Reports of the Bureau of Education, Part II [pp. 215-218]

Educational Reports.
tree-planting, both of which contain much
that is very important, but not of close bearing up)on the line of thought we are now following, we will close with an extract from a
speech upon Southern education, addressed
to Southerners, by Mr. Mayo, a well-known
worker for education in that section.
"But I am told that, with the uttermost that can be
be expected even under favorable circumstances, the
amount of money that can be set apart for education
in the average Southern community must be small,
and the people may well-nigh be discouraged, when
they have done their best. All this I have seen, and
am not discouraged myself; for the upshot of all I
know about education is, that but one thing is absolutely necessary to a good school. That one absolute
essential is a good teacher; and a good teacher every
school may have if the people will begin to spend at
the soul end and develop the material accessories
Therefrom. I am not indifferent to the great assistance that may be derived from a model school-room,
improved school books, and the various illustrative
apparatus which adorns, sometimes even encumbers,
the teacher's desk. But all this is a'body of death'
till breathed upon by the spirit of the true instructor,
and a real teacher can bring around himself at least
a temporary body, until the people are able to give
the fit clothing to his work.
"General Garfield, returning to his almna mater,
Williams College, Massachusetts, which for many
years was known chiefly by the great teaching of
President Hopkins, said, at Commencement dinner:
' I rejoice with you over the new surroundings of our
old college: these beautiful buildings, large collections, ample endowments, and the improvements of
this beautiful town. But permit me to say that, if I
were forced to elect between all this without Dr. Hopkins, and Dr. Hopkins with only a shingle and a
piece of chalk, under an apple tree, he on one end
of an oak log and I on the other, I would say, My
university shall be Dr. Hopkins, president and college in one.'
"May the South, in its new'building for the children,' learn from the dismal American experience of
the past to put its first money into the teacher, and
keep putting it in, until teachers and children persuade the people to give an outward temple fit for
the dwelling place of the new spirit of life that has
been born in their midst.
"I have in mind a picture of a noble school-house,
in a prosperous Northern town, going to wreck, with
broken windows, battered doors, the walls disfigured,
the yards a litter, and the school itself a nursery of
bad manners and clownish behavior. The trouble is a
knot of'eminent' citizens, whoinsist on keeping in the
central room a quarrelsome woman,... whose obstinate conceit and selfishness make havoc of every
good influence therein.... I remember another
school, in the Southland, where one of the gentlest of
gentlemen and bravest of captains, at the close of the
war, gathered about himn a crowd of wild little colored children in a deserted house, and'kept school'
so beautifully that, out of their own poverty, the colored people developed his dilapidated shanty into a
neat and commodious school-house, where, with the
help of the older children, he was giving instruction,
in his faded old soldier clothes, such as I never knew
until my school (lays had gone by. A good teacher
carries his school in himnself. His own life and daily
'walk and conversation' are an hourly'object lesson' in morals and manners; his fullness of knowledge supplies the lack of text books; his fertile brain
and child-like spirit blossom anew every day into
some wise method of imparting truth or awakening
faculty; and his cunning hand brings forth devices
for illustration more effective than cabinets of costly
apparatus....
"I know a hundred neighborhoods, where a good,
womanly, Christian colored girl has gone from her
academical course at Fisk or Hampton, and so toiled
with the children and prevailed with their parents
that she has not only gotten over her head a good
school-house, but built up around her a'new departure' in a Christian civilization. If you have only
money enough to procure the best teacher that
can be had, take the teacher, gather the children,
and begin to push for the millennium. If there is no
fit interior, begin in God's school-house of all-outdoors. Somebody will give your new school elbow
room under a tree, and the wondrous library of nature
will spread its open leaves before you. Let the teacher instruct the boys to fence in a campus, and the
girls to plant flowers therein, and make ready the
place for building. Ere long the most godless or
stupid of parents will take a big holiday to build you
as good a house as they are able, and that humble
temple of science may be so adorned by the genius
and grace that you can coax out of thirty children
and youth that is will become an invitation to
better things. One book is enough in a school, if
the teacher knows what to do with a book, while
the Congressional Library is not enough for a pedant... who only turns the crank of a memory
machine."
218
[Aug.