ideal of its
Principal, that education in the broadest and truest sense is designed
to influence individuals to help others; is designed, first, last, and
all the time, to transform and energize individuals into life-giving
agencies for the uplift of their fellows. Principal Washington's whole
educational creed, accepted by Tuskegee Institute teachers and students
alike, was recently declared in one of his familiar Sunday-evening
"talks" to the students of the institution. Said he:

"Education in the broadest and truest sense will make an individual seek
to help all people, regardless of race, regardless of color, regardless
of condition. And you will find that the person who is most truly
educated is the one who is going to be kindest, and is going to act in
the gentlest manner toward persons who are unfortunate, toward the race
or the individual that is most despised. The highly educated person is
the one who is most considerate of those individuals who are less
fortunate. I hope when you go out from here and meet persons who are
afflicted by poverty, whether of mind or body, or persons who are
unfortunate in any way, that you will show your education by being just
as kind and considerate toward those persons as it is possible for you
to be. That is the way to test a person with education. You may see
ignorant persons, who perhaps think themselves educated, going about the
street, and when they meet an individual who is unfortunate--lame, or
with a defect of body, mind, or speech--are inclined to laugh at and
make sport of that individual. But the highly educated person, the one
who is really cultivated, is gentle and sympathetic to every one.
Education is meant to make us absolutely honest in dealing with our
fellows. I do not care how much arithmetic we have, or how many cities
we can locate; it is all useless unless we have an education that makes
us absolutely honest. Education is meant to make us give satisfaction,
and to get satisfaction out of giving it. It is meant to make us get
happiness out of service for our fellows. And until we get to the point
where we can get happiness and supreme satisfaction out of helping our
fellows, we are not truly educated.... Education is meant to make us
appreciate the things that are beautiful in nature. A person is never
educated until he is able to go into the swamps and woods and see
something that is beautiful in the trees and shrubs there--is able to
see something beaut