THE SCHOOL JOURNAL.

At the State Teachers' Association, which met here, the real condition of things in our public schools was made manifest. Heretofore, from timidity or other causes, nothing has been said; now the teachers are statistics that fifty-seven per cent. of the school popula beginning to speak out. Professor Root showed by tion was in the schools; and the school term is but

little over three months. I have conversed with teachers who get $14 per month and are employed three months in the year. Of course, they will not attend normal schools when the pay is so small.

The short term, the poor teaching reacts on the high school. Professor Root showed that about one per cent. of those in the public schools go into the high schools. people know only how to read, write, and cipher. This Thus the education is always of a low tension; the Rarely does one see a newspaper in the hands of the has been my experience in moving about the state. farmers, only in the hands of the merchants, and such people. There are few books bought and read. The laborer stops working and chews tobacco instead of reading.

Professor Root has done a great service in calling attention to this desperate condition of things. Will it do any good? The people in generai have so little education that they are not likely to act. If in any locality they wish to expend more money they have no power by law to lay a tax for this purpose. Once this was so in the Northern states but they remedied that; now any town or village at the North can raise all it wants to. Birmingham, Ala. E. V. FRISBIE.

July 5, 1902

THE

SCHOOL JOURNAL.

17

The Novel Commencement at Tuskegee. every inch of roped-off space is filled, and at the open doors

Mr. Max Bennett Thrasher publishes, in a recent number of the Boston Transcript, a most entertaining account of the recent commencement at Tuskegee institute. The plan was novel, but it was carried out in the most delightful manner. There were two green, growing peach trees in boxes of earth on the stage in the church, Mr. Thrasher says, in the place of the traditional" Commencement" palms which one comes to know from year to year so well that the leaf scars on their trunks almost seem to spell of themselves "Class of 1901," "Class of 1900," and so on backwards. One of the peach trees was full of bright green, healthy leaves, and the trunk was smooth and brown. Hung to one of the branches was a placard which said: "This is a carefully cultivated peach tree. The trunk of the other tree was knotted and rough and covered with dead bark: some of the branches were dead, and on none of them were the leaves plentiful. The tag on this specimen said: "This is a neglected peach tree."

On one end of the stage there rose, piled high above each other, six large cages of lattice work in which were-from the bottom upwards-geese, turkeys, ducks, two varieties of fullsized hens and roosters, and on top a cage full of dainty white bantams, whose combs and wattles glowed like coral set in ivory. These fowls were not stuffed; they were alive, very much alive, as the part which they took in the exercises later showed.

Just beside the speaker's desk on the stage, where naturally there would have been a big bouquet of commencement roses for the graduates to pose behind, so as to show off to good advantage their white dresses, there was a stout little upright steam engine, which, being connected by a pipe thru the floor of the stage with a steam boiler, when its turn on the program came sputtered and hustled its driving wheel around at a great rate. On the other side of the stand was an incubator in operation, and in the background a display of articles ranging from the fully built and trimmed two-horse carriage to a fully built and trimmed bonnet. Above all this, from the arch of the great church ceiling, there hung a purple and silver design: "Ready to serve," the class motto.

I wiped my glasses and took a more careful look about me. Was it possible that after many years' experience I was going to see a really novel and interesting school commence ment? Turning from the stage to look toward the audience room I found myself facing row after row of negro faces. Tuskegee Institute Chapel-for I was at Booker Washington's school, in Alabama-will seat 2,400 persons, and every inch of sitting room and standing room not roped off was filled solid full. All shades, from lightest yellow thru the browns, up to shining, stove-polish black. Some of the old heads were grizzled. These were the men and women who once were slaves, come now to see some grandchild graduate into that mysterious state called "eddication," which to these old people will always be so wonderful, because for them so unattain able. They know only too well how hard it is for old dogs to learn new tricks. Some of the women's heads are bound in the white "cloth," or the bandanna, of slavery's time, and on others there are huge cavernous sunbonnets from beneath which the wearer's eyes gleam white and ghost-like; but in main they are a neatly dressed company.

The sound of a band comes in thru the open church windows. Many of those in the room turn their heads, but no one goes out. It is too hard to get standing room to risk losing it, once gained; there are too many outside wishing to get in. My chair at the reporters' table being secure, I go out.

The band is near the church now, all black boys. Behind them them comes a line marching four and four, which streams out thru the hot Southern sun as if endless. Company after company of young men and women, and then a hundred teachers, and then a line of alumni. The band has reached the church door now, but the end of the line, winding in and out beneath the magnolia trees far across the grounds. has not yet come in sight. Now the advance guard of the first company has reached the church. The commandant's voice rings out in a sharp command. The company halts, divides, and the men range up closely in double rank so as to leave a line between them. Each succeeding company does the same, and when the young women come along they add the length of their lines to the others.

Then, down thru this living lane of fourteen hundred young negro men and women come the institute's teachers and the graduates of other years. The band has stopped playing now. To this part of the ceremony there is always accorded the more impressive tribute of perfect silence.

Booker Washington is a singularly modest man. So far as I know, no one ever has accused him of any exhibition of vanity; but if his heart ever does swell with pride it may not unreasonably be at commencement time each year, when he walks thru this quadruple line of adoring faces-for adoration is the only word which really expresses the feeling which the students at Tuskegee have for the principal-and remembers how less than a quarter of a century ago, where now is this small army of students and this village of buildings, he began with thirty untaught men and women in a shanty so shaky that a student had to hold an umbrella over the teacher's head in school when it rained.

When the commencement line has come into the building

windows hundreds of late comers cluster like bees about

the mouth of a hive in summer time. Choice seats on the platform and in the front rows are filled with white people from the town and country. The governor of the state is there. Back of the platform, in a huge gallery there rises, tier on tier, a chorus of one hundred and twenty-five students, with an organ and a piano and an orchestra to accompany them.

The six coops of poultry have inspected the newcomers with interest as they have mounted to their places upon the platform and have greeted them with polite cordiality. The ducks have been especially sociable. Nobody minds them, tho, and the grizzled old preacher who makes the invocation, begins to speak, his voice, like the deepest, richest notes of a pipe organ, easily making his hearers oblivious of every other sound.

The leader in the gallery raises his baton and the chorus rises in obedience to the signal and begins to sing. What is this they are singing? I do not need to look to my program to recognize the "Hallelujah Chorus." And how well they sing it. How those superb basses and tenors thunder, “Hallelujah Hallelujah!" While clear and sweet above them all the women's voices chant higher and still higher: "King of Kings and Lord of Lords!"

"Yes, it's fine," the reporter who sat next to me said, as the last notes of the "Chorus" died away, "but I'd like to hear them sing some of their own songs. I don't think they ought to be educated out of their-"

high pitched, quavering man's voice which came from somewhere among the dark faces up in the gallery.

The rest of what he said was lost in the sound of a single

"Oh, give me dat old-time religion," the voice sang unaccompanied and alone.

"Oh, give me dat old-time religion," a dozen golden voices chanted in quick response.

And then, "Oh, give me dat old-time religion," from two thousand throats, in the gallery, on the platform, in the audience, and from the open air outside, the response was thundered back, and added to: "It's good enough for me."

"It was good for my old father," the one voice in the gallery asserts again, and the ever swelling chorus stands by the soloist's statement.

"It was good for Paul an' Silas."

"It is good in time of trouble," the single voice declared,
and the hundreds thundered back-
"It's good enough for me."

I. looked at the man beside me. 66
nods. "They can sing both kinds."
The program begins.

They're all right," he

There are ninety-four graduates from the school's various departments. In addition to the regular academic work there are students to graduate in such novel branches as laundry work, cooking, tinsmithing, farming, nursing, millinery, dressmaking, steam engineering, carriage building, dairying, and more of the same nature.

An alert, keen faced young man tells how to plant and culti vate a forty acre farm so as to get the most profit out of it. His helpers bring up on the stage a model, twelve feet square of the farm he is talking about, in the different compartments of which are growing the crops he describes. A young woman follows him with a clear, concise explanation of how to do good wholesome laundry work. She has her basket of clothes, irons, soaps, and powders before her. She begins with showing why clothes should be disinfected, and then goes on hastily to tell the housewives present that they ought to make their own soap, and shows them how to do it. Then she takes out a peach stain and removes a blotch of iron rust. She wears, not the traditional graduating dress of sheerest white, but a serviceable print gown, with a big apron. A man follows, with cans of milk, pats of butter, cheese, and butter molds, to tell what he knows about dairying. His garb is of spotless white duck.

Having got the milk and butter, naturally the next number on the program introduces another young woman in print dress and apron who proposes to show the people what she knows about" cooking."

With a truly laudable desire to help the thing along, a hen in the next to the upper cage having selected this time to lay an egg, announces the fact in a joyous cackle which is at once taken up by every cackling fowl in the entire collection, to the absolute drowning of the young cook's voice. The audience enjoys the situation, and applauds the hen. Mr. Washington performs a vigorous pantomime in which no words are distinguishable, but an usher after trying in vain to get to the offending coop and not being able to reach up, secures half a sheaf of long barley straw from the agricultural display on the stage, and standing on a table beats the coop into a surprised silence.

A young man in overalls and calico shirt shows how to build a pony phaeton, on the stage, and nearly builds it there. Another tells how he built the steam engine on exhibition, and explains a really ingenious attachment to it which is his own invention. Nor are the essays and orations all of this purely materialistic nature. One young man tells of "The Survival of the Fittest." in a really scholarly manner. "Industry and Character," "The Value of Little Things," "The Dignity of Service," are other topics, reminding one that after all a commencement is in progress.

18

THE SCHOOL JOURNAL.

The governor of the state is introduced to say that Alabama is proud of Tuskegee. This sentiment is so agreeable that the little white bantam rooster in the top cage promptly greets it with triumphant "Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

A huge, fat old buff cochin rooster two cages beneath responds in a voice pitched full two octaves lower, "Cock-adoodle doodoo!" and the bantam, not to be outdone, goes him two more.

The governor makes the best of it, raises his voice and goes on, but when a minute later both roosters crow together, he laughs with everybody else and sits down.

All three roosters are now in full swing, with a running accompaniment from the geese and ducks. There is more pantomime from the principal, vigorous and emphatic. Two young men rush out, and returning in a trice from a nearby boys dormitory with two enormous woolen bed blankets, drape the hen coops from top to floor. The roosters subside and probably put their heads under their wings and go to sleep, but one strong-minded duck, not to be deceived so easily, keeps up a reproachful, faint" quack-quack quack

This music which was not on the program having been silenced, we are evidently going now to have some which is on the program. I glance at the paper before me, and, even with recollections of the "Hallelujah Chorus " in my head, almost shiver when I read "The Inflammatus."

It isn't necessary. The leader raises his baton and the choir rises. The only accompaniment this time is the organ, The head of the young woman playing it, outlined against the stained glass window in the back of the gallery, might have been the head of a Nubian queen. Another young woman, very black, with purest African type of features, has stepped the least bit out from the first row in the choir. The organist touches the keys more and more softly and the whole great multitude is hushed as if by some subtle sympathy, for they know not what; for this is the first time the "Inflammatus has ever been sung here. Then, clear, sweet, high, pure, and absolutely true floats forth that wonderful first note, sung so easily that one hearing it settles back involuntarily, knowing that what is to follow will be pure enjoyment. Then the chorus, "Oh, the Dreadful Judgment Day!" and then, tremendous as that chorus sung by negro voices is, the obligato solo, with the girl's voice again, still with perfect ease, triumphant above it all.

None of the trades taught at Tuskegee is more practical than that of nursing the sick. The institution has a neat, well furnished hospital, given it by a New England woman. The school's resident physician is in charge, with a capable trained nurse to assist him. Both, like all the teachers at Tuskegee,

July 5, 1902

whose contributions have made his name well known to SCHOOL
JOURNAL readers, has been elected to a district super-
intendency in New York City. He was prin-
cipal of P. S. 19, Manhattan.

screens were removed the audience saw a regular iron hospital
bed, with the whitest of linen, and in the bed a patient. This
patient, the graduate explained, was supposed to be suffering
from a severe attack of fever and the graduate proposed to
show the audience what ought to be done in such a case.

A clinical thermometer stuck in the patient's mouth and left for a questionably short time revealed the truly alarming fact

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THE SCHOOL JOURNAL.

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that the patient's temperature registered 105 degrees. In this
emergency a cold bath was evidently required. A rubber
sheet was deftly slipped under the patient, the head of the bed
elevated, a pan set at the foot to catch the water, and then,
willy-nilly, the boy who had been drafted to personate the pa-
tient got a good sponging in cold water. Another trial with
the thermometer relieved the anxiety of the audience by in-
forming them that the temperature had fallen to only half a
degree above the normal. Some simple remedies being now
needed, they were prepared and the patient took them with the
same resignation that he had taken his bath. As a reward,
however, he having continued to improve, he was fed with a
most tempting looking repast which the nurse provided and
set out on a swinging hospital table, the patient being bolstered
up in bed to eat. Convalescence being the result, the screens
were brought into requisition again, and the stage cleared.
All this is only a part of what this day's commencement at
Tuskegee institute, this year, showed me-a commencement
the like of which for novelty and utility I believe it will be
hard to surpass. Is it any wonder that two members of the
London school board, sitting on the platform, said that they
had come four thousand miles to see Tuskegee, and that if

they had come solely for that and nothing else, they would have been well repaid?

Of course there were diplomas, tied up with white ribbon. It would not have been a real commencement otherwise. These young men and women have worked as hard for their diplomas as ever student worked. Yes; harder, a good many times, than many of them. That young man has worked five long years to pay his way. That slender young woman with sensi tive oval face and waving hair has worked for four years in the laundry here to pay her way.

After all, perhaps the best diploma which they got was when Booker Washington told them, "As you go out from here there is one thing I want to caution you about. Don't go home and feel that you are better than the rest of the folks in the neighborhood because you have been away to school. Don't go home and feel ashamed of your parents because you think they don't know as much as you think you know. Don't think you are too good to help them. It would be better for you not to have had any education, than for it to have made you feel so that you go home and do that."

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