Negro ignorance; some Northerners proposed
limited education, not, they explained, to better the Negro, but merely
to make the investment more profitable to the present beneficiaries.
They thus gained wide Southern support for schools like Hampton and
Tuskegee. But could this program be expected long to satisfy colored
folk? And was this shifty dodging of the real issue the wisest
statesmanship? No! The real question in the South is the question of the
permanency of present color caste. The problem, then, of the formal
training of our colored children has been strangely complicated by the
strong feeling of certain persons as to their future in America and the
world. And the reaction toward this caste education has strengthened the
idea of caste education throughout the world.

Let us then return to fundamental ideals. Children must be trained in a
knowledge of what the world is and what it knows and how it does its
daily work. These things cannot be separated: we cannot teach pure
knowledge apart from actual facts, or separate truth from the human
mind. Above all we must not forget that the object of all education is
the child itself and not what it does or makes.

It is here that a great movement in America has grievously sinned
against the light. There has arisen among us a movement to make the
Public School primarily the hand-maiden of production. America is
conceived of as existing for the sake of its mines, fields and
factories, and not those factories, fields and mines as existing for
America. Consequently, the public schools are for training the mass of
men as servants and laborers and mechanics to increase the land's
industrial efficiency.

Those who oppose this program, especially if they are black, are accused
of despising common toil and humble service. In fact, we Negroes are but
facing in our own children a world problem: how can we, while
maintaining a proper output of goods and furnishing needed services,
increase the knowledge of experience of common men and conserve genius
for the common weal? Without wider, deeper intelligence among the masses
Democracy cannot accomplish its greater ends. Without a more careful
conservation of human ability and talent the world cannot secure the
services which its greater needs call for. Yet today who goes to
college, the Talented or the Rich? Who goes to high school, the Bright
or the Well-to-Do? Who does the physical work of the world, those whose
muscles need the