ife and real life--and it is being continued now that
he is gone--but preached it whenever and wherever opportunity offered.
Some years ago, in addressing himself to those of his own students who
expected to become teachers, he said on this subject among other
things: "... colored parents depend upon seeing the results of
education in ways not true of the white parent. It is important that
the colored teacher on this account give special attention to bringing
school life into closer touch with real life. Any education is to my
mind 'high' which enables the individual to do the very best work for
the people by whom he is surrounded. Any education is 'low' which does
not make for character and effective service.

"The average teacher in the public schools is very likely to yield to
the temptation of thinking that he is educating an individual when he
is teaching him to reason out examples in arithmetic, to prove
propositions in geometry, and to recite pages of history. He conceives
this to be the end of education. Herein is the sad deficiency in many
teachers who are not able to use history, arithmetic, and geometry as
means to an end. They get the idea that the student who has mastered a
certain number of pages in a textbook is educated, forgetting that
textbooks are at best but tools, and in many cases ineffective tools,
for the development of man....

"The average parent cannot appreciate how many examples Johnny has
worked out that day, how many questions in history he has answered;
but when he says, 'Mother, I cannot go back to that school until all
the buttons are sewed on my coat,' the parent will at once become
conscious of school influence in the home. This will be the best kind
of advertisement. The button propaganda tends to make the teacher a
power in the community. A few lessons in applied chemistry will not
be amiss. Take grease spots, for example. The teacher who with tact
can teach his pupils to keep even threadbare clothes neatly brushed
and free from grease spots is extending the school influence into the
home and is adding immeasurably to the self-respect of the home."[2]

[Footnote 2: From "Putting the Most Into Life," by Booker T.
Washington. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., Publishers.]

The idea that education is a matter of personal habits of cleanliness,
industry, integrity, and right conduct while of course not original
with Booker Washington was perhaps further developed and more
effectively emphasi