanism, therefore of the industrial capitalism in the South. Emancipation was only a instrument, as far as the Negroes were concerned. When the Reconstruction was over, the Negroes were again bound to labor under the plantation system as the semi-slavery system and exploited as much as before. During the Reconstruction, basing upon the principle of the public, free, and universal education for all, many Southern States provided for the new school laws and improved the conditions of education. Many of the laws were helpless, however, owing to the poverty, the uncertain political conditions, the mixed-shool conception of public education, and ignorance of the people. The ruling class of the Old South disliked and feared to educate the Negroes as citizens, because it needed the cheap and docile labors