Copyright by Christopher Haviland Ketcham 2010 The Dissertation Committee for Christopher Haviland Ketcham certifies that this is
the approved version of the following dissertation:
WHAT AND HOW WILL WE TEACH; FOR WHAT SHALL WE TEACH AND
WHY? AIMS-TALK IN THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO EDUCATION
1932-1953
Committee:
______Sherry Field, Supervisor
______Anthony Brown, Supervisor
______Lisa J. Cary
______Norvell Northcutt
______Mary Lee Webeck
WHAT AND HOW WILL WE TEACH; FOR WHAT SHALL WE TEACH AND
WHY? AIMS-TALK IN THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO EDUCATION
1932-1953
by
Christopher Haviland Ketcham, B. S.; M. B. A.
Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
The University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of:
Doctor of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin
May, 2010 Epigraph
Whence all this passion towards conformity anyway?—diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you‘ll have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business they‘ll end up forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive towards colorlessness? But seriously, and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if this should happen. America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. It is ―winner take nothing‖ that is the great truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many – This is not prophecy, but description. Thus one of the greatest jokes in the world is the spectacle of the whites busy escaping blackness and becoming blacker every day, and the blacks striving towards whiteness, becoming quite dull and gray. None of us seems to know who he is or where he‘s going. 1
Ralph Ellison‘s ―invisible man‖ speaks from his basement apartment about the social order of his time.
1 Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Vintage Books Edition ed. (NY: Random House, Inc., 1972, 1947), 435-36.
WHAT AND HOW WILL WE TEACH; FOR WHAT SHALL WE TEACH AND
WHY? AIMS-TALK IN THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO EDUCATION2
1932-1953
Christopher Haviland Ketcham, Ph.D.
The University of Texas at Austin
Supervisors: Sherry Field and Anthony Brown
This is a study of educational aims discourses (aims-talk) in the Journal of Negro
Education between 1932 and 1953. In this era of segregation, economic depression, and war, educators and other champions of education for African Americans struggled to define and then develop objectives, goals, and curricula for African American students in secondary schools and colleges. This study considers the different aims discourses, how they evolved, and how they were affected by economic depression and war. Using literary analysis, this historical analysis considers the influence of philanthropy, The
Cardinal Principles, segregation, the American social order, democracy, and the
―peculiar‖ needs of African Americans as themes within the disparate discourse. This study uses the taxonomy of critical race theory to inform the discourse and supplement
2 ―What and how shall we teach?... For what shall we teach and why?‖ [emphasis in original] In the title of this study is from a quote from: Ambrose Caliver, "The Negro Teacher and a Philosophy of Negro Education," The Journal of Negro Education 2, no. 4 (1933): 439. v the theory of whiteness as property with the related theory that education is also property.
The study‘s analysis is informed by Nel Noddings‘ theoretical position that aims can be used as a critique of society. Finally, this study adds empirical evidence to support Eddie
S. Glaude, Jr.‘s theory of nation language.
The conditions of segregation significantly influenced the discourse of the 100 authors and the 137 articles considered by the study. The conditions of segregation did not change during the period of this study but the economy improved and war provided more job opportunities for African Americans. While there was a heightened call for the elimination of segregation and resetting of the social order during World War II in the
Journal of Negro Education, the educational condition of the African American as reported by these researchers did not significantly evolve over the same period. However, a new discourse developed in which both philanthropists and African-American educators recognized the need for some combination of industrial and academic education for their students. The period examined in this study begins with the publication of the first issue of the Journal of Negro Education in 1932 and ends on the eve of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1953.
vi Table of Contents
Introduction—How This Study Is Organized ...... 1
Chapter 1—Historical Analysis ...... 5
Chapter 2—The Discourse is All about Segregation and the African American’s Place in the American Social Order ...... 35
Chapter 3—The Meanings of “Peculiar,” “the Negro,” “Negro Education,” “Education for Negroes,” and “Social Order” ...... 51
Chapter 4—Why Aims-Talk? ...... 75
Chapter 5—Segregation: A Value Statement ...... 92
Chapter 6—The Cardinal Principles ...... 112
Chapter 7—Philanthropy ...... 124
Chapter 8—Democracy and the Social Order—Living the Amphibious Life ...... 149
Chapter 9—Industrial vs. Traditional Academic Schools; and a Philosophy of Negro Education: Same As vs. Different from Whites ...... 199
Chapter 10—“Getting Out of the Dog House”: The Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education—July 1936 ...... 229
Chapter 11—Summary and Conclusions ...... 299
References ...... 322
Vita ...... 338
vii Table of Figures Figure 1 The Contributors to the 1936 JNE Yearbook ...... 232
viii Introduction—How This Study Is Organized
This is a multi-dimensional analysis of educational aims discourses (aims-talk) in the Journal of Negro Education (JNE) from 1932-1953. Chapter One discusses the study‘s research methods and methodologies and explains why the JNE is important to
African-American aims-talk.
Chapter Two introduces the discourses used in the study and places them in the context of the social order of the period to be discussed. This chapter considers the theory of ―nation language‖ relative to the views of the researchers whose work informs this study. This chapter also discusses how Antonio Gramsci, Paulo Freire, and critical race theory will inform the study.
Chapter Three considers the use of the following words and their various and possible connotation in this study: ―peculiar,‖ ―the Negro,‖ ―Negro Education,‖
―education for Negroes,‖ and ―social order.‖
Chapter Four is a theoretical analysis of the concept of educational aims, their importance to education and, from a critical perspective, how they can be theorized viewed as a critique of society.
Chapter Five explores segregation as the contextual fundament that creates an ever-widening divide in America over the period of this study. Associated with segregation is the Critical Race Theory (CRT) concept of whiteness as property and its corollary, education as property.
1 Chapter Six discusses The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education—the
1918 report issued by the National Education Association‘s Committee on the
Reorganization of Secondary Schools—a theory of aims that was frequently discussed in the JNE and that is still relevant to present-day aims-talk.3 4
Chapter Seven considers the efforts and aims of the Northern philanthropists who not only influenced the aims and curricula of the rural Southern schools, but who were also given a prominent voice in the JNE.
Chapter Eight explores democracy and aims. Democracy was a central theme of both African-American-centric and white-centric educators during the period of this study. In the context of the African-American experience, democracy is complicated by segregation. This chapter separates democracy and aims from segregation in order to define democracy in an age where laws applied differently to different races and laws made it difficult or even impossible for African Americans to vote in the South. The chapter considers how aims-talk for democratic means and ends was construed and constrained in a democracy that was not democratic for all.
Chapter Nine examines the industrial versus traditional academic school debate and associated aims-talk for secondary schools and colleges. This discourse considers elements of aims-talk from all sectors, including vocational aspiration and vocational opportunity, the aims of select Northern philanthropies, segregation, the racial differences
3Clarence D. Kinglsley, "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education," (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, 1918). 4 Nel Noddings suggested in 2004 that the Cardinal Principles were fundamental to schools with her added aim called ―happiness.‖ Nel Noddings, "The Aims of Education," in The Curriculum Studies Reader, ed. David J. & Thornton Flinders, Stephen J. (NY: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004), 333. 2 dialectic and more. The industrial versus traditional academic school discourse has proponents of complacency, pragmatism, and even activism.
Chapter Ten is an analysis of the discourse in a single issue of the JNE—the July
1936 yearbook, ―Does ‗Negro Education‘ Need Re-Organization and Re-Direction?‖
[Emphasis in original]5 This single yearbook addresses most elements of the complicated conversation of aims-talk in the JNE during the period of this study.
Chapter Eleven presents a summary of the study, conclusions, and suggestions for future research.
Finally, each chapter in this study is introduced by or contains a relevant quotation from Ralph Ellison‘s Invisible Man6 is solipsism within the bounds of segregation. The novel‘s unnamed protagonist represents a pure product of segregation.
In many ways, the work, written during the period examined by this study, reflects the conversations in the JNE. Invisible Man presents a fictional counternarrative to the study because it embodies many of the problems, issues, and concerns that influenced the contributors to the JNE.
Ellison‘s early life intersects the discourse of this study in two places: Ellison attended the Tuskegee Institute for a time, an early bastion of the industrial education
5 Charles H. Thompson, "Editorial Note: Does Negro Education Need Re-Organization and Re-Direction?," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 311. 6 Ellison, Invisible Man. 3 movement. Later, he received one of the last Rosenwald fellowships, which he ostensibly used to write Invisible Man.7
7 Jayne R. Beilke, "The Changing Emphasis of the Rosenwald Fellowship Program, 1928-1948," The Journal of Negro Education 66, no. 1 (1997). The Julius Rosenwald foundation was one of the Northern philanthropies that was heavily involved in building schoolhouses across the South in the early part of the 20th century; in the later it favored fellowships and scholarships. 4 Chapter 1—Historical Analysis
I looked at the painted slab. It appeared the same: a gray tinge glowed through the whiteness, and Kimbro had failed to detect it. I stared for about a minute, wondering if I were seeing things, inspected another and another. All were the same, a brilliant white diffused with gray. I closed my eyes for a moment and looked again and still no change. Well, I thought, as long as he is satisfied...
But I had a feeling that something had gone wrong, something far more important than the paint; that either I had played a trick on Kimbro or he, like the trustees and Bledsoe, was playing one on me.8 9
The ―invisible man‖ had been expelled from a Southern black university for driving its white benefactor to forbidden places. The protagonist was then sent on a journey to the city with a secret but damning letter of ―introduction.‖ Having nearly run out of money, the ―invisible man‖ took a job in a white paint factory. Given little instruction, he was required to meet exacting specifications to produce the whitest paint.
In this scene, the ―invisible man‖ looked at history, albeit his own history, to inform his present condition. It was a moment for the protagonist to consider that those in power he might have trusted may have had other motives. This recognition began his slow process of beginning to understand himself and his relationship to society.
This study examines history through the eyes of contributors to the Journal of
Negro Education (JNE) A goal of this study is to bring to light the educational aims discourse of advocates for African-American education who are not well represented in the literature beyond the JNE and who have been left out of the discussions of the
8 Ellison, Invisible Man, 156. 9 Kimbro was a colleague at the paint plant and Bledsoe was Dr. Bledsoe who expelled the invisible man from college. 5 education and curriculum histories‘ of Herbert M. Kliebard, Arthur Zilversmit, David
Tyack and Larry Cuban, Craig Kridel and others.10 While the socio-philosophical work
W. E. B. Dubois11, E. Franklin Frazier12, Ralph Bunche13, and Alaine Locke14 have been discussed in the literature, other important JNE contributors such as Alethea Washington,
Charles H. Thompson, Ambrose Caliver, Kelly Miller, Robert P. Daniel, Reid E. Jackson,
D. O. W. Holmes and other informants to this study are rarely mentioned in the
10 David B. Tyack, The One Best System (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), David B. Tyack, & Larry Cuban, Tinkering toward Utopia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). Craig Allen Kridel, Robert V. Bullough, & John I. Goodlad, Stories of the Eight-Year Study: Reexamining Secondary Education in America, vol. (SUNY Press: 2007), Herbert M. Kliebard, Schooled to Work (NY: Teachers College Press, 1999), Herbert M. Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893- 1958, 3rd ed. ed. (New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004). 11 Donald Johnson, "W.E.B. Dubois, Thomas Jesse Jones and the Struggle for Social Education, 1900- 1930," The Journal of Negro History 85, no. 3 (2000), Derrick P. Alridge, "Guiding Philosophical Principles for a Duboisian-Based African American Educational Model," The Journal of Negro Education 68, no. 2 (1999), Beilke, "The Changing Emphasis of the Rosenwald Fellowship Program, 1928-1948.", Frederick Dunn, "The Educational Philosophies of Washington, Dubois, and Houston: Laying the Foundations for Afrocentrism and Multiculturalism," The Journal of Negro Education 62, no. 1 (1993), Scipio Africanus Jordan Colin, III, "Voices from Beyond the Veil: Marcus Garvey, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, and the Education of African-Ameripean Adults" (Ed.D., Northern Illinois University, 1989), C. Spencer Poxpey, "The Washington-Dubois Controversy and Its Effect on the Negro Problem," History of Education Journal 8, no. 4 (1957). 12 Richard Seltzer, Michael Frazier, and Irelene Ricks, "Multiculturalism, Race, and Education," The Journal of Negro Education 64, no. 2 (1995), Arthur P. Davis, "E. Franklin Frazier (1894-1962): A Profile," The Journal of Negro Education 31, no. 4 (1962). 13 Charles P. Henry, "Ralph Bunche: Academic Excellence and Global Responsibility," PS: Political Science and Politics 38, no. 1 (2005), Hanes Walton, Jr., "The Political Science Educational Philosophy of Ralph Bunche: Theory and Practice," The Journal of Negro Education 73, no. 2 (2004), Beverly Lindsay, "Ralph Bunche: University and Diplomatic Legacies Fostering Innovative Paradigms," The Journal of Negro Education 73, no. 2 (2004), Ben Keppel, "Thinking through a Life: Reconsidering the Origins of Ralph J. Bunche," The Journal of Negro Education 73, no. 2 (2004), Clare L. Spark, "Race, Caste, or Class? The Bunche-Myrdal Dispute over "an American Dilemma"," International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 14, no. 3 (2001), John B. Kirby, "Ralph J. Bunche and Black Radical Thought in the 1930s," Phylon (1960-) 35, no. 2 (1974). 14 LaVerne Gyant, "Contributors to Adult Education: Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Alain L. Locke, and Ambrose Caliver," Journal of Black Studies 19, no. 1 (1988), David Nasaw, Alain Locke : Reflections on a Modern Renaissance Man Schooled to Order : A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States (Baton Rouge, New York: Louisiana State University Press Oxford University Press, 1982), Eugene C. Holmes, "Alain L. Locke and the Adult Education Movement," The Journal of Negro Education 34, no. 1 (1965). 6 mainstream literature. Yet, as this study will show, these and other contributors to the
JNE developed important theories related to the education of African Americans during a period of Depression, war, and segregation.
The opportunity presented by the historical analysis of education is that it may help to increase the understanding of the evolution of educational thought and practice.
Yet, any explanation of the past is inextricably linked to the context of the age and the constituents in the society. John Rury provided framework for historical analysis:
- Have a clear understanding of what the researcher is studying.
- Determine what other scholars have to say about the issue.
- Understand the contexts.
- Know how to listen and learn how to hear what the documents are saying.
- Construct an historical narrative. 15
What Is Being Studied?
Gary McCullough, through Richard Evan Mills, suggested that without a theoretical underpinning, research becomes fact gathering: ―…if historians have no
‗theory‘, they may provide materials for the writing of history but they cannot themselves write it.‖16
15 John L. Rury, "Historical Research in Education," in Handbook of Complementary Methods in Education Research, ed. Judith L. Green, Gregory Camilli, & Patricia B. Elmore (Mawah, NJ, Washington, DC: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2006), 330-31. 16 Gary McCulloch, Documentary Research in Education, History and the Social Sciences (NY & London: Routledge, 2004), 8. 7 Gary McCullogh and William Richardson suggested that it is important to understand that history is an ―academic discipline,‖ and education is a ―field of study.‖17
Within this context, they ask three questions of the study of educational history:
- Is the study of education intrinsically concerned with advancing notions of social progress?
- To what extent is academic history an innately conservative discipline?
- In a field such as educational history, how diverse is the audience and what are its varied expectations? 18
They acknowledged that even contemporary research has not significantly benefitted from the melding of traditional analysis from a ―national political and institutional narrative,‖ with the ―eclectic array of more recent social and economic history.‖19 They suggested that traditional ―close documentary analysis‖ persists.20 The inherent conservatism in historical analysis has limited its ability to consider other ways of probing the diverse audience of educational history and the concept of education as advancing notions of social progress.
The importance of this study will be its effort to conceptualize the aims-talk of those concerned with educating African Americans in the context of a period of intense segregation. Within this aims-talk is considerable dialectic over the meaning of social progress within a conflicted and socioeconomically stratified society.
This study considers the following research questions:
17 Gary McCulloch, & William Richardson, Historical Research in Educational Settings (Buckingham & Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2000), 28. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 39. 20 Ibid. 8 1. What were the different educational aims discourses (aims-talk) in The Journal of Negro Education (JNE) during the time period between 1932 and 1953?
2. How did these educational aims discourses change over the time period of this study?
3. What influences did the great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War up to, but not including, Brown v. Board of Education, have on these educational aims discourses?
This study considers aims from the perspective that they, ―…provide criteria by we judge our choices of goals, objectives, and subject content. Aims can also be directed at the larger society and its policies.‖21 The theoretical positioning of aims as a critique of society from Nel Noddings frames the discourses in how they compare, contrast, and evolve.
While this is a conservative historical analysis in the traditional methodological sense, the considerable conversations about aims in context of ―democracy,‖ ―the new social order,‖ and ―what will we teach the Negro?‖ buttress the discussion of education‘s need to advance social progress within the considerable diversity of the discourse in the
JNE.
This study embraces the theoretical underpinning of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education and its related theory that ―whiteness is property‖22 and extends CRT to consider how education is also ―property‖ and how segregation, class, caste, and other
21 Noddings, "The Aims of Education," 341. 22 Gloria Ladson-Billings, & William F. Tate IV, "Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education," Teachers College Record 97, no. 1 (1995). 9 socioeconomic hierarchies affect education. Cheryl I. Harris presented the case for the persistence of whiteness as property:
Even as the capacity of whiteness to deliver is arguably diminished by the elimination of rigid racial stratifications, whiteness continues to be perceived as materially significant. Because real power and wealth never have been accessible to more than a narrowly defined ruling elite, for many whites the benefits of whiteness as property, in the absence of legislated privilege, may have been reduced to a claim of relative privilege only in comparison to people of color.23
Gloria Ladson-Billings and William F. Tate IV suggested that a component of education is its physical nature associated with laboratories and other affordances. By inference they suggest that these have become a component of ―education as property:‖
The availability of ―rich‖ (or enriched) intellectual property delimits what is now called ―opportunity to learn‖—the presumption that along with providing educational ―standards‖ that detail what students should know and be able to do, they must have the material resources that support their learning. Thus intellectual property must be undergirded by ―real‖ property, that is, science labs, computers and other state-of-the-art technologies, appropriately certified and prepared teachers.24
The aims discourses considered appeared in the JNE from its founding in 1932 and through the Depression, war, and beyond. The period studied ends in 1953 on the eve of Brown v. Board of Education.
What Have Others Said?
A substantive analysis of the JNE from the period this study examines has not been undertaken. While many of these researchers or their research were not included in the mainstream colloquies of the time, they maintained a separate and robust aims-talk in the JNE that should be considered today. This study will show that while this separate
23 Cheryl I. Harris, "Whiteness as Property," Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (1993): 1758. 24 Ladson-Billings, "Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education," 54. 10 discourse has largely been ignored, the issues with which these researchers struggled were quite often the same as what are being discussed today.25 In addition to their potential contribution to contemporary discourse, these articles should be studied for their addition to education, curriculum and aims theory. The JNE provides a significant body of work that addresses the iniquities of segregation and makes a sustained effort to identify the educational aims and curricular requirements of African Americans. Existing literature, save for the industrial educational versus academic curriculum explorations of
James D. Anderson and Adam Fairclough, provides little analysis of the aims of education from the African American perspective during period in question.26
25 Janell Byrd-Chichester, "The Federal Courts and Claims of Racial Discrimination in Higher Education," The Journal of Negro Education 69, no. 1/2 (2000), Wenfan Yan, "Successful African American Students: The Role of Parental Involvement," The Journal of Negro Education 68, no. 1 (1999), Joy Ann Williamson, "In Defense of Themselves: The Black Student Struggle for Success and Recognition at Predominantly White Colleges and Universities," The Journal of Negro Education 68, no. 1 (1999), William G. Tierney, "Models of Minority College-Going and Retention: Cultural Integrity Versus Cultural Suicide," The Journal of Negro Education 68, no. 1 (1999), Marvin Lynn, Charletta Johnson, and Kamal Hassan, "Raising the Critical Consciousness of African American Students in Baldwin Hills: A Portrait of an Exemplary African American Male Teacher," The Journal of Negro Education 68, no. 1 (1999), Linda Darling-Hammond and Barnett Berry, "Recruiting Teachers for the 21st Century: The Foundation for Educational Equity," The Journal of Negro Education 68, no. 3 (1999), Edward J. McElroy and Maria Armesto, "Trio and Upward Bound: History, Programs, and Issues-Past, Present, and Future," The Journal of Negro Education 67, no. 4 (1998), John H. Stanfield, II, "The Myth of Race and the Human Sciences," The Journal of Negro Education 64, no. 3 (1995), Ellen Swartz, "Emancipatory Narratives: Rewriting the Master Script in the School Curriculum," The Journal of Negro Education 61, no. 3 (1992), Mwalimu J. Shujaa, "Afrocentric Transformation and Parental Choice in African American Independent Schools," The Journal of Negro Education 61, no. 2 (1992), Barbara Schneider and Roger Shouse, "Children of Color in Independent Schools: An Analysis of the Eight-Grade Cohort from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988," The Journal of Negro Education 61, no. 2 (1992), Carol D. Lee, "Profile of an Independent Black Institution: African-Centered Education at Work," The Journal of Negro Education 61, no. 2 (1992), Asa G. Hilliard, III, "Behavioral Style, Culture, and Teaching and Learning," The Journal of Negro Education 61, no. 3 (1992), Edmund W. Gordon, "Human Diversity, Cultural Hegemony, and the Integrity of the Academic Canon," The Journal of Negro Education 61, no. 3 (1992), Lisa D. Delpit, "Education in a Multicultural Society: Our Future's Greatest Challenge," The Journal of Negro Education 61, no. 3 (1992). 26 James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill &London: The University of North Carolina, 1988), Adam Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South (Cambridge Ma., London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). 11 Understand the context
John L. Rury provided additional depth to the contextual argument by considering historiography‘s interpretive element. He stated that, as in other fields of study,
―Historians start with a question in mind and an idea about its answer.‖27 However, they use documents in addition to other items to develop their interpretations. The result, according to Rury, is that ―…because frames of reference shift and new evidence arises, history is an ever-changing field of research, subject to considerable debate and controversy.‖28
Rury used Vanessa Siddle Walker‘s Caswell County Training School Study as an example of recent research into African-American Schools in the South. Walker‘s study used extensive records from the school and community to depict how the school served its community and students and create a portrait of how tightly knit a successful African-
American school and its community had become despite the Depression.29
Inculcation of culture is a critical element of the aims of education in America, as observed by authors cited by Gary McCulloch and William Richardson:
-Through Simon: ―All schemes for education involve some consideration of the surrounding society…‖
- Through Lawson and Silver: ―Education seen as in and of society concerns not only schools and universities, teachers and pupils, but also those social institutions which have at different times shaped it, been influenced by it or become enmeshed in it.‖30
27 Rury, "Historical Research in Education," 324. 28 Ibid., 323. 29 Ibid. 30 McCulloch, Historical Research in Educational Settings, 45. 12 These researchers inform this study‘s consideration of not only the national community (the macro environment) but also of the local community (the micro environment) and their interactions. This study will show that there were considerable differences between the aims of the dollar-bearing philanthropies and the academic
African-American aspirations for education. Other studies have shown that despite the offer of philanthropic money if specific curricular objectives were adopted, local African-
American communities had their own ideas about how children should be educated.31
This study also considers the theoretical aims discourses in the JNE from professors, deans, librarians, and presidents of universities and compares their thinking to the contributors from local schools, test-bearing psychologists, politicians, and bureaucrats. This study connects these varied discourses contextually to the micro and macro environments.
How to Listen: What Are the Documents Saying?
The literature on historical research does not offer prescriptive insights for how to listen, for as John L. Rury said, ―Some historians argue for the use of ‗common sense‘ in developing arguments, whereas others assert that a particular ‗intuition‘ is needed.‖32
Rury suggested that conclusions derived from arguments are not testable or likely to be replicated but are contextual in time and moment. Rury offered that many historians will
31 B. C. Caldwell, "The Work of the Jeanes and Slater Funds," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 49 (1913), Barbara Finkelstein, "Revealing Human Agency: The Uses of Biography in the Study of Educational History," in Writing Educational Biography, ed. Craig Allen Kridel (NY & London: Garland Publishing Group, Inc., 1998), Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Exodus: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America (Chicago &London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997). 32 Rury, "Historical Research in Education," 325. 13 consider the causes in context with each other to consider how many causes may interact, diverge, or reinforce discourse. Rury said, through Carl Kaestle, that historiography‘s is distinct from other social research because it seeks to explain and describe events.33
However, even armed with a considerable number of documents, Rury said that one must understand how to listen. Rury said:
This is where having a clear idea of the topic and a clear formulated set of expectations (or ―hunches‖) can be very valuable…One must also be willing to ―hear‖ the unexpected and to discover the unanticipated. Expectations can serve as a framework for reading the sources to evaluate their relevance, but especially to interpret them. For this reason, and for purposes of clarifying expectations, it is advisable to do a good deal of secondary reading.34
The considerable use of companion material (extra-JNE) for this study to frame the conditions—both quantitatively and qualitatively—of African American education during the period of this study provides a framework with which to develop conclusions and suggestions for additional research.35
Construct An Historical Narrative
Through C. Wright Mills, Gary McCullough said that, ―…historical and social inquiry have been prone to ignore the personal and the individual in their emphasis on the big picture.‖36 This is further complicated by the intertwining of the private and public
33 McCulloch, Historical Research in Educational Settings. 34 Ibid., 330-31. 35 R. Scott Baker, Paradoxes of Desegregation (Columbia,SC.: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), John Hope Franklin, "History of Racial Segregation in the United States," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 304 (1956), E. Franklin Frazier, Negro Youth at the Crossways (New York: Schocken Books, 1940, 1969), Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, [9th ed.] ed. (New York: Harper, 1944), Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro (New York: Classic House Books, 2008, 1933). 36 McCulloch, Documentary Research in Education, History and the Social Sciences, 8. 14 lives of the individuals in the historical context. Consulting Jurgen Habermas, Gary
McCullough said, ―…the private and the public have often engaged in ‗mutual infiltration‘ and ‗reciprocal permeation‘…‖ McCullough then suggested that documentary studies have tended to favor either the private story or the public story.37
There are exceptions to this. In Social Ideas of American Educators, Merle Curti discussed the social conditions of education in the South, the African American condition, school and business, and then provided biographical sketches and educational work analysis of Booker T. Washington, William Heard Kilpatrick, G. Stanley Hall, and other historical figures in context of the conditions.38 As Merle Curti said:
The history of a man‘s ideas is part and parcel of the story of his life, and his ideas at any period of his life can be adequately appreciated only in the light of his whole personality. These and other considerations resulted in the adoption of an organization combining the topical with the biographical treatment.39
Curti acknowledged that many prominent educators were not included in the text and, as of the original printing—some of them were still living and had not completed their work.
In the second and more recent study, Craig Kridel provided the running discourse in The Stories of the Eight-Year Study and then punctuated the story with chapters on the major figures in the discourse, providing not only biographical insight, but clarity to their work outside of the Progressive Education Commission‘s study.40 While Merle Curti and
37 Ibid., 9. 38 Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators, Second ed. (Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1959). 39 Ibid., XIX. 40 Kridel, Stories of the Eight-Year Study: Reexamining Secondary Education in America. 15 Craig Kridel both provided biography and context to their historiography, Kridel concentrated on the work done by the educators during their involvement in the study.
Kridel offered the following analysis of the aims-talk of these researchers, which follows the suggestion from Gary McCullough that education through aims-talk involves the inculcation of culture:
Conversely, the means for achieving desired social aims were considered and judged in terms of how they would impact educational communities and shape the quality of students‘ educational experiences. Aims and means were tightly linked-they could not discuss one without also considering the other—and theory and practice were brought into intimate relationship, what we refer to as theoretical practicality (or middle-range theorizing) leading to intelligent problem solving.41
Craig Kridel‘s biographies place the study‘s report and conference dialog in context by providing insight into the lives and work of major figures in the research study‘s discourse.
Merle Curti, on the other hand, provided basic social context, but then used the work, writing, speeches, and personal history of the individual to frame their particular philosophy of education and, in conclusion, relate these discourses to his general findings that:
…educational leaders in every period in American life have thought of the school as a social institution as well as an agent for transmitting culture and for equipping individuals with the rudiments of knowledge.42
Thus, Craig Kridel put the educator in context with the study and Merle Curti put the discourse of American education in context of (Curti‘s chosen) major social thinkers.
41 Ibid., 33. 42 Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators. 16 While both combined biography with the context of the time, they did so at different levels and with different purposes.
This study will be a derivation of the technique of combining biography with historical context. Virtually all of the submissions associated with this study were written by single authors. Thus, they are the micro-product of individual thinking about aims.
Contextually, however, it is difficult to understand the contributor‘s thinking without understanding their personal differences, such as affiliation (industrial or academic college, progressive movement, government, philanthropy, etc.) background and other work. Unlike Craig Kridel or Merle Conti‘s work, this study does not attempt to develop chapter-length biographies of its sources, but considers basic differences such as educational level and their university affiliations, race (where available), gender, employment at the time the article was written, and future career (where available).
Because many of the authors cited by the study produced many articles for the JNE, the study considers changes in their thinking over time, which frames the context of their personal discourse. While not using extensive biography is a limitation, the importance of this study is that it will help to better categorize the discourses and the influences behind them.
The study of the JNE is a literary analysis. Derrick P. Alridge, through R. E.
Beringer, proposed that literary analysis is appropriate for analyzing intellectual discourses through four iterative but recursive phases: (1) Read the literature, (2) Note the
17 themes, (3) Discuss the themes, and (4) Support your conclusion by example.43 44 Phases
3 and 4 are proposed by this study, while Phases 1 and 2 have been completed and are summarized.
Phase 1: Read the Literature
The author reviewed (electronically) every issue of the JNE from its founding in
1932 through 1953 and selected those that could be associated with curriculum or aims for additional review. From the 300 works chosen for preliminary review, the author identified 137 articles as relevant to the discussion of aims, whether directly or tangentially, and determined that very few articles in the journal deal with elementary education. Therefore, this study focuses on secondary school, college, and teacher development associated with the needs of students.
Phase 2: Note the Themes
The author read and noted the themes contained within each of the 137 articles chosen. The objective of this review was to find as many themes as possible without preconception. On a spreadsheet, the author noted bibliographical details about each article and its major topics and or themes. If the article contained explicit aims-talk, the author recorded the aims definitions and/or the discussion about aims. From this review, the following themes developed, defined using a grounded approach,45 that is, by how
43 Derrick P. Alridge, "The Limits of Master Narratives in History Textbooks: An Analysis of Representations of Martin Luther King, Jr," Teachers College Record 108, no. 4 (2006): 664. 44 R. E. Beringer, Historical Analysis: Contemporary Approaches to Clio's Craft (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978). 45 Kathy Charmaz, "Grounded Theory in the 21st Century," in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. N.K. Denzin, & Lincoln, Y. S. (Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage, 2005). 18 they emerged from this literature review. The theme is noted first, followed by the number of articles in which the theme occurred, and its grounded meaning. As more than one theme could be found in a single article, this is not a cumulative list:
Aims (53): Terms considered: aims, objectives, needs and other synonyms whether for students, teachers, college or secondary school.
College (31): The purposes of college and what it should teach.
Teacher (29): What teacher competencies are required in order to better serve students and how are these obtained.
Segregation (27): Joel Spring‘s definition works well in summary of the disparate discussion of segregation‘s meaning for the school: ―Segregated schooling was a means of conferring an inferior status on a minority group and of educating individuals for particular roles in the political and economic structure.‖46
Democracy (19): Democracy is not defined in the JNE until 1941. However, many researchers in the JNE considered the definition from the 1918 Cardinal
Principles47 in the chapter of this study on Cardinal Principles. Throughout the discourse, such terms as ―new social order‖ were used. This study reviews how the concepts of democracy became associated with educational aims-talk.
Philanthropy (19) : Northern industrial and church money built schools, provided teachers and texts and other services to African-American schools. However, philanthropy is a double-edged sword in that the objectives of the philanthropist dictate
46 Joel Spring, The American School 1642-1985 (New York & London: Longman, 1986), 186. 47 Kinglsley, "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education." 19 how money will be spent and can influence curriculum and other affordances and constraints of education.
Curriculum (17): Discussion of aspects of curriculum such as subjects, scope, sequence, and other topics.
Classical vs. Industrial (15): The ongoing W. E. B. Dubois-Booker T.
Washington debate over vocational versus traditional academic-centric curriculum.
Funding (14): The funding theme triangulates with the economic literature on school financial support during segregation that is part of this study.
Pragmatism (13): This theme considers practical thinking about problems of segregation, curriculum, aims, funding and other topics. Yet, this was a period when philosophers such as John Dewey were developing pragmatic philosophical theory.48 A review of the philosophy of pragmatism is outside the scope of this study. However, the philosophy of pragmatism should be considered in derivative research. The analysis of this topic will consider the implications of pragmatism, especially as it relates to Antonio
Gramsci‘s definition of hegemony, Paulo Freire‘s theory of oppression, and Critical Race
Theory‘s taxonomy.
Assessments (12): This theme relates to the aptitude, intelligence quotient, and other standardized tests that were commonly used at the time. Concomitant with this discussion are issues associated with the use of these assessments to categorize the races
48 R. Ormerod, "The History and Ideas of Pragmatism," The Journal of the Operational Research Society 57, no. 8 (2006). 20 and the challenges contributors to the JNE made to the reliability of these assessments in relation to cultural bias associated with their construction.
Same as whites (10): Should the African-American curriculum be identical or similar to white schools and why?
Different From whites (10): Should the African American curriculum be different from white schools and why? The term ―peculiar‖ is used to define the different needs of African Americans.
War (9): The effects of war and/or its aftermath on schools and its implications for African Americans.
Cardinal Principles (7): Discussions associated with the Cardinal Principles of
Secondary Education and how they could be applied to African-American education.49
Class (7): Discourse on the term ―class‖ or ―caste‖ as opposed to ―race.‖
Philosophy (6): Philosophical discourse involving one or more of the other discourses in this study, including aims or same as or different from whites.
Rural vs. Urban (4): Differences in needs and/or opportunities for rural and urban African-American schools, students, and vocational opportunities after school.
Rural (2): The needs and circumstances of the rural schools, communities, and students without comparison to the urban schools.
These themes were further influenced by culture, progressivism, gifted and talented, educational value, and guidance (individual-curriculum-vocational aspiration)
49 Kinglsley, "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education." 21 discourses. 50 The analysis of these discourses considers the influence of mainstream educational thinking on the discourses, including manual training, scientific curriculum, wartime curriculum, and life adjustment education.51
This study also utilizes Beringer‘s52 chronological approach to history and is influenced by the Depression (1932-1941), World War II (1942-1945), and the early Cold
War (1946-1953). While the Depression began earlier than 1932, this is the year in which the JNE was launched. The study concludes with 1953 because the following year,
Brown vs. Board of Education ushered in a new epoch of de jure desegregation, which began a whole new discourse about schooling and its nature and aims.
The length of the period examined in this study and the associated socio- economic ruptures within help address the problem of Martha Howell and Walter
Prevenier‘s ―immobilities,‖ which refers to the concept that ―…some changes occur so slowly that they are invisible within the lifetime of the individuals who experience them; they become visible only in retrospect.‖53
Why the Journal of Negro Education?
In the founding issue of the JNE, Editor Charles H. Thompson commented:
…there are no general means of collecting and disseminating facts about educational activities among Negroes…There is a need for continuous critical appraisal
50 Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, & Margaret Jacob, Telling Truth About History (New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994), 245. Quoting Hayden White: ―Historians, as Hayden White has maintained ‗do not build up knowledge that others might use; they generate a discourse about the past.‘‖ 51 Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958, 98,113, 52, 57, 200-01, 50. 52 R. E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, & William N.Still, Jr., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens & London: The University of Georgia Press, 1986). 53 Martha Howell, & Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2001), 126. 22 of the present and proposed practices relating to the education of Negroes…there is a need for some agency to stimulate and sponsor investigation of problems incident to the education of negroes…the fact that it meets a need that is not adequately met by any other agency at the present time.54
Throughout the course of this study, the JNE format remained much the same.
The JNE produced four issues a year with a July yearbook that, as Charles H. Thompson said, ―…will attempt to present a comprehensive, critical summary of the facts, proposals, and significant events that have occurred in the field during the preceding school year.‖55 Thompson outlined the format of the other three issues, which would consist of, ―editorial on current practices,‖ discussions that are, ―…critical evaluations of existing or proposed practices,‖ ―reports of studies in the fields,‖ ―…current literature…,‖ and, ―…current news or events of national importance, noting or indicating progress in the education of Negroes.‖56 Finally, at the beginning of each issue, the magazine contained a recitation of its three purposes:
First, to stimulate the collection and facilitate the facts about the education of Negroes; second, to present discussions involving critical appraisals of proposals and practices relating to the education of Negroes; and third, to stimulate and sponsor investigations of problems incident to the education of Negroes.57
Such a scope and mission would be ambitious for any journal. Consider, however, that segregation was firmly entrenched throughout the course of the early history of JNE.
While the journal‘s home at Howard University was well endowed by African-American university standards, funding of anything involving education was problematic during the
54 "Editorial Comment: Why a Journal of Negro Education?," The Journal of Negro Education 1, no. 1 (1932): 1-2. 55 Ibid.: 4. 56 Ibid. 57 "Volume Information," The Journal of Negro Education 1, no. 3/4 (1932). 23 Depression and war years. Yet, the JNE attracted some of the most influential scholars, both white and black, of the day. Adam Fairclough suggested possible reasons why:
…the Journal maintained rigorous standards and functioned as the foremost source of up-to-date research. By sponsoring conferences and commissioning special education sessions, the journal also provided a forum for intellectuals, civil rights leaders, and teachers to address all of the major issues affecting black education. The Journal helped break down divisions between northern and southern teachers, and between teachers in public and private institutions…Thompson kept the Journal open to all comers, but he was keen to promote criticisms of Jim Crow.58
For the seventy-fifth anniversary of the JNE in 2007, Edward W. Gordon added context to the journal‘s founding and historical context:
The contributors to the Journal were not confined to educational specialists, but were the Leading Black and White social scientists and intellectuals in the United States, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles S. Johnson, Sterling Brown, Eric Williams, Charles Hamilton Houston, Mercer Cook, E. Franklin Frazier, and many others. ―The so-called hereditarian school of psychologists‖ was represented in the 1934 Journal yearbook with the article by Teachers College psychologist Raymond Pintner ―Intellectual Differences between American Negroes and Whites.‖ Pintner (1934) suggested that since the Black and White research participants speak the same language and live in the same communities, the environment should influence tests scores ―from 3 to 10 points in I.Q.‖ Differences in inherited racial abilities accounted for the remainder of the differences in I.Q. scores between Whites and African Americans.59
By the early 1940s there was much evidence that the critiques of intelligence testing published in the JNE had greatly influenced what researchers believed these tests actually measured.60
It was Frazier‘s [E. Franklin Frazier] Black Bourgeoisie and its orientation that dominated education for Negroes, and it was the education of this population that was the focus of The Journal.61
58 Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South, 335. 59 Edward W. Gordon, "A Context for the Birth of the Journal of Negro Education," The Journal of Negro Education 76, no. 3 (2007): 219-20. 60 Ibid.: 223. 61 Ibid.: 199. 24 Besides the scholars referenced by Edward W. Gordon, contributors included future Nobel laureate Ralph Bunche, who contributed 27 articles during the period of this study, Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior for the entire Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, who contributed twice, and famed philosopher and educator Alain Locke, who contributed eight articles during the period of this study. Other contributors came from the ranks of secondary schools as teachers, librarians, and leaders. The journal also featured articles by exceptional undergraduates, including future Senator Claiborne Pell.
The 100 contributors considered by this study produced 137 articles that are directly or tangentially associated with the aims discourse. These authors penned a total of 615 articles, reviews, and other content during the period of this study. However, 47 of these authors contributed only once or twice during the period of this study. Therefore, there is a diversity of voices for this study that can serve to extend the discourse and develop various themes.
From 1933 on, the July yearbook themes included:
1933: A Survey of Negro Higher Education
1934: The Physical and Mental Abilities of the American Negro
1935: The Courts and the Negro Separate School
1936: The Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education
1937: The Health Status and Health Education of Negroes in the United States
1938: Not titled, but was a critique of the relationship between the federal government and separate African American schools
1939: The Present and Future Position of the Negro in the American Social Order
1940: The Negro Adolescent and his Education 25 1941: Racial Minorities and the Present International Crisis
1942: Negro Higher Education in the War and Post-War Reconstruction
1943: The American Negro in World War I and World War II
1944: Education for Racial Understanding
1945: Adult Education for Negroes in the United States
1946: The Problem of Education in Dependent Territories
1947: The Availability of Education in the Negro Separate School
1948: Negro Higher and Professional Education in the United States
1949: The Health Status and Health Education of Negroes in the United States
1950: The Negro Child in the American Social Order
1951: The American Negro and Civil Rights in 1950
1952: The Courts and Racial Integration in Education
1953: The Relative Status of the Negro Population in the United States
The progression of research in these yearbooks followed the country's general socioeconomic, political, legal, and educational trends within the bowels of segregation: first through the throes of Depression, then through the implications of race in war and predictions for the post-war environment. After the war, the JNE followed the changing legal and socioeconomic discourse about segregation in the United States.
Selected yearbooks provide evidence of the influences of war, Depression, and the aftermath of war on the aims discourse in the JNE. Because this is the only journal of the period that maintained an active and sustained discourse on African-American schools, it likely represents the leading thread of African-American-oriented academic aims-discourse that exists outside of the local university, private, legislative- 26 administrative, or community-school environment. More importantly, this study will consider the aims-talk in the JNE through the lens of the period, considering the socioeconomic, political, philanthropic, democratic, and social order of the time.
While the JNE focused on education for African Americans, it considered the mainstream educational discourses of the period, including The Cardinal Principles aims and the life adjustment education movement that evolved from them.62 Many educators also drew from progressive education and its considerations of practical learning associated with the cultural and physical environment of the child. The authors consulted
John Dewey for the theoretical considerations of aims and curriculum and Franklin
Bobbitt for the granular objectives needed to accomplish certain aims. The industrial versus traditional academic discourse drew from the vocational educational mainstream discourse as defined by Herbert Kliebard in Schooled to Work.63
African American educators had little or no involvement in the grand studies of the time, including the 1894 Committee of Ten Report,64 The Cardinal Principles
Report,65 and the 1930‘s decade-long Eight-Year Study.66 While these major studies‘ recommendations did not always produce robust change in the educational system, they were venues where prominent educators could assemble and discuss their ideas. The
Eight-Year Study researchers used 30 schools as laboratories to both theorize and provide
62 Kinglsley, "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education." 63 Kliebard, Schooled to Work. 64 Charles Eliot, "Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary Schools Studies," (Washington, D.C.: NEA, 1893). 65 Kinglsley, "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education." 66 W. Aikin, The Story of the Eight-Year Study, with Conclusions and Recommendations (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942). 27 practical applications to their theories.67 African American educators and researchers were seldom invited to these colloquies. Yet, many consulted and even recommended mainstream work. For example, in 1932, Walter G. Daniel urged the educators of African
Americans to liberally draw from Twenty-Sixth Yearbook for the Study of Education and its byproduct, The Foundations and the Techniques of Curriculum Making for guidance.68
There were two studies (minor compared to the mainstream studies) significant to
African-American education during this period. The first was the National Conference on the Education of Negroes in 1934, which was introduced in the JNE but was not well discussed.69 The second was the Secondary School Study, which allowed teachers in the early to mid-1940s to gain some collaborative experience in curriculum building through individual consulting by subject matter experts at their schools.70W. H. Brown provided two updates to the JNE on the progress of this program during the course of this study.71
Thus, the JNE became a virtual forum where educational researchers could assemble asynchronously to debate the issues that faced educators of African
American—a substitute for the grand committees in mainstream educational research.
The annual yearbooks were like micro-committees or forums to debate specific questions
67 Kridel, Stories of the Eight-Year Study: Reexamining Secondary Education in America. 68 Walter G. Daniel, "The Curriculum," The Journal of Negro Education 1, no. 2 (1932): 280. 69 Harold L. Ickes, "Why a National Conference on the Education of Negroes," The Journal of Negro Education 3, no. 4 (1934). 70 W. H. Brown, "Report of Two Years of Activity of the Secondary School Study," The Journal of Negro Education 12, no. 1 (1943), William H. Brown, "An Experimental Study of Workshop-Type Professional Education for Negro Teachers," The Journal of Negro Education 14, no. 1 (1945). 71 Brown, "Report of Two Years of Activity of the Secondary School Study.", Brown, "An Experimental Study of Workshop-Type Professional Education for Negro Teachers." 28 or issues. Throughout the period of this study, researchers considered, integrated, and adapted many of the same theories as their mainstream counterparts. Yet, the adaptations of mainstream discourse were in context of the condition of the African American in the
American social order.
Finally, as in mainstream research, a number of contributors asked new questions to advance educational theory. In 1932 (from a speech given in 1930), W. E. B. Dubois,
Professor of Sociology at Atlanta University, developed his own theory of the aims of education, which he called ideals. These ideals included ―poverty,‖ ―work,‖
―knowledge,‖ and ―sacrifice.‖72In 1935, Horace Mann Bond, dean at Dillard University, considered the need for equality in a democracy and the oxymoron that an African-
American child would need a separate education in such a democracy. His analysis dismissed the need for a separate school for African Americans.73 In 1936, Ambrose
Caliver, Senior Specialist in the Education of Negroes, U. S. Office of Education, theorized that teachers would become Gramscian-like organic intellectuals and if they,
―Dare to be Different!‖ they would take the place of the philanthropists and religious leaders who informed and funded early education of African Americans after
Reconstruction.74
Also in 1936, R. O‘Hara Lanier, dean at the Houston Junior College for Negroes, developed a theory of education for African Americans he called ―integration and
72 W.E.B. DuBois, "Education and Work," The Journal of Negro Education 1, no. 1 (1932): 72-73. 73 Horace Mann Bond, "The Curriculum and the Negro Child," The Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 2 (1935): 167. 74 Ambrose Caliver, "The Role of the Teacher in the Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 516. 29 articulation.‖75 Integration included the development of a sound purpose for education from the earliest grades through college and articulation was the practical application and implementation of such a purpose.76 While mainstream researchers had developed highly refined aims and curricula associated with practical curricula, Lanier urged that the
African-American concept of a curriculum be constructed organically and be flexible and opportunistic in relation to new possibilities in society that developed for the race.77 In
1940, Walter G. Daniel, education professor at Howard University, advanced the notion that there was need for change in both the black and the white schools, hinting not only at the need for structural curricular changes, but also an honest dialog about race and culture that would evolve into the concept called multiculturalism.78
The JNE not only served as a forum for a discussion of the aims and curricular needs of African Americans, but it also provided regular avenues for debate and the development of new educational theories associated with multiculturalism, curriculum, aims theory, teachers as community leaders, and a myriad of other topics. This study attempts to redress the fact that many of these contributors and their contributions to educational theory have not received adequate consideration in the literature.
75 R. O'Hara Lanier, "The Reorganization and the Redirection of Negro Education in Terms of Articulation and Integration," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936). 76 Ibid.: 369. 77 Ibid.: 374. 78 Walter G. Daniel, "The Aims of Secondary Education and the Adequacy of the Curriculum of the Negro Secondary School," Journal of Negro Education 9, no. 3, The Negro Adolescent and his Education (1940): 472. 30 The Need for This Study to Inform Curriculum and Educational History
Much literature exists regarding issues related to mainstream and white educational curriculum over many epochs of U.S. history, including works by David
Tyack and Larry Cuban, Herbert M. Kliebard, Arthur Zilversmit, and Craig Allen
Kridel.79 Kridel in Stories of the Eight-Year Study, reviewed the rich curricular discourse of this decade-long project from the point of view of predominantly white researchers in predominantly white schools. While The Eight-Year Study occurred during the period examined in this study, there was little mention of the African American discourse on curriculum building or aims-talk in its reports or in subsequent works.
Herbert M. Kliebard, in Schooled to Work, explained how vocational education evolved over the twentieth century. James D. Anderson extended this to African-
American industrial education in the early part of the twentieth century in The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935.80 William H. Watkins examined teachers at African-
American colleges in Teaching and Learning in the Black Colleges: A 130-Year
Retrospective.81 Adam Fairclough added to the African-American discourse on black kindergarten through 12th grade teacher experiences in the segregated South with A Class of their Own.82
79 Tyack, The One Best System, Tyack, Tinkering toward Utopia. Tyack, Tinkering toward Utopia. Kliebard, Schooled to Work, Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958. Arthur Zilversmit, Changing Schools (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Kridel, Stories of the Eight- Year Study: Reexamining Secondary Education in America. 80 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935. 81 William H. Watkins, "Teaching and Learning in the Black Colleges: A 130-Year Retrospective," Teaching Education 3, no. 1 (1990). 82 Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South. 31 Yet there has been little written about how leading African American researchers who wrote during the period examined in this study contributed to the curriculum and aims discourse. A recent article that sought to fill one such gap in the literature discussed the social studies contribution of Journal of Negro History founder Carter G. Woodson:
…the work of Carter G. Woodson does not receive the due diligence it deserves in the literature devoted to the development of the modern social studies curriculum. Woodson‘s name either does not appear or receives only minimal mention in major histories of the social studies field or of curriculum history…83
Nor have the contributions of major contributors to African American educational theory from the period of this study been adequately accorded mention in the literature.
Charles H. Thompson as editor of the JNE provided direction and challenging issues for researchers of African American education to consider.84 W. A Robinson, Principal,
Laboratory High School, Atlanta University considered the separate-but-equal school in light of its curricular needs.85 Alethea Washington, a Professor of Education at Howard
University, provided decades-long analysis of the issues of rural education and aims.86
83 LaGarrett J. King, Ryan Crowley, & Anthony L. Brown, "The Forgotten Legacy of Carter G. Woodson: Contributions to Multicultural Social Studies and African American History," Journal of Negro Education (In Press): 3. 84 Chas H. Thompson, "Introduction: The Problem of Negro Higher Education," The Journal of Negro Education 2, no. 3 (1933), Charles H. Thompson, "A Quest for Understanding," The Journal of Negro Education 2, no. 2 (1933), Charles H. Thompson, "Editorial Comment: The Federal Government and Negro Education," The Journal of Negro Education 3, no. 4 (1934), Thompson, "Editorial Note: Does Negro Education Need Re-Organization and Re-Direction?.", Chas H. Thompson, "Editorial Note: The Negro Adolescent and His Education," The Journal of Negro Education 9, no. 3 (1940), Chas H. Thompson, "The Basis of Negro Morale in World War Ii," The Journal of Negro Education 11, no. 4 (1942). 85 W. A. Robinson, "What Peculiar Organization and Direction Should Characterize the Education of Negroes?," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936). 86 Alethea H. Washington, "Rural Education," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 4 (1936), Alethea H. Washington, "Review: Meeting the Needs of the Rural Negro," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 4 (1936), Alethea H. Washington, "The American Problem of Rural Education," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936), Alethea H. Washington, "Rural Education," The Journal of Negro Education 7, 32 Kelly Miller, education professor at Howard University considered the college curricular needs87 and David Lane, Jr., the Dean, West Virginia State College studied and reported on the African American Junior College needs and aims.88 Charles S. Johnson, professor at Fisk University pragmatically discussed the educational triage required in the development of curriculum and aims during the period of segregation.89 Future diplomat
Ralph Bunche was in his prior career as head of the Political Science Department at
Howard University during the period of this study. Bunche used sociology to consider curriculum and aims in a segregated society.90 E. Franklin Frazier, Professor of
Sociology, Howard University, Walter G. Daniel, education professor at Howard
University and editor and frequent contributor to the JNE, and Horace Mann Bond, Dean
no. 4 (1938), Alethea H. Washington, "Negro Secondary Education in Rural Areas," The Journal of Negro Education 9, no. 3 (1940), Alethea H. Washington, "Rural Education," The Journal of Negro Education 9, no. 2 (1940), Alethea H. Washington, "Rural Education," The Journal of Negro Education 10, no. 1 (1941), Alethea H. Washington, "Rural Education: Wartime 1944-1945," The Journal of Negro Education 13, no. 4 (1944), Alethea H. Washington, "Rural Education," The Journal of Negro Education 15, no. 2 (1946). 87 Kelly Miller, "Editorial Comment: Negro Education and the Depression," The Journal of Negro Education 2, no. 1 (1933), Kelly Miller, "The Past, Present and Future of the Negro College," The Journal of Negro Education 2, no. 3 (1933), Kelly Miller, "The Reorganization of the Higher Education of the Negro in Light of Changing Conditions," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936). 88 David A. Lane, Jr., "The Junior College Movement among Negroes," The Journal of Negro Education 2, no. 3 (1933), David A. Lane, Jr., "Some Major Implications of the Fifth Yearbook of the Journal of Negro Education," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936). 89 Charles S. Johnson, "On the Need of Realism in Negro Education," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936), Charles S. Johnson, "The Problems and Needs of the Negro Adolescent in View of His Minority Racial Status: A Critical Summary," The Journal of Negro Education 9, no. 3 (1940), Charles S. Johnson, "The Negro and the Present Crisis," The Journal of Negro Education 10, no. 3 (1941), Charles S. Johnson, "The Negro in Post-War Reconstruction: His Hopes, Fears and Possibilities," The Journal of Negro Education 11, no. 4 (1942), Charles S. Johnson, "The Negro," The American Journal of Sociology 47, no. 6 (1942), Earl S. Johnson, "The Need for a Philosophy of Adult Education," The Journal of Negro Education 14, no. 3 (1945). 90 Ralph J. Bunche, "Education in Black and White," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936), Ralph J. Bunche, "A Critique of New Deal Social Planning as It Affects Negroes," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 1 (1936). 33 of Dillard University developed and advanced new curriculum theory for African-
American education.91
While the issues of segregation and its effects on civilization have been well documented,92 the efforts of these educators and others to develop effective aims and curriculum theory have not been well represented in the educational history texts or in the texts dealing with advances in curriculum and aims. Nor do these voices appear in the literature on the philosophy of education regarding aims-talk. In an effort to fill this gap in the literature, this study explores the aims-talk of these and other researchers as they struggled to define education for African Americans in a period of segregation and racism. The issues that these researchers struggled with during a period of definitive social order are similar to and, in some cases, the same as those faced by today‘s educators. These include increased segregation in the schools, poverty, lack of resources, lack of qualified teachers, limitations on career and job opportunities, and the meaning of culture in the context of education and aims.
91 E. Franklin Frazier, "The Status of the Negro in the American Social Order," The Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 3 (1935), E. Franklin Frazier, "A Critical Summary of Articles Contributed to Symposium on Negro Education," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936), E. Franklin Frazier, "The Role of Negro Schools in the Post-War World," The Journal of Negro Education 13, no. 4 (1944). Daniel, "The Curriculum.", Walter G. Daniel, "Current Events of Importance in Negro Education: The American Negro Views the Other Underprivileged People of the World," The Journal of Negro Education 3, no. 1 (1934), Walter G. Daniel, "General Progress," The Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 2 (1935), Walter Green Daniel, "Current Trends and Events of National Importance in Negro Education," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 2 (1936), Daniel, "The Aims of Secondary Education and the Adequacy of the Curriculum of the Negro Secondary School.", Walter G. Daniel, "Negro Education Progressed in 1942," The Journal of Negro Education 12, no. 1 (1943). Horace Mann Bond, "The Extent and Character of Seperate Schools in the United States," The Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 3 (1935), Bond, "The Curriculum and the Negro Child." 92Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. Baker, Paradoxes of Desegregation. Robert A. Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 34 Chapter 2—The Discourse is All about Segregation and the African American’s Place in the American Social Order
―Look at him,‖ I called out to the angry crowd. ―With his blue steel pistol and his blue serge suit. You heard him, he is the law. He says he‘ll shoot us down because we are law abiding people. So we‘ve been dispossessed, and what‘s more, he thinks he‘s God. Look up there backed against the post with a criminal on either side of him. Can‘t you feel the cold wind, can‘t you hear it asking, ‗What did you do with you heavy labor?‘ What did you do? When you look at all you haven‘t got in eighty-seven years you feel ashamed‖93
The ―invisible man‖ had stumbled upon an eviction. Until this point he had been a bystander, not an activist. The ―invisible man‖ began his oratory career with this observation about power, poverty, and the law. Through the lens of oppression, this study begins its analysis of the discourse in the JNE.
The discourse throughout the period examined in this study focused on education in a segregated Southern society and, in the North and South, the African American‘s place in the American social order. The taint of segregation and its influences, its debilitations, and the ―peculiarities‖ it created for the educators of African Americans were pervasive and colored nearly every article, idea, and consideration of the aims of education. Segregation informed African-American cultural discourse and significantly influenced their place in the social order in the democratic society of the United States.
While segregation no longer is a legal mandate in the United States and civil rights legislation has girded the bulwark of constitutional rights for all citizens, a new kind of segregation has emerged. This may be termed ―deterministic segregation,‖ which
93 Ellison, Invisible Man, 212. 35 suggests that what has come before determines what will be. Deterministic segregation‘s roots lie in the mediated and legal segregation of the past in the concept of ―whiteness as property‖94 which is a relic of and remains the vestigial appendage, the oppressive brother, of segregation. This relic is both attitudinal and part of society‘s fabric.
Evidence of this can be found today in the funding of public schools through property taxes. Naturally, the more valuable the homes being taxed, the more taxes are collected. There is also likely to be a smaller population of students in wealthier communities because of the predominance of single-family homes and smaller family sizes, leading to smaller class sizes. The vestiges of whiteness as property also are revealed in the phenomenon of ―white flight‖ when white parents remove their children from integrated public schools and send them to private schools.
Thus, if there is a brand of segregation that exists today with many, if not all, of its ancestral ―peculiarities,‖ then it is important to consider the discourse of those educators who tried to reason through the absurdity of legal segregation. If whiteness as property is deterministic of a continuing form of segregation, then current debates might have similar arguments, similar needs, and similar aims-talk as the discourses from the past.
From pragmatism to revolution, the aims-talk of the period addressed in this study was far from a single-themed discourse. Nor were the contributors to the JNE all African
Americans or educators. JNE editor Charles H. Thompson invited white educators,
94 Harris, "Whiteness as Property." 36 government officials, philanthropists, scientists from other fields, sociologists, psychologists, and others to engage in the discourse. A rich tapestry of views on the purposes and aims of education resulted.
While the Northern philanthropists of Reconstruction and the first half of the twentieth century have been replaced by state and local educational funding, the maxim
―He who has the gold makes the rules‖ still applies today. This study does not entertain a robust comparison of past discourses to current aims discourses. Yet it is hoped that others will consider these past discourses and rich arguments to frame the debate about the pervasiveness of ―deterministic segregation‖ in contemporary educational reality and practice.
One might consider that if the African American was subject to segregation and discrimination during the period of this study that the collective experience was similar and that the solutions fashioned by educators would be similar in scope and substance.
Both assertions could not be farther from the truth. There was no universal experience, no consummate theory. This applied to North, South, rural or urban, in one state or another, in depression or war, the experiences of individuals, communities, colleges, and other groupings. Nor were educative remedies universal.
Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. used the theory of ―nation language‖ to explain the differences in reaction to shared conditions:
The idea of a common condition and by extension a common interest, however, is another concern. A problem may be a shared one for black individuals. We may all agree that slavery is wrong or that lynching is evil. But that fact does not lead to the conclusion that we have identical interests or that we agree on a course of action. Some may pursue a moral or legal means to end both practices: they may appeal to a broader moral law or 37 simply to the stated principles of American democracy. Others may pursue a more violent course of action: they may call for insurrection or even outright revolution. In either case, the desired aims could very well be different.95
While the common problem was the African American‘s place in the American social order during the period of this study, the solutions to mitigate the general experience of substandard education varied. Most specifically, they varied in classification of the African American in this social order and with the professed aims of education within these classifications. This is consistent with Antonio Gramsci‘s concept of the diversity of the oppressed. Through Gramsci, Kate Crehan commented:
Very importantly, Gramsci always recognized that subaltern groups are not homogeneous, that they have their own hierarchies and equalities, and that it cannot be assumed that all the members of a particular subaltern group see the world in the same way. Gramsci was also aware that however isolated and seemingly remote such communities may appear, they are in fact embedded in larger political and economic realities.96
Aims-talk is inextricably tied to culture, for it is towards acculturation that aims eventually strive. Eddie Glaude‘s nation language and Gramsci‘s heterogeneous subaltern groups help to define why the discourses in the JNE during the period examined by this study varied and evolved over time. Evidence from this study concurs with Eddie
Glaude‘s statement, ―To be sure the plurality of voices within the African American communities has led and will continue to lead to a plurality of responses as to what acting
95 Glaude, Exodus: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America, 11. 96 Kate Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology (Berkley: University of California Press, 2002), 5. 38 for ourselves will entail.97 Gloria Anzaldua considered how she, a person of the borderland, theorized her own existence:
Living on borders and in margins, keeping intact one‘s shifting and multiple identities and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element, an ―alien‖ element. There is an exhilaration in being a participant in the further evolution of humankind, in being ―worked‖ on. I have the sense that certain ―faculties‖—not just in me but in every border resident, colored or non-colored are being activated, awakened.98
Anzaldua‘s borderland psyche cycled through difference, sameness, and change.
This cyclical process of thinking or praxis that Anzaldua experienced adds evidence to
Eddie Glaude‘s theory of nation building that can inform this study. Different individuals entered the discourse in the JNE in different places in the praxis cycle that Anzaldua described. Some entered in a sameness frame of mind; others considered difference as their center. Still others desired change, some even radical change. Yet, as Anzaldua describes herself, all of the authors existed in different places in their own discourse at different times. Thus, it will be important to consider how individual contributors to the
JNE developed their own discourse through such praxis over time. The entering of the different JNE authors from the various points of the praxis cycle can serve to develop a rich definition of social reality and at the same time provide varied considerations on how researchers proposed to alter that reality or stay within its bounds. Perhaps the richest praxis-influenced conversation that occurred during the period examined in this study was in the 1936 JNE yearbook to which this study devotes an entire chapter.
97 Glaude, Exodus: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America, 11. 98 Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands, La Frontera (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987 & 1999), Preface. 39 A debate that intensified in the 1936 JNE yearbook issue on the ―Reorganization and Reconstruction of Negro Education” was whether there was a need for a separate philosophy of Negro education, and with this, whether the Negro needed a curriculum separate from whites. While all agreed that the African American needed effective schooling, there was no consensus of what that was. Even those who proposed generally similar concepts were far apart on concrete direction as to how to effect change.
Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. further explained his theory, which can help clarify the variation in discourse:
The goal of defining the interests of African Americans seems to me impossible…The aim is to allow for a plurality of action and to build forms of overlapping consensus with an eye toward problem-solving and not with the view that there is one conception of the good to be recognized by all black people because they are black.99
Nor was the discourse in the JNE from a strictly African American perspective.
White educators, sociologists, philanthropists and others were given voice in these pages, making the discourse even more diverse.
While Glaude‘s study of African Americans occurred a century before this study and in the environment of slavery, his theory can inform a historical perspective of the educational aims discourse in the JNE. Glaude added an additional dimension to his argument:
…I have maintained that African American uses of nation language in the early nineteenth century did not presuppose a biological notion of race: racial or national identity was not a stable, fixed thing that stood apart from the vicissitudes of actual
99 Glaude, Exodus: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America, 12. 40 history. Rather, race language was an explanatory account of certain conditions of living that warranted problem-solving activity.100
While the JNE did consider the biological notion of race (especially as it related to intelligence testing) it did so in order to undermine the notion.
The concept of ―nation language‖ is tangentially associated with the Critical Race
Theory (CRT) concept of ―voice.‖ CRT considers ―minority voice‖ to be central to the theory. J. M. J. Culp said of voice:
All scholars of color have a voice of color. This voice is part of their identity. To speak with a voice of color is to speak as a member of a community who are viewed by others and view themselves in terms of their race. To speak with a voice of color has two aspects that need to be separated. One aspect is the attempt by the scholar of color to speak as part of some community of color. The other aspect of a voice of color is how others hear our voice in our scholarship and teaching.101 A. D. Dixon and C. K. Rousseau through Richard Delgado explained that this voice is not monolithic but is informed by collective experiences:
We should make clear, however, that the use of the term ―voice‖ in the singular does not imply the belief that there exists a single common voice for all persons of colour. The stories of individuals will differ. However, Delgado (1990) suggests that, although there is not one common voice, there is a common experience of racism that structures the stories of people of colour and allows for the use of the term voice.102
However, the concept of voice has detractors. Farber and Shelly suggested that there is little evidence in the literature for a distinct voice of color. They said:
100 Ibid., 165. 101 Jerome McCristal Jr. Culp, "Voice, Perspective, Truth, and Justice: Race and the Mountain in the Legal Academy," Loy. L. Rev. 61 (1992-1993): 63. 102 Adrienne D. Dixson and Celia K. Rousseau, "And We Are Still Not Saved: Critical Race Theory in Education Ten Years Later," Race, Ethnicity & Education 8, no. 1 (2005): 11. 41 Related to the lack of evidence for the existence of a distinct voice of color, we have found little exploration of the content of such a voice.103
D. Kennedy, in his critique of Mari Matsuda‘s argument for voice, had additional concerns. This quotation is through L. G. Espinoza:
Finally Kennedy relies on the rhetoric of individuality in his critique of Matsuda. Matsuda urges identification and nurturing of a minority voice that offers a new perspective on legal issues. Kennedy does not deny the possible existence of such a voice. He worries, however, that claims of racial distinctiveness may reinforce racial generalizations and thereby undermine the promotion of equality. In Kennedy‘s view, minorities are individuals and should be judged by a standard of merit that is blind to race and background.104
That racism and oppression were common during the time period examined in this study is understood. ―Minority voice‖ is difficult to define. Critics of ―minority voice‖ have said that one cannot say that all experience is individual and that there is a common experience without being contradictory. Critical race theorists have yet to fully reconcile this dichotomy. The concept of individuality and individually constructed social experiences is a logical conclusion. The common voice dwells in the abstract. For example, the individual experiences of oppression are a personal reality, but the fact that oppression exists for many if not all persons of color is a shared experience. Stories from individuals may differ in circumstances or words, but the basic concepts of a racialized experience remain.
Having dismissed biological differences, the contributors to the JNE struggled with determining how different the culture of the African American was from the rest of
103 Daniel A. Farber, & Sherry, Suzanna, "Telling Stories out of School: An Essay on Legal Narratives," Stanford Law Review 45 (1992-1993): 814-15. 104 Leslie G. Espinoza, "Masks and Other Disguises: Exposing Legal Academia," Harv. L. Rev. 103 (1989- 1990): 1883. 42 society and its origins. If, as some considered, the route to better education was to find the best means of defining and delivering a separate form of education in the status quo, what were the ―peculiarities of the Negro‖ that produced differences? From these differences, what were the needs for separate education and how did they influence the aims of education?
If to challenge the social order was the goal, would there remain for the African
American a vestigial culture (―peculiarities‖) that required separate treatment after the social order changed? Eddie S. Glaude Jr.‘s theory provides a compelling argument that these century-later discussions were all oriented towards problem-solving. They were, but something was missing. This study reveals that the problems of poor educational practices and environment for African Americans were not solved.
While there were great educational champions like W.E.B. Dubois of Atlanta
University, Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University, Ralph Bunche of Howard University,
E. Franklin Frazier of Howard University, Doxie Wilkinson, Assistant Professor of
Education, Howard University , and Horace Mann Bond of Dillard University, to name a few, who were frequent contributors to the discourse, there was no consensus; nor did there emerge a leader(s) with a vision(s) who could or would take the often-polarized discourse towards one or more workable solutions. Thus, the discourse tended to devolve into pragmatism—not acceptance of, but an understanding of the tragedy of segregation.
Through William James and Sidney Hook, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. explained this form of pragmatism:
43 The reality of our lives, the fact that we live in a dangerous world, the seriousness that we attribute to life means that ineluctable noes and losses form a part of it, that there are genuine sacrifices, and that something permanently drastic and bitter always remains at the bottom of the cup.105
Because there was no agreed upon solution to segregation, there could not be a logical conclusion to the fractured aims discourse in the JNE. Nor were presented opportunities for educative reform well capitalized. For example, even with the occupational gains made during war, African-American colleges were loath to spend to develop science and engineering curricula to supply needed African-American builders of the war machine.106
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. adroitly considered the ―peculiarities‖ and the place of the
African American in the American social order in his discussion about the dilemma of
African American politics:
…that we are constantly having to choose either to identify ourselves with this fragile democracy; struggling for its soul, or to define ourselves over and against it—and live with the consequences of such choices without yielding to despair.107
While Glaude‘s theory of nation language informs us of the problem solving nature of the discourse and the lack of agreement despite the common effects of segregation and oppression, CRT, through its taxonomy, can provide insight into the psychological aspects of what racism and segregation actually do to whites and blacks.
105 Glaude, Exodus: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America, 166. 106 Herman Branson, "The Training of Negroes for War Industries in World War I I," The Journal of Negro Education 12, no. 3 (1943): 384.
107 Glaude, Exodus: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America, 167. 44 This study uses CRT‘s taxonomy to help identify the realities of oppression and what they might mean to the discourse.
In addition, this study asks the philosopher Antonio Gramsci and the educator
Paulo Freire to enter the discourse to provide their insights into how their theories of oppression, hegemony, organic intellectuals, and other constructs of oppression and segregation can help us better understand the environment of segregation and oppression during Depression and war.
Finally, this study considers the counternarrative, or counterstory. The counterstory is a fictional narrative that can provide context to both the environment and to the thinking of someone in an oppressor-oppressed relationship environment. Richard
Delgado and Jean Stefancic explain, ―These ‗counterstories‘ at the same time contest majoritarian stories and ‗strike a chord‘ with the ready listener.‖108 In this study‘s counterstory, written and published during the later days of the period examined by this study, Ralph Ellison‘s Invisible Man takes the reader on a journey through the period.
Ellison illustrated the philanthropically funded black college and its autocratic, non- democratic president, Dr. Bledsoe. Bledsoe demonstrates Paulo Freire‘s concept of ―sub- oppression.‖
I‘s big and black and I say ―Yes, suh‖ as loudly as any burrhead when it‘s convenient, but I‘m still the king down here. . . . The only ones I even pretend to please are big white folk, and even those I control more than they control me. . . . That‘s my life, telling white folk how to think about the things I know about. . . . It‘s a nasty deal and I
108 Richard Delgado, & Jean Stefancic, ed., The Derrick Bell Reader (NY and London: New York University Press, 2005), 437. 45 don‘t always like it myself. . . . But I‘ve made my place in it and I‘ll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am.109
Freire describes ―sub-oppressors:‖
But almost always, during the initial stage off the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or ―sub- oppressors‖…Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is oppressors.110
Dr. Bledsoe wounded the ―invisible man‖ through expulsion and then sent him on a fruitless journey with a toxic letter of introduction. From his rural roots, the ―invisible man‖ traveled to the city. The ―invisible man‖ tried to understand the color white in a white paint factory and failed miserably. Later, the ―invisible man‖ became an orator for
African American justice but was caught up in the murkiness of the politics of whites and
African Americans and their Glaudean dilemma of ―nation language.‖ All in all, he searched for himself in the white world, something many of the contributors to the JNE were looking to discover—themselves and their relationship to this brand of segregation and oppression that was so divisive and pervasive. Yet, the JNE and Ellison both imply that the colleges did not prepare their students for life in the real world, and, in fact, likely sent them out with false hopes to uncertain futures.
Both Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. and Ralph Ellison defined the gist of the problem facing the contributors to the JNE during the period of this study: that the body politic of
African American educational aims-talk found itself ensconced within its own political dilemma. This is precisely this choice that faced Ralph Ellison‘s ―invisible man‖:
109 Ellison, Invisible Man, 109-10. 110 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc., 1970, 1993), 46. 46 No indeed, the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me. I‘ve come a long way from those days when, full of illusion I lived a public life and attempted to function under the assumption that the world was solid and all the relationships therein. Now I know men are different and all life is divided and that only in division there is true health. Hence again I have stayed in my hole, because up above there‘s an increasing passion to make men conform to a pattern.111
Summary
Segregation forms the context for the discourses in the JNE. Yet even as context, it was not uniformly experienced. Segregation brought with it the profound influence of whiteness as property. As Cheryl I Harris suggested, whiteness carries with it the same privileges as the ownership of property, including:
…rights of disposition…
…rights to use and enjoyment…
…reputation and status property…
…the absolute right to exclude…112
If whiteness can be theorized as property, then the education accorded to those who possess whiteness and that serves to acculturate whiteness becomes a component of the property that is whiteness. Therefore, it is not a stretch to apply Harris‘s four property rights to education.
The theory of whiteness as applied to African American education during the period of this study was profound. While the economic disparity has been well documented in the literature and within this discourse (right of use, right to exclude, and
111 Ellison, Invisible Man, 435. 112 Harris, "Whiteness as Property," 1729-37. 47 right of disposition) the rights of reputation and status as it relates to culture building through aims-talk from the African American perspective is a dimension that deserves further study. While this study will consider the contextual nature of the economic iniquities of the time, the rights of reputation and status through the culture building aims-talk of the aims discourse will be a major element of this discussion.
To achieve this end, other theories must be considered that inform culture building. First, Eddie Glaude‘s theory of ―nation language‖ provides ample evidence for the cacophony of voices from the African American community who all brought different solutions, ideas, and theories for how to develop educational aims and culture to African-
American education. While segregation was not uniform across the United States, it was more easily observed and defined in the South. Yet, even with the common experience of non-whiteness and segregation in the South, these researchers offered multiple solutions to the problems in the African American schools. This study will consider ―nation language‖ in Glaude‘s terms: ―The aim is to allow for a plurality of action and to build forms of overlapping consensus with an eye toward problem-solving and not with the view that there is one conception of the good to be recognized by all black people because they are black.‖113
While there was consensus that the African American needed a quality education, this study will consider an extension of Glaude‘s theory of ―nation language‖ where the discourses at first are so disparate that at times they are oppositional in their solutions to
113 Glaude, Exodus: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America, 12. 48 problems. Thus, this study will use the discourses to learn how these disparate concepts evolved to build overlapping consensus or were discarded as being untenable. This study will also consider how major ruptures such as war affected this consensus building.
Neither Glaude‘s theory of nation language nor this study attempt to theorize to what extent more or less overlap in consensus is beneficial or not. The coming together of the entire country during World War II was a time where the aims of society were clear and the means to get there became ever more focused. What should be studied further is what level of interest convergence (such as that which was the experience in World War
II) is required to build greater consensus. Concomitantly is the question of whether consensus or a continuing diversity of voices is beneficial to educational aims-talk.
While education and whiteness, nation language, overlapping consensus, and problem solving were central to the discourses, they do not fully inform their analysis.
Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire provided the fundamental tenets and mythologies associated with subaltern culture and acculturation. Gramsci and Freire not only explained how the subaltern mythologizes his/her subalternism and passes it along, they offered suggestions on how the subaltern might move towards greater co-equality with the oppressor. This study considers how the authors in the JNE both acceded to the hegemony of the time and tried to fight against it. While Antonio Gramsci‘s concepts of hegemony and organic intellectual are critical to understanding the thoughts and actions of the subaltern in society, Paulo Freire considered how these cultural aspects are handed down to subsequent generations through the various educative influences on the child, including family, community, and school. All three educative influences informed the 49 discourse in the JNE. Thus both Paulo Freire and Antonio Gramsci will provide theoretical guidance for both the hegemonic and antihegemonic discourses.
The use of the theories of whiteness as property, nation language, and subalternism when used together can develop a more robust explanation of the discourses in the context of the times. As these theories are not time-dependent, they could be combined to better inform present-day discourses that consider ever more segregated schools, the achievement gaps between whites and persons of color, and the ever-present
American social order.
Finally, this study is not an exhaustive meta-analysis of every condition of use of aims-talk, democracy and other terms discussed in the JNE during the period of this study. This study concentrates on the principal discourses and their influences. Even so, it is all about segregation—segregation and its close Northern neighbor, the African
American‘s place in the American social order. Segregation was The Spook Who Sat by the Door.114 Segregation was both the spy that informed the white man about the African
American and it was the specter that sat by the door in every classroom and in the path of any educative endeavor the African American attempted during the period of this study.
114 Sam Greenlee, The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1969). 50 Chapter 3—The Meanings of “Peculiar,” “the Negro,” “Negro Education,” “Education for Negroes,” and “Social Order”
I have been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man. Thus I have come a long way and boomeranged a long way from the point in society toward which I originally aspired [Emphasis in original]. 115
The ―invisible man‖ announced his invisibility to the world through Ralph
Ellison. The concept of invisibility suggests that not only does the individual perceive the world as not valuing his/her presence, but that society itself legally, socially, and politically is ignorant or has created barriers to its own enlightenment to the plight of the invisible. Whether the person‘s discourse lacks relevance as suggested by A. D.
Gilmore‘s disconnection and dissonance116 or through the subordination of voice, invisibility serves not only to denigrate the group but helps to internalize reductions in self-worth or worthlessness. Segregation carries within its definition the concept of invisibility.
This chapter is about words. There were terms or phrases used by the writers in the JNE that require further consideration. They are the terms and words (and derivations and extensions of) ―peculiar,‖ ―the Negro,‖ ―Negro education,‖ ―education for Negroes,‖ and ―social order.‖
115 Ellison, Invisible Man, 401. 116 Angela D. Gilmore, "It Is Better to Speak," Berkeley Women's L.J. 6 (1990-1991): 75. Gilmore spoke from an African-American feminist perspective and her disconnection and dissonance was related to her experiences in law school that was most often delivered by a white male professor and from the point of view of white and male. The implication is that the pedagogy was less than relevant and perhaps even less effective than if it had contained examples and cases from the author‘s perspective and cultural experience. 51 “Peculiar”
The word ―peculiar‖ appears in 165 articles during the period of this study.117
―Peculiar‖ appears in the title of articles twice, both in 1936. The 1971 Random House
Unabridged Dictionary118 defines ―peculiar‖ as: ―1. strange; queer; odd…2. uncommon; unusual…3. distinguished in nature or character from others…4. belongs characteristically (to)…5. belonging exclusively to some person, group or thing…6. a property or privilege belonging exclusively or characteristically to a person.‖
The 1978 Rodale’s Synonym Finder119 provides the following frequently found synonyms for ―peculiar‖: ―1. odd, curious, queer, offbeat, quizzical, cranky…2. unconventional, uncommon, unusual, unique, unorthodox, uncustomary, unwonted, rare, out of the ordinary, out of the way; atypical, original, singular, exceptional, individual, lone, sole, solitary, select; unexampled, unparalleled, unprecedented, unfamiliar, uncomfortable, extraordinary, egregious, astonishing; exotic, unreal, fey, supernatural, preternatural…3. distinct, distinctive, distinguished, diacritical, striking, marked, conspicuous, remarkable, notable, signal, outstanding, special…4. (Usually followed by of) characteristic, indicative, representative, typical, denotative, designative, connotative, suggestive, symptomatic, symptomatological, diagnostic…5. exclusive, unique, special,
117 The number of articles in each of the instances of appearance for all words was as a result of using the advanced search feature of the JSTOR database that houses the entire collection of The Journal of Negro Education. No attempt was made to determine whether the search correlates to the exact count. The use of numbers of instances was to ascertain the relative use of the words reviewed by this chapter. 118 "Peculiar," in The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, ed. Jess Stein (New York: Random House, 1971), 1062. This was the oldest dictionary I had access to. A better dictionary for the purpose of assessing definition would have been published during the course of this study. 119 J. Rodale, "Peculiar," in The Synonym Finder, ed. Lawrence Urdang (Emmanus, PA: Rodale Press, 1978), 862. 52 particular, limited, proper, specific, individual, personal; private, secret, confidential, intimate, inner, esoteric.‖
The exact phrase ―peculiar problem‖ appears in 18 articles. The phrase ―peculiar problem of the Negro‖ appears twice in 1942-1943. ―Peculiar‖ and ―problem‖ appear in
14 articles within 10 words of each other and in 24 articles within 25 words of each other.
The exact phrase ―peculiar need(s)‖ appears in 12 articles. ―Peculiar‖ and ―need(s)‖ appear in 18 articles within 10 words of each other and in 22 articles within 25 words of each other. Both ―peculiar‖ and ―aim(s)‖ appear in 200 articles, but they do not appear in an exact phrase ―peculiar aim(s).‖
Likely the contributors to JNE who used the term considered the definition that considers ―peculiar‖ to be unique to African Americans. But why didn‘t the researchers use a word like ―unique‖ or another synonym that has not the available and possibly more vernacular connotation as ―strange?‖ With the iniquities of segregation ever present, the term was used precisely because of its double meaning of both ―strange‖ and ―unique.‖
Segregation and the African American ensconced within this societal aberration were both strange and a unique construct of the American democracy and its culture. Consider the following quotations from the period of this study that used the term ―peculiar:‖
Ambrose Caliver (Senior Specialist in the Education of Negroes, U. S. Office of Education):…while endeavoring in every possible way to improve their condition and to become fully-fledged citizens of our democracy, they must not be blind to the peculiar problems facing the Negro at present.120
120 Caliver, "The Negro Teacher and a Philosophy of Negro Education," 447. 53 Howard K. Beale (Bowdoin College Historian): Negro educators need, too, to give more attention to cultivation of the gifts and abilities peculiar to the race.121
Horace Mann Bond (Dean of Dillard University): It should be realized that the method of ―activity analysis‖ in the construction of a curriculum presupposes an elastic, democratic social order….Beginning with such a theory…any activities peculiar to Negro children, and so susceptible to inclusion in a ―Negro‖ curriculum are a defect in the social order. The construction of a ―Negro‖ curriculum concedes the falsity of the initial premise.122
Reid E. Jackson (Director of Training at Edward Waters College): But on the other hand, the Education of Negroes connotes an adequate education for a specific group of people, suited to their own peculiar needs, and offered under the most propitious circumstances.123
E. George Payne (Assistant Dean, School of Education, New York University):…the Negro occupies a distinct and peculiar place in our American democracy and education but in general the point of view is that the larger purposes of democracy and the whole future of the Negro require that these peculiar problems of the Negro be solved without resort to the treatment of the Negro as a class in our society.124
R. O‘Hara Lanier (Dean, Houston Junior College for Negroes): Integration in Negro education simply means assuming on the basis of a sound philosophy of education and a social policy that there is a oneness in purpose on common peculiar problems extended from the elementary school through the college.125
R. O‘Hara Lanier: The more education the Negro has should take into consideration his peculiar problems. The peculiar problems and shortages must be integrated into the curricula.126
Margaret C. McCulloch (Professor at Lemoyne College): A Negro student has specific and peculiar need to understand what the fact of his being a Negro implies as to his social relationships and to gain insight into the elements of race, of minorities, of
121 Howard K. Beale, "The Needs of Negro Education in the United States," The Journal of Negro Education 3, no. 1 (1934): 9. 122 Bond, "The Curriculum and the Negro Child," 167. 123 Reid E. Jackson, "A Proposed Revision of a Two-Year Curriculum for Training Elementary Teachers in Negro Colleges," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 4 (1936): 602. 124 E. George Payne, "The Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education: A Critical Analysis," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 428. 125 Lanier, "The Reorganization and the Redirection of Negro Education in Terms of Articulation and Integration," 369. 126 Ibid.: 372. 54 economic stratification, of political strategy and of other sociological factors that enter into this matter. He has peculiar need for social poise, social cooperation, social leadership, as well as for social insight...127
And the following article titles:
―What Peculiar Organization and Direction Should Characterize the Education of Negroes?;‖128 ―A determination of the Peculiar Problems of Negroes in Contemporary American Society‖129
The authors of these quotations were some of the more clamorous contributors to the JNE–their phraseology and their word choice was never arbitrary or unintended.
Yet, there is an equally valid argument that perhaps the word today has taken on the connotation of the ―strange‖ and the more classically trained academicians at the time and, perhaps, even the common usage, was more in line with its definition as ―unique.‖
However, looking back at the discourse with the word in mind, it seems altogether fitting that the double meaning of ―peculiar‖ should be ascribed to the educational aims and discourses about and for the education of African Americans during a time of segregation. The term ―peculiar‖ was not used in the JNE in reference to white educational constructs, curriculum, aims, or comparisons. Yet the term, with its connotation of uniqueness, also brings with it the separation of the African American from the rest of society. A common element of the discourse in the JNE was the separateness of the races, not just physically, but characteristically and culturally, even though there was an underlying current and need for the same conditions, goals, aims,
127 Margaret C. McCulloch, "The Function of the Negro Cultural College," The Journal of Negro Education 6, no. 4 (1937): 621. 128 Robinson, "What Peculiar Organization and Direction Should Characterize the Education of Negroes?." 129 D. A. Wilkerson, "A Determination of the Peculiar Problems of Negroes in Contemporary American Society," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936). 55 means, and ends as others in society. The word ―peculiar‖ has a central place in this discourse.
“Peculiarities” in the 1940 Yearbook
In the 1940 yearbook, the general theme was ―The Negro Adolescent and His
Education.‖ Here, the discourse on ―peculiarity‖ or ―uniqueness‖ versus the same needs for all continued in earnest. Walter G. Daniel of Howard University suggested that changes for both black and white education were warranted and complementary, but these differences were more structural than philosophical:
These aims apply equally to Negro and white adolescents who have both common and different experiences. To the extent to which generalizations show different needs, curricular experiences should be differentiated. However, investigation indicates that for almost every differentiated curriculum provision for the minority group, there is a complementary adaptation needed for the majority group. The differentiation is largely in the selection, organization, and method of approach.130
Charles S. Johnson, Director, Department of Social Science at Fisk University, considered the plight of ―the Negro‖ as both an individual and society—developing together in a process of acculturation:
…the American Negro is actually in process of acculturation and differences within the group in levels of theoretical learning amount almost to differences in cultural levels at the same time that the race is sociologically a single group.131
130 Daniel, "The Aims of Secondary Education and the Adequacy of the Curriculum of the Negro Secondary School," 472. 131 Johnson, "The Problems and Needs of the Negro Adolescent in View of His Minority Racial Status: A Critical Summary," 352. 56 Within this conception is consideration of difference, but this difference is encapsulated in the sense of an evolvement of the culture. Yet, the group is subject to the existing social order. Johnson continued:
A re-conception and re-direction of the educational experience is necessary if present maladjustments are to be in any major way corrected. Such redirection will take more realistically into account the social processes itself by which these youth get their definition of status, human relationships in terms of their own rather than other people's experiences, occupational efficiency in terms of occupational conditions rather than mere escape, and a re-conception of themselves in terms of a possible and honorable and inspiring career as a minority group, and as individuals.132
―Social order‖ had become ―social process.‖ What was the difference? Johnson asked for change—endemic; systemic—African Americans are both the same as a people and as individuals. This dichotomy is the dilemma of segregation. Segregation neither affirms or denies the individual, but always places the individual categorically and suggests that relativity begins with this categorization.
Alethea Washington, Professor of Education, Howard University, posed the question of difference in the form of a question:
Is it possible that a different philosophy, resulting in different educational objectives is responsible to any degree for the meager educational opportunity offered all rural children in the United States?...There appears much ―muddy‖ thinking on this issue despite the fact that in a democracy it ought to be rather easy to agree that the basic function and aims of all education should be the same for all population groups and for all levels of education.133
132 Ibid.: 353. 133 Washington, "Negro Secondary Education in Rural Areas," 519. 57 To reinforce the assertion that there was such a difference contemplated in the education of the rural child, Alethea Washington quoted from the Committee of the
Department of Rural Education:
While the basic aims or functions of education are the same throughout education, whether rural or urban, elementary, secondary or higher, educational practices can best be developed in terms of specific educational functions to be performed. It is therefore essential that the accepted educational functions be implicit in any development of special methods and technics. This requires clarification and understanding of educational functions as they apply to rural conditions.134
So, Alethea Washington asked in reply—where is the proof?
If basic objectives, in accord with the American ideal of education may not or cannot apply to the rural school, and especially to the rural school provided for Negro youth, research needs to establish the reason why.135
With her questions about proof, research, and data, Alethea Washington exposed a common problem of the era that began with philanthropy, then later with intelligence testing, and the assumptions about available employment for African Americans: Where was the data to prove the assumptions of difference? In 1934, JNE devoted an entire issue to ―The Physical and Mental Abilities of the American Negro.‖ In this issue, researchers reconsidered the data and assumptions of intelligence tests and discovered that many questions were so culturally biased that they were only appropriate for a narrow middle- class white population.
The same applied to the concept of the ―peculiar‖ needs of African Americans for industrial education. The philanthropists had offered scant proof that industrial education
134 Ibid.: 519-20. 135 Ibid.: 520. 58 was a valid need for the African American. Without any valid data, they pressed this argument long after the African American community had abandoned the Hampton
Institute and Booker T. Washington (Tuskegee) versions of industrial education.
Despite the discourse, like other stereotypical conventions of the time, the use of
―peculiar‖ and difference remained strong throughout the period. Harlan R. Douglass,
Director of the College of Education, University of Colorado, Boulder, critiqued the entire 1940 July issue with the following observations:
Like much of the thinking of Southerners, the authors have dwelt over much on the misfortunes of their people. They have perhaps stuck to closely to comparisons with conditions of white youth instead of attacking directly the problems of Negro youth in absolute terms.136
It may not be true, but it will seem to some that the authors have been somewhat too conscious of their audience—the more scholarly Negroes—and have been somewhat diligent in avoiding any possibility that they might be criticized for appearing to condone the present conditions or relax in their struggle for recognition of Negro rights.137
Douglass stirs the conscience. There had been considerable discussion over the period of this study of the absolute differences in educational funding compared to whites. Yet, what did he ask for here? If it was not to compare and ask for similar opportunities, it was, ―…attacking directly the problems of Negro youth in absolute terms.‖ 138 Was this not a pragmatic attempt at saying, ―get on with it and teach children regardless of the conditions?‖ Or, was it something else? Douglass suggested in his
136 Harl R. Douglass, "The Education of Negro Youth for Modern America: A Critical Summary," The Journal of Negro Education 9, no. 3 (1940): 545. 137 Ibid.: 546. 138 Ibid.: 545. 59 phrase ―…diligent in avoiding any possibility that they might be criticized…,‖139 to paraphrase Queen Gertrude from Shakespeare‘s Hamlet, ―The lady doth protest too much, methinks.‖ (Protest in the context of the seventeenth century means to make a vow or other obeisance.)140
The possibility of pandering to the audience is intriguing. Was Douglass condemning the discourse regarding the quest for African American rights or simply saying that these academicians had proven themselves powerless in the past to gain societal changes? Or, was he observing, perhaps from knowledge of the past discourse, writing, and discussions of these researchers, that a more honest discourse based upon the researcher‘s true feelings was warranted?
Douglass‘ discourse also hints at two terms from CRT: ―marginalization‖ and
―voice.‖ Richard Delgado helps to define the issues associated with marginalization and the marginalized. Delgado suggested that the bastions of legal scholarship spoke from a white perspective, leaving out (marginalizing) the voice of the minority from the discussion:
Derrick Bell once observed that the exclusion of minority participants from litigation and scholarship about Black issues reminds him of traditional families of former years in which parents would tell their children, ―Keep quiet. We are talking about you, not to you.‖141
139 Ibid.: 546. 140 Hamlet Act 3, scene 2, 222–230 141 Richard Delgado, "Imperial Scholar: Reflections on a Review of Civil Rights Literature," U. Pa. L. Rev. 32 (1983-1984): 577. 60 Antonio Gramsci said that, ―Subaltern classes are subject to the initiatives of the dominant classes, even when they rebel; they are in a state of anxious defense.‖142
Paulo Freire considered this in the context of the ―fear of freedom:‖
The ―fear of freedom‖ which afflicts the oppressed, a fear which may equally well lead them to desire the role of the oppressor or bind them to the role of oppressed should be examined. One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual‘s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed into one that conforms with the prescriber‘s consciousness. Thus, the behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.143
The 1940 issue on adolescent educational needs did not resolve the debate over
―peculiarities.‖
“The Negro”
The exact phrase ―the Negro‖ appears in 867 articles during the period examined in this study. ―the Negro‖ appears in the title of articles 247 times from 1932 through
1953. Interestingly, in this phrase, ―the‖ is never capitalized (except when it began a sentence), but Negro and Negroes always is. If ―the‖ had been capitalized, it might be argued that the term was intended to be ―of being absolutely distinct.‖ The term ―the whites‖ appears 202 times but neither ―the‖ or ―white(s)‖ is ever capitalized.
The question is what the usage of ―the Negro‖ connotes. First, ―Negro‖ is singular, designating the term as a representation of something. But what? One consideration is that courts and legislation had made the African American anyone who had any drop of black blood and that whites were everyone else. Thus ―the Negro‖ had
142 Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology, 98. 143 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 46-47. 61 been defined by inclusion while whites were defined by exception. Another interpretation might be that the usage is demonstrative of the dignity of the term ―Negro‖ by both capitalization and formalization with ―the‖ as one might address, ―the honorable…‖ Yet, like ―peculiar,‖ it is possible that some of the contributors to the JNE were using the term not as an endearment, but as an emphasis of the condition and state of African American culture and economy in America. Consider the following quotations from the JNE:
Walter G. Daniel (Howard University):…the curricular provisions for both the Negro and white child need considerable enrichment and other modifications that would meet modern standards144
Will W. Alexander (Acting President of Dillard University): If one were to judge the objective of the Negro college by its graduates, he would conclude that its purpose, primarily, is that of training teachers, and, secondarily, that of providing specific pre- professional training for the profession of medicine.145
Ambrose Caliver (U.S. Department of Education): …while endeavoring in every possible way to improve their condition and to become fully-fledged citizens of our democracy, they must not be blind to the peculiar problems facing the Negro at present.146
Irwin V. Shannon (Research Assistant in the Department of Sociology at Vanderbilt University): In other words, there is no apparent tendency here on the part of these educators to identify the needs, interests, or future of the Negro as fundamentally different from what may be the common lot of all groups participating in American life. The only exception is that they seem to favor the development of race consciousness.147
Ralph Bunche (Howard University): [Quoting from the National Conference on the Fundamental Problems in the Education of the Negro] Thus it is seen that the aim of education should be functional, that it should make such changes in none that his daily
144 Daniel, "The Curriculum," 295. 145 Will W. Alexander, "Southern White Schools Study Race Questions," The Journal of Negro Education 2, no. 2 (1933): 268. 146 Caliver, "The Negro Teacher and a Philosophy of Negro Education," 447. 147 Irwin V. Shannon, "The Teaching of Negro Life and History in Relation to Some Views of Educators on Race Adjustment," The Journal of Negro Education 2, no. 1 (1933): 64. 62 activities in the major aspects of life shall be more personally satisfying and socially useful.
Ralph Bunche (Professor of Political Science, Howard University): Much of the confusion surrounding the subject of ―Negro Education‖ is merely a reflection of the position of the Negro in the United States.148
Ralph Bunche: The real task confronting Negro schools, therefore, is not that of deciding whether to give the Negro a reorganized ―Negro‖ education instead of ―white‖ education, but to assure the student that he will receive a thorough training in the fundamentals. The emphasis should be on the fundamentals of education rather than on its frills.149
A. Heningburg (Personnel director, Tuskegee Institute): For the Negro in America, even more than for the white man, attention must be given to the extent to which we expect education to direct rather than reflect social change.150
Kelly Miller (Professor of Sociology at Howard University): If there is any American educational ideal, it is to furnish the individual an equal opportunity under democracy. But alas, the Negro is placed outside the pale of this ennobling bond.151
Kelly Miller: The educational policy of the Negro will be constantly adjusted and readjusted to suit the mood of the Nordic mind which is the dominant factor of his educational and general life.152
E. George Payne (New York University):…the Negro occupies a distinct and peculiar place in our American democracy and education but in general the point of view is that the larger purposes of democracy and the whole future of the Negro require that these peculiar problems of the Negro be solved without resort to the treatment of the Negro as a class in our society.153
148 Bunche, "Education in Black and White," 352. 149 Ibid.: 357. 150 A. Heningburg, "What Shall We Challenge in the Existing Order?," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 386. 151 Miller, "The Reorganization of the Higher Education of the Negro in Light of Changing Conditions," 486. 152 Ibid.: 487. 153 Payne, "The Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education: A Critical Analysis," 428. 63 R. O‘Hara Lanier (Houston Junior College for Negroes): The more education the Negro has should take into consideration his peculiar problems. The peculiar problems and shortages must be integrated into the curricula.154
Ullin W. Leavell (Professor of Education, George Peabody College for Teachers): Too much emphasis upon memoriter and repetitional processes has limited the interests of the Negro elementary school children to an unwholesome extent. A different approach to educative processes is necessary.155
W. A. Robinson (Laboratory High School, Atlanta University): That it is possible by special direction of Negro education so to train the Negro that he will ultimately become aware o the oppressive conditions of his social existence and will have the intelligence to created a strategy and a technique for correcting the conditions that oppress the Negro group and, further, by union with other oppressed groups, will seek to improve conditions as they affect the masses generally.156
Charles H. Thompson (Howard University): It was pointed out earlier in this paper that the education of and for the Negro was carried on within a framework of proscription and enforced segregation with discrimination.157
Charles H. Thompson: The problem faced by the Negro in the separate school is two-fold: first, shall it be extended to sections it does not now legally obtain? Second, how can the legally established separate schools be made to provide more equitable educational opportunity for Negro pupils.158
Ralph Bunche, Walter G. Daniel, Ambrose Caliver, and Charles H. Thompson were all frequent contributors. However, the use of ―the Negro‖ was not universally used by even these contributors. A question for further study is the use of the demonstrative:
―the Negro‖ and difference in context, if any, from the word ―Negroes.‖ Had ―the Negro‖
154 Lanier, "The Reorganization and the Redirection of Negro Education in Terms of Articulation and Integration," 372. 155 Ullin W. Leavell, "Needed Redirection of Elementary Education for Negroes," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 457. 156 Robinson, "What Peculiar Organization and Direction Should Characterize the Education of Negroes?," 399. 157Chas H. Thompson, "The Status of Education of and for the Negro in the American Social Order," The Journal of Negro Education 8, no. 3 (1939): 492. 158 Ibid.: 496. 64 became a subtle colloquialism in academia the way that street language today has become coded with meaning in context of its use and culture?
Nor was ―the Negro‖ the only phrase that elevated the concept of Negro to a separate plane. The exact phrase ―Negro education‖ appears in 983 articles. The exact phrase ―education of the Negro‖ or ―education of Negroes‖ appears in 250 articles. Both
―Negro education‖ and education of the Negro‖ or ―education of Negroes‖ appear in 242 articles. The exact phrase ―Negro school(s)‖ appears in 319 articles. The exact phrase
―school(s) for Negro (es)‖ appears in 176 articles. Both ―Negro school(s) and ―school(s) for Negro (es)‖ appear together in 167 articles. ―education for the Negro‖ appears 25 times while ―education for Negroes‖ appears 151 times. They appear together in the same article 14 times. ―African American‖ does not appear.
Reid E. Jackson, Assistant professor of education at Talladega College, and
William Anthony Aery, Director of Education at the Hampton Institute, framed the debate over the phraseology ―Negro Education‖ versus ―education for Negroes:‖
Reid E. Jackson (Talladega College): Negro Education, to the writer, is an apocryphal term. A more valid concept, in the mind of the writer, is that of the Education of Negroes. To subscribe to the thesis of a Negro Education is to submit to a subordinate brand of education…159
William Anthony Aery (Hampton Institute): Too long have American educators, both white and Negro, been thinking about Negro education instead of the education of the Negro.160
159 Jackson, "A Proposed Revision of a Two-Year Curriculum for Training Elementary Teachers in Negro Colleges," 602. 160 William Anthony Aery, "New Emphases in the Education of Negroes," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936). 65 The subtlety of the differentiation was not lost on either Jackson or Aery, for they pointed to a common problem of the period. Mainstream education called for the education of children—not ―white education.‖ However, with the efforts of philanthropies and others to develop a branded and distinct form of ―Negro education,‖ this became dialectic for many of the contributors to the JNE. That African Americans required a separate and special curriculum not only because of segregation but of the race‘s ―peculiar‖ needs was both seen as necessary and a cause for alarm. The alarm, it seems, stemmed from white branding and curricular race-based packaging by white philanthropists and their ideological followers. At the same time, other researchers, especially African American researchers, identified and offered pragmatic suggestions about how to deal with the ―peculiarities‖ to which society had subjected them. Yet the significant use of terms, ―Negro education‖ and ―educating Negroes,‖ over the period addressed by this study suggests that other than to make the case that Jackson and Aery make for use of the phrase ―educating Negroes,‖ there was not a wholesale preference or drive to adopt the phrase ―educating Negroes‖ versus ―Negro education.‖
“the Negro” and “social order”
―the Negro‖ is now juxtaposed with the phrase ―social order‖ and will be considered in context with the syllogism: There is a social order; Negroes are subalterns; therefore Negroes are part of the social order. The exact phrase ―social order‖ appears in
144 articles during the period of this study. ―Social order‖ appears in the title of articles, or as the subject of the articled 45 times. Two yearbooks included ―social order‖ in their titles: 1939, ―The Present and Future Position of the Negro in the American Social 66 Order,‖ and 1950, ―The Negro Child in the American Social Order.‖ The exact phrase
―new social order‖ appears in 13 articles during the period of this study. The exact phrase
―American social order‖ appears in 63 articles (including 29 in the 1939 issue and 13 in the 1950 yearbook). The exact phrase ―changing social order‖ appears in 12 articles. The exact phrase ―social aim(s)‖ appears 5 times. The terms ―aim(s)‖ and ―social order‖ both appear in the same article 45 times.
The use of the term ―(the) social order‖ and its derivatives are never defined by any author, but the term is used too frequently that to not consider its connotation in the discourse about schools, curricula, and aims would be a slight. ―Social order‖ could mean the keeping of order in society in the sense of the quelling of riots and the jailing of criminals. However, social order, in context of the discourse in the JNE implies difference in society and carries with it the seeds of the words ―caste‖ and ―subaltern‖ and ―superiority.‖ ―Social order‖ could also be considered in context as a euphemism for
―segregation‖ or even as an attempt at minimizing the connotation of the term. Both in
1939 and 1950, the JNE solicited for articles regarding ―…the American Social Order,‖ which implies that America was somehow different from other societies or countries.
―New social order‖ implies change and during the period of this study, there was significant economic turmoil that affected African Americans more deeply than whites.
However, federal education and welfare programs delivered services that African
Americans had never before experienced in the South. War changed the social infrastructure of the country as it moved ever so gradually away from segregation and
African Americans slipped away from agricultural ghettos and moved to cities where 67 they obtained more skilled jobs. ―Social order‖ remains a troubling term, however, because it neatly packages the status quo without challenging it. Nor does it suggest the possibility of future change, even though many JNE authors contributed heated arguments for the abandonment of segregation and its ilk.
What then does ―new social order‖ imply? While the economic conditions of
America improved over time, the condition of segregation did not lessen during the period of this study. Migration of African Americans from the South to the North did change individual conditions, but the social order of segregation and subordination persisted. Was this simply wishful thinking, or did educators actually believe that more than just the economy was changing? Had there been a change in social positioning? If so, they provided scant evidence of the change.
Why Consider These Terms?
For what purpose does the parsing of these terms serve aims-talk? If the needs or problems of the Negro are ―peculiar,‖ in the sense of being unique, then does it not also follow that the aims of education for persons fitting this discrete category must also be unique and/or different from others? The use of the term ―Negro education‖ also advances the notion of difference. Even ―education of the Negro‖ categorizes and requires the consideration of aims in the sense of the peoples being discussed; and it too suggests that hidden within this categorization is a discussion of possible differences in aims. During the period of this study, some JNE authors asked for the educational aims and curricula for the Negro to be identical to or as available as to whites. Often, these same and other authors then suggested that the ―peculiar‖ problems or needs of the Negro 68 required special treatment of various forms: whether it was to better inculcate culture, teach economics more vigorously, or consider that the Negro will face a different existence and will need to gird his/her psyche for the more injurious life as a subaltern in segregation. By acknowledging that there existed a social order, the Negro had a
―peculiar‖ need for the cultural etiquette of a separate caste or class, which, it may be assumed, was ―peculiar‖ to the Negro and also must be a subject for education. Thus an aim oriented towards cultural acquisition must also consider the etiquette needs of the subaltern.
Later Uses of These Terms
The year after the 1940 yearbook brought war and a change in the discourse in the
JNE. Unlike previous times, the focus was on the common needs and objectives of an entire people in war. During the war years, colleges modified some curricula to meet wartime needs (generally compressing the number of required courses or time to complete.) African-American colleges were called upon to serve and acknowledged their weaknesses in engineering and other hard sciences. Yet, they did little to effect curricular change.161 African Americans migrated north to jobs in war factories and the unions began to loosen their racist exclusivity in organized labor. So too did the discourse evolve towards citizenship and democracy as the principles for which war was being waged.
The 1941 yearbook asked, ―What would a Citizenship for Democracy curriculum look like?‖ Researchers asked, ―Would there be a difference for African American aims
161 Branson, "The Training of Negroes for War Industries in World War I I," 384. 69 based upon their social status, suffrage, and place in the social order?‖ Charles H.
Wesley, dean of the Graduate School at Howard University, responded:
The program for schools being given the definition and practice in ―education for citizenship‖ has deep significance for Negro citizens, as well as for other citizens…The distinction already made in the rights and responsibilities of citizens in the rights and responsibilities on the basis of race and color, particularly in the Solid South, have caused thoughtful Negroes to ask themselves what form such an education for them and their children may take…Is this citizenship program to consider the rights, duties, and privileges of political life? Is this program to concern itself with the processes of making a living? Or is it to embrace comprehensively one's entire social life as a member of a community…In the case of Negroes, is there to be a neglect of political activity and an emphasis upon the wider civic activity? In fact, is Education for Citizenship to mean the same for Negro Americans as for Americans of other ethnic origins?162
With his reply to these questions, Charles H. Wesley suggested that, regardless of the present condition and rights of African Americans in the existing social order, the need for citizenship training was identical to others in society:
When, therefore, we teach citizenship in our democracy, we are teaching it, with its fullest meaning, to all citizens and their children. We are not teaching a kind of circumscribed citizenship process, nor are we omitting the suffrage from consideration merely because the legalists inform us that it is not necessarily an aspect of citizenship in the United States. Citizenship should be taught with all of its implications for the training of the socially useful person.163
In 1942, Rufus Clement, dean of the Louisville Municipal College for Negroes, asked educators to consider the Negro in light of the changed conditions war had brought to the American democracy:
The Negro graduate school, along with other institutions for the creation of intelligent public opinion, has been called upon to consider the question of the Negro's
162 Charles H. Wesley, "Education for Citizenship in a Democracy," The Journal of Negro Education 10, no. 1 (1941): 68. 163 Ibid.: 69. 70 stake in the present world conflict and in the peace and reconstruction period which will follow the war.164
Clearly, the African American was in a changing social order during the war. The war also emboldened E. Franklin Frazier to become outspoken about much of ―Negro education‖ that had come before. Armed with Gunnar Myrdal‘s An American Dilemma, he considered the faults of Negro education as a problem of isolationism, which had its roots both in its segregation and in the manner in which Northern philanthropies had theorized its separate construct:
First, it should be pointed out that these institutions were more concerned with some theory or belief as the Negro's place in Southern society than with the real problem of education and the creation of an educational leadership.
In this connection it might be pointed out that there is reason to believe that even some of the munificence of Northern philanthropists was due not so much to a genuine belief in the essential equality of the Negro as to the belief that it created something similar to Kluger Hans, the educated horse, or at best the emasculated singer of spirituals.
The second effect of the isolation of these institutions has been the emphasis upon certain traditional values…But as a matter of fact, despite ―industrial‖ appendages to the State supported schools, which were designed to satisfy the prejudices of state legislators, those in control of State supported schools really sought to give a traditional education.
These institutions have largely created and at the same time determined the intellectual outlook of the Negro upper class.165
Earlier writing in JNE questioned many of the tactics and educational aims of the
Northern philanthropies and state governments. At the same time, many writers also demurred in their criticisms, providing tacit acknowledgement that from these institutions the money flowed. Angering these providers could have proven to be disastrous. E.
164 Rufus E. Clement, "The Impact of the War Upon Negro Graduate and Professional Schools," The Journal of Negro Education 11, no. 3 (1942): 274. 165Frazier, "The Role of Negro Schools in the Post-War World," 468. 71 Franklin Frazier of Howard University, on the other hand, provided the discourse an un- tinged assessment of the Negro school and its supposed needs based upon the Negro‘s
―peculiarities.‖
Consider Frazier‘s argument in context. The white philanthropists had produced a
―peculiar‖ brand of industrial education that, by all accounts from ―the Negro,‖ had proven to be and continued to be completely inadequate. There needed to be a counterargument or contraindication of the diagnosis of the philanthropists or more of the same would be proffered upon a people who just might be willing enough to accept anything because it was better than nothing.
Thus, this theoretical proposition of ―peculiarity‖ had considerable influence over the contributors to JNE over the entire course of this study. And, if it could be theorized, postulated, or even proven that ―the Negro‖ had certain ―peculiar needs‖ in the
―American social order,‖ then an alternative theory of ―Negro education,‖ or, if preferred,
―education of the Negro‖ could be postulated and even have validity. But in 1944, E.
Franklin Frazier spoke of a different idea. Frazier considered the changing social order and debunked another one of Negro education‘s perennial myths—that when born in that community, the person will live forever in that discrete community —if born into rural agriculture—the jobs, life, and curricula should have a considerable rural agricultural element, whatever that meant:
According to the older conception of the role of the Negro institutions of higher education, their students were being prepared to take their places in a rather stable world behind the walls of segregation. But in the changing world of today and in the post-war world, the Negro world will no longer be stable, and if the walls of segregation, ―don't come tumbling down,‖ at least some areas of life they will be crumbling. 72 Moreover it should be emphasized that these institutions are not educating their students to fit into local communities. The Negro graduates of these schools are likely to live in any part of the nation.
…the Negro must not simply receive an education but he must be made educable for the changing world in which he must live. This is probably more necessary for the Negro student since he will be called upon to be more adaptable than the white student. [This in consultation with Horace Mann Bond and Gunnar Myrdal].
And it is the function of the institutions to provide him with this social intelligence.166
The social order was fractured. Frazier said:
Although the increasing mobility of the Negroes is causing considerable social disorganization, it is nevertheless widening their mental horizons and giving them a new conception of themselves.167
―Peculiarities‖ had changed from a code of difference wrought by separatism to
―stranger in a strange land‖ where opportunities, mobility, and socialization were changing the experience of the African American. These had become ―peculiarities‖ of progress, not the caste function of the social order of the depression and post-
Reconstruction years. The discourse had changed to that of student needs from the needs of the Negro and the need for a separated Negro education.
The extent to which the African American educators who contributed to the JNE had to go to counter the prevailing white view of blacks in America was, to put it graphically, Jovian.
166 Ibid.: 470-71. 167 Ibid.: 469. 73 Summary
―Peculiar,‖ ―The Negro,‖ ―Negro Education,‖ ―education for the Negro,‖ and
―social order‖ all imply difference and not equality. Yet many who wrote for the JNE before World War II could envision no foreseeable lifting of the veil of segregation and its ―two-ness‖ that it created in American culture and society. Despite this, perhaps these terms gave the academicians intellectual definition to an era of existence that defied explanation in its dysfunction. These terms gave intellectual advance to the concept that difference was untenable—and ushered in an age of defiance of the conventional—the civil rights movement.
74 Chapter 4—Why Aims-Talk?
Our fate is to become one, and yet many—this is not prophecy but description. Thus one of the greatest jokes in the world is the spectacle of the whites busy escaping blackness and becoming blacker every day, and the blacks striving toward whiteness, becoming quite dull and gray. None of us seems to know who he is or where he‘s going.168
Ralph Ellison‘s ―invisible man‖ reflected in and upon a period of time where the solipsism of ―being‖ crossed the boundaries of segregation that defined existence.
This existential no-man‘s land represents the struggle with which the contributors to the JNE began their aims conversation. Because segregation remained both the firmament and keel of society during the period of study, the aims conversation became a critique of society and its educational aims. Aims-talk is fundamental to curriculum discovering. When there is rich discourse about aims, there is an engagement of culture and the individual. That culture is influential in aims-talk is a centerpiece to this study.
Culturally-ascribed aims-talk is evident in the JNE. First, however, it is important to consider the ontology and epistemology of the concept called educational aims.
The literature has difficulty defining ―the aims of education.‖ Philip H. Phenix informed us that aims are the cultural-philosophic value statements of education.169
Phenix considered the fact that when we make choices as to what to include and not include in a class, these choices require us to consider the value of the aims we keep or discard. If aims are ―a problem of values‖ as Phenix suggested, then these values and
168 Ellison, Invisible Man, 435-36. 169 Philip H. Phenix, Philosophy of Education (NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1958), 549. 75 their manifestations—aims are subject to critique as they relate to society. Such values and aims can also be critically assessed as to outcomes or results of the application of value towards curriculum.170 Values in a society that professes to be both democratic and segregated are considerably more complex and likely discordant than in a society where individuals coexist more-or-less equally. Gunnar Myrdal considered such discordance from the point of view of the white South and of education for African Americans:
A white Southerner can defend, for instanced the suppression of the Negroes by saying that they are satisfied with their status and lack of desire for change. Without any intermediate remarks, he can then proceed to explain that suppression is necessary, that Negroes must be kept down by all means, and that Negroes have an ineradicable craving to be like white people. Attempts on the part of the interlocutor to draw attention to the contradiction have seldom succeeded.171
Walter G. Daniel of Howard University, writing in the 1932 JNE, explained the discordance of segregation and equality by framing the problem in terms of education:
If curricular provisions for the Negro child are made separately from those for the white, the problem becomes one of comparison and adequacy. If provisions are not separate, the problem is that of adequacy.172
The difficulty that Walter G. Daniel wrestled with is the ―value‖ of and the need for a separate education for the Negro. This question is bound up in significant and conflicted issues facing African Americans during this period. Were African Americans truly different from whites from some fundamental way? Was this a permanent difference, or something generational that existed from the fact that the people being educated in the 1930s were children or grandchildren of former slaves? How valid were
170 Ibid. 171 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 31. 172 Daniel, "The Curriculum," 278. 76 the theories of assessments that ―proved‖ white superiority in intelligence? How relevant were the anthropological theories that suggested that a people, such as African Americans whose ancestors came from ―primitive lands‖ would take many generations in an evolutionary sense to become civilized? If any one or all of these complaints against
African Americans were true, then there should be a separate school and curriculum for
African Americans. If they were not true, then Daniel‘s assertion of adequacy in a legally segregated school was in question.
Yet the phrase ―separate but equal‖ used to quantify segregation gave no credence to the argument that African Americans were inherently different from others. The concept of value in the segregation context of ―separate but equal‖ suggests that African
Americans are equal in all aspects to other citizens of the nation. This concept imposes no qualification of equality such as that expressed by an anonymous pig in George Orwell‘s
Animal Farm:
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS [emphasis in original]173
Yet there was a pervasive depreciative relationship between whites and blacks that existed during segregation. Considering values beyond the concept of intellectual, social, cultural, moral and ethical and the like, one must contextualize societal norms socioeconomically. The period of this study was in an environment of scarcity. There was considerable scarcity in the South where the agricultural economy‘s decline was greater
173 George Orwell, Animal Farm (London: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1946), 67. 77 during depression than the Northern industrial breakdown. There were no jobs and limited funding for the schools. All of these exacerbated the condition of separate but unequal. Within George Orwell‘s barnyard pronouncement are the seeds of the fundamental value statement of the time.
In the 19th century Congress passed the two Morrill Acts174 that required states that maintained separate colleges for Whites and African Americans to fund them equally:
State from its own revenue, for the education of colored students in agriculture and the mechanic arts, however named or styled, or whether or not it has received money heretofore under the act to which this act is an amendment, the legislature of such State may propose and report to the Secretary of Education (4) a just and equitable division of the fund to be received under this act between one college for white students and one institution for colored students established as aforesaid which shall be divided into two parts and paid accordingly, and thereupon such institution for colored students shall be entitled to the benefits of this act and subject to its provisions, as much as it would have been if it had been included under the act of eighteen hundred and sixty-two, and the fulfillment of the foregoing provisions shall be taken as a compliance with the provision in reference to separate colleges for white and colored students.175
Yet, these acts also gave the states the power to determine what equal funding meant. Like in Orwell‘s Animal Farm, those in power determined the nature of equality.
The statistics of the age all point to the fact that Southern states provided minimal financial assistance to the African American colleges, even those public institutions established by the states. Thus, scarcity of resources, exacerbated by a profoundly damaged economy during the early years of the Depression pointed to the value and
174 First Morrill Act: Act of July 2, 1862, ch. 130, 12 Stat. 503, 7 U.S.C. 301 et seq. Second Morrill Act: Act of August 30, 1890, ch. 841, 26 Stat. 417, 7 U.S.C. 322 et seq. 175 Second Morrill Act: Act of August 30, 1890, ch. 841, 26 Stat. 417, 7 U.S.C. 322 et seq. 78 evaluative concept that whiteness was property, a legal theory that Justice Henry Billings
Brown had earlier codified in Plessy v. Ferguson:
If he be a white man and assigned to a colored coach, he may have his action for damages against the company for being deprived of his so-called property. Upon the other hand, if he be a colored man and be so assigned, he has been deprived of no property, since he is not lawfully entitled to the reputation of being a white man.176
Scarcity and the ownership of whiteness carried over to more than just reputation; it carried into the schools and school resources. In the chapter of this study on segregation, the true magnitude of the differential between white and black educational funding and experience will be revealed. Suffice it to say here that the aims-talk for the
African American in segregation included the systemic delimiter called money and the lack thereof.
Within this complex conundrum of ―values‖ are the questions with which the early researchers in the JNE began to wrestle. A central question that permeates the aims discourse in the JNE is ―whose values?‖ In 1932, Walter G. Daniel of Howard University framed the central question of aims that beset the contributors to the JNE over the course of this study:
Yet the problem of providing for him the most worthwhile succession of experiences towards a desirable educational goal has not been solved; for in both segregated and mixed school systems there are found opposing theories and practices as to what should be the aim and content of the education of the Negro Child.177
While not always stated directly; the concept of values was inherent in the following statements from discrete JNE contributors:
176 Plessey v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) 177 Daniel, "The Curriculum," 277. 79 Walter G. Daniel (Howard University): Or in other words that a certain amount of industrial-arts education is essential and useful in the elementary education of all children—both white and Negro; and that any further differentiation is a matter of the method and organization of the curriculum to meet individual needs rather than a fundamental difference in aims.178
W.E.B. Dubois (Atlanta University): Our educational institutions must graduate to the world men fitted to take their place in real life by their knowledge, spirit, and ability to do what the world wants done. This vocational guidance must have for its object the training of men who can think clearly and function normally as physical beings; who have a knowledge of what human life on earth has been, and what it is now; and a knowledge of the constitution of the known universe. All that, and in addition to that, a training which will enable them to take some definite and intelligent part in the production of goods and in the furnishings of human services and in the democratic distribution of income so as to build civilization, encourage initiative, reward effort and support life. 179
Ambrose Caliver (U.S. Department of Education): Theoretically, our moral and social life has improved greatly, yet social maladjustments abound and we are morally corrupt. Our intellectual and religious advancement have increased beyond the most sanguine hopes, still we are unable to think straightly and clearly, and, we are without spiritual moorings.180
Howard K. Beale (Bowdoin College): One of the first necessities of education today is a determination of its fundamental purposes. Shall it pass on information and skills of the past which will enable men to earn a livelihood, or shall it create varied personalities capable of living richly beyond material subsistence? Shall it develop industrial efficiency, or shall it teach men wisely to use the leisure which industrial development makes possible, nay, inevitable? Is its function to pass on attitudes, prejudices, beliefs of the past generation, or to produce critical thinking and ability to adapt oneself to a rapidly changing world? Shall education bulwark the status quo or take the lead in creating a new and better social order?181
These four quotations aim at the heart of the aims discourses that coursed through the JNE in the 1930s and established the platform for the value-laden discussion of how to educate the African American. They asked what is possible within a physically
178 Ibid.: 289. 179 DuBois, "Education and Work," 70. 180 Caliver, "The Negro Teacher and a Philosophy of Negro Education," 434. 181 Beale, "The Needs of Negro Education in the United States," 8. 80 separate environment. They considered the value statements of separate and integrated but in context of what might be real. What are the affordances; what are the constraints in this environment? What is the value of character not in a segregated environment, but in a rapidly changing technological society?
While all four were writing about education for African Americans, their value of questions and even their value-parameters were different. Perhaps the sources and impact of their individual experiences shaped their value-propositions. W. E. B. Dubois was an
African American teacher/philosopher and activist founder of the NAACP. Walter G.
Daniel was a long-time education professor at Howard University and editor and frequent contributor to the JNE. Ambrose Caliver was a Herbert Hoover appointed Senior
Specialist in the Education of Negroes in the U.S. Office of Education. On the other hand, Howard K. Beale was a white historian at Bowdoin. Because of the disparate nature of values and their sources, there must be other considerations beyond ―values‖ for how we might better define aims.
R. S. Peters suggested that while aims are a societal formulation, they are also intrinsic and are not extrinsically imposed:
By contrast, Peters‘ succinct recognition that the aims of education are intrinsic to it remains extremely important…While we might have extrinsic reasons for educating people (such as to serve the economy), the fact remains that the normative force of the word is the consequence of its inherent valued objectives or aims.182
182 Robin Barrow, "‗Or What‘s a Heaven For?‘ the Importance of Aims in Education," in The Aims of Education, ed. Roger Marples (NY: London: Routledge, 2002), 16. 81 Through John Dewey, John I. Goodlad said that not only are aims intrinsic to education, but they are intrinsic to the individual:
The aims of education, according to Dewey, are found within the process, not outside it in the state. The state does not set the aims of education nor do its educational pronouncements have any immunity from critical examination through the educational process. It is one‘s individual observations and judgments that count in a continuous striving to improve the quality of one‘s experience and, therefore, one‘s life.183
If aims are intrinsic, then aims discourse as a meta-narrative becomes problematic. John I. Goodlad through John Dewey suggested that aims are internally constructed by personal discourses within an individual in relationship to the world and experience. The external discourse and conversation becomes one of only possibilities— of value-laden externalities—a conversation without end. The conversation about aims cannot conclude because, in a sense, it has limited value beyond the individual involved in his-her own education.
The question is what is the value of the extrinsic discourse if all aims are intrinsic? Given this conundrum, aims-talk would become an oxymoron at even the mid- range theoretical level. Yet, there are two additional concepts to be considered before dismissing the possibility of constructive extrinsic aims-talk. The first is the inextricable bond between curriculum and aims. While aims might be considered metaphysically as ends; curriculum could also be so considered as means. Yet aims and curriculum speak to each other in a ―complicated conversation.‖184
183 John Goodlad, What Schools Are For (Los Angeles: Phi Delta Kappa Education Foundation, 1979), 37. 184 William Pinar, What Is Curriculum Theory?, vol. (TxU)13834436 (Mahwah, N.J. :: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), 186.. 82 A complicated conversation is more than just dialog, as Michael Oakeshott explained, ―In a conversation the participants are not engaged in enquiry or a debate; there is no ‗truth‘ to be discovered, no proposition to be proved, no conclusion sought.‖185
Thus, the exercise of the curriculum and its aims begins as a conversation between and among its constituents—students, parents, teachers, administrators, community, and researchers and so on:
In conversations, ―facts‖ appear only to be resolved once more into the possibilities from which they were made; ―certainties‖ are shown to be combustible, not by being brought in contact with other ―certainties‖ or with doubts, but by being kindled by the presence of ideas of another order; approximations are revealed between notions normally remote from one another. Nobody asks where they have come from or on what authority they are present; nobody cares what will become of them when they have played their part. There is no symposiarch or arbiter; not even a doorkeeper to examine the credentials .186
Michael Oakeshott explained that even while the conversation is taking place, it is being reflected upon and distilled into something else with its own detritus, chaff, and fungible product. Conversation is as Joseph J. Schwab described in his ―polyfocal conspectus‖187 was part of the first cycle, or the listening to and mastery of the subject matter at hand. At this point in the conspectus, the conversation may be more absorbing than interacting. For Schwab, conversation need not be talk, but communication with art, books, nature, or the body language of another.
185 Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind (London: Bowes & Bowes, 1959), 10. 186 Ibid. 187 Joseph J. Schwab, Science, Curriculum, and Liberal Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 342. 83 For Michael Oakeshott, there was no winner; no loser in the conversation:
Conversation is not an enterprise to yield an extrinsic profit, a contest where a winner gets a prize, nor is it an activity of exegesis; it is an unrehearsed intellectual adventure. It is with conversation, as with gambling, its significance lies neither in winning nor in losing, but in wagering.188
Yet to wager is to reflect upon choices with knowledge learned in previous tries in order to produce a desirable outcome. This brings back to Joseph J. Schwab and the
―polyfocal conspectus.‖ After the doctrine is imparted (the first phase), the second phase:
…is concerned with transforming the doctrine into view, moving it from the status of ―knowledge‖ toward being one mode of discriminating certain kinds of problems and materials appropriate to their solution in educational situations.189
Within this second cycle, there is a need of multiple perspectives for the student and the teacher to develop the conversation. And it is here where Schwab and Oakeshott both described the great difficulty of the conversation in curriculum:
Michael Oakeshott: Education, properly speaking, is an initiation into the skill and partnership of this conversation in which we learn to recognize the voices, to distinguish the proper occasions of utterance, and in which we acquire the intellectual and moral habits appropriate to conversation. And it is this conversation which, in the end, gives place and character to every human activity and utterance.190
Joseph J. Schwab: Exploitation of alternative views, their practical utilization, ought, then, to be pursued…in its own right, as a capstone to theoretic mastery.191
If the conversation of education as William E. Doll, Jr. said is ―rigorous,‖
―recursive,‖ ―rich,‖ and ―relational,‖192 then the conversation becomes complex and even
188 Oakeshott, The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind, 10-11. 189 Schwab, Science, Curriculum, and Liberal Education, 356. 190 Oakeshott, The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind, 11. 191 Schwab, Science, Curriculum, and Liberal Education, 342. 84 transcendent as Arthur Wellesley Foshay described, ―…the sudden awareness of one‘s self as a part of a vastly larger whole.‖193
Yet, are our curricular conversations imbued with the complexity of a ―polyfocal conspectus?‖ Schwab warned us:
Second and subsequent cycles are not duplicates of the first. A cumulative factor is added to each phase. The cumulative factor is appended to ensure that perceptual space, discrimination of one view and doctrine from another, is maintained, or if not maintained, is knowingly violated and to good purpose…Their new task is to decompose the finished picture they had earlier shaped, resolve it into its original and polyvalent potentialities, then reshape it into a new picture, a new kind of problem, and a new kind of solution, and do all this without destroying beyond possibility of recovery the first picture composed. Only then will trainees have experienced a polyfocal conspectus.194
If aims are intrinsic and are also part of the complicated conversation of curriculum, how does the individual utilize life and the societal construct of education in context of personal needs? This question is firmly ensconced within the question of
―Whose aims; whose curriculum; whose education is this?‖ In this 1932 proposal in the decades' long conversation in the JNE during the period examined in this study, Walter
G. Daniel of Howard University reflected upon this dilemma in his consideration of how to frame the conversation of aims in context of the individual. Within the curriculum, he proposed that other researchers and practical curriculum developers consider the following:
- The capacities, needs and interests of the learner…
192 William E. Jr. Doll, A Post-Modern Perspective on Curriculum (NY: Teachers College Press, 1993), 176-81. 193 Arthur Wellesley Foshay, The Curriculum, Purpose, Substance, Practice (NY: Teachers College Press, 2000), 3. 194 Schwab, Science, Curriculum, and Liberal Education, 357. 85 - Both the individual and society must be considered…
- Differences among individuals need to be considered…
- The curriculum should have a ―maximum lifelikeness for the learner‖ so that its experiences will appear to him to be worthwhile and vital195
Daniel further clarified his items of consideration to reflect upon the differences in location in which the child is to learn. This too became a part of the decades'-long conversation in the JNE. The question of environmental possibilities and conditions became a dialectic that divided the researchers. The dilemma of what to teach the child who lives in an agricultural community versus the city carries the argument that the child will remain as an adult where he/she grew up as a child. This conundrum coexisted with segregation. Segregation constructs walls, boundaries, and other opaque constraints that validate such thinking. Within the separate doctrine of segregation, African Americans are relegated to discrete places. If relegated to discrete places and, that appear to even the most casual observer as socioeconomic backwaters, then how can the inhabitants move to other places? Without training, why would workers move from agriculture to the city to look for industrial work?
What this ―regionalization‖ argument ignores is the empirical evidence of the times: that individual African Americans and whole families and even whole communities migrated from the Southern farms to both Southern and Northern cities.
Many African Americans from Southern states did not return to segregation; instead they preferred to look for jobs and opportunities in the North.
195 Daniel, "The Curriculum," 290. 86 The concept of regionally ascribed aims-talk became part of the complicated conversation made more divisive and insidious in the context of segregation and de minimus opportunities for African Americans. A rhetorical question of the time was,
―Why teach the African American to learn how to be a machinist in Mississippi if there are no machinist jobs for blacks in Mississippi?‖ Nowhere was this question more relevant than with the Northern philanthropies like the Jeanes and Slater funds, 196which subscribed to the philosophy of education for African Americans that prepared the child for the jobs available to him or her only in the general community where they lived.
Thus, the concept of regional education and regional opportunity within the specter of segregation ghettoized the African American community in the minds of early twentieth- century white philanthropists and others almost as completely as America had tribalized its Native Americans.
As long as separate communities, whether de jure or de facto, existed for whites and blacks, regionalism would persist. Throughout the period of this study, regionalism and the idea that there were a limited number of career opportunities that African
Americans could aspire to persisted. In later conversations, especially during and after
World War II, the insidious nature of this conversation in relationship to developing realities in the integrated military, in the North, and even in Southern cities likely contributed to society‘s conversation that led to Brown v. Board of Education and the resulting civil rights movement.
196 Caldwell, "The Work of the Jeanes and Slater Funds.", Jane E. McAllister and Dorothy M. McAllister, "Adult Education for Negroes in Rural Areas: The Work of the Jeanes Teachers and Home and Farm Demonstration Agents," The Journal of Negro Education 14, no. 3 (1945). 87 Nel Noddings said that aims-talk has stalled and must be revived, ―I have argued that we need to talk about aims because aims provide criteria by which we judge our choices of goals, objectives, and subject content. Aims can also be directed at the larger society and its policies.‖197
Aims-talk should be revived and reconceptualized in a different manner from previous aims discourses. If the individual is socially constructed, then aims as ends must be framed in context with society. Curriculum as a complicated conversation and
―curriculum as means‖ to understand the socially constructed individual continue to produce ontological and epistemological dilemmas that are difficult to conceptualize. The individual in this conversation must be considered. What are the rights of the individual in this aims-talk? To what extent does the individual have an opportunity or right to cherry-pick in the orchard of possibilities? Add a delimiter to this choice by positioning it in a society where power inequities and the property value of whiteness create barriers, ever increasing hurdles and other inveiglements of segregation and the conversation becomes more complicated.
Yet this conversation of curriculum as Michael Oakeshott describes is a process and not a contest is seen by others as a Triumph of the Will.198 Deborah Britzman through
Anna Freud believed that, ―…education wants something from the child:‖199
197 David J. Flinders, & Thornton, Stephen J. , ed., The Curriculum Reader (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004), 341. 198 A reference to Leni Riefenstahl‘s 1934 film documentary Triumph of the Will of Hitler and his powerful propaganda machine; the pedagogy of this work then became a perverse implement of this propaganda machine, even winning awards around the globe for its cinematic technique. 88 Step by step education aims is the exact opposite of what the child wants, and at each step it regards as desirable the very opposite of the child‘s inherent instinctual strivings.200
If, as Anna Freud said, that, ―…the child‘s attainment of pleasure is the main object of life,‖ we must first determine what pleasure means and whether curriculum affords no pleasure and even whether pleasure is an evil to be educated out.201
Is the learning of conversation or the experience of an intellectual transcendence not a form of pleasure seeking that is learned and by its nature does not reject the pleasure-seeking nature of humanity? Can such a conversation add to the richness to life that is beyond the primitive subsistence of infancy? Or, as Noddings said, is ―happiness‖ the ultimate educational aim?
If we accept happiness as an aim of education, we will be concerned with both the quality of present experience and the likely contribution of that experience to future happiness. Everything we do will be evaluated in light of this aim and others that have been assessed as compatible with it.202
Noddings brings us once again back to values and the complicated conversation of values, the intrinsic nature of aims, and the necessary curriculum that results. This curriculum, if we are to embrace Dewey, is a dance of life and the conversation of that dance changes with every new theme that the orchestra of life presents as opportunity or challenge. This is where the discourse begins to consider the intrinsic nature of aims and conceptual issues. First, if aims are intrinsic, how do they become so within the psycho-
199 Deborah P. Britzman, Lost Subjects, Contested Objects: Toward a Psychoanalytic Inquiry of Learning (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 1. 200 Anna Freud, Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Lectures for Child Analysts and Teachers 1922-1935 (NY: International Universities Press, Inc., 1974), 101. 201 Britzman, Lost Subjects, Contested Objects: Toward a Psychoanalytic Inquiry of Learning, 1. 202 Nel Noddings, Happiness and Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 215. 89 existential being? Second, the principal aims-talk of education has been, at least for the past century, extrinsic in association with organized education. While this discourse has been enriched through Joseph Schwab and Paulo Freire and others, how do we engage, enrich, encourage, and assist the individual to develop an intrinsic sense of personal aim?
Finally, is there a curricular approach that considers Noddings‘ happiness, Dewey‘s education as life, and Phenix values approach in association with the socialization needs of society and the intrinsic needs of the individual? This is the new aims-talk—this is where the conversation begins to orient its reconceptualization.
Yet conversation and reconceptualization is not enough. Egalitarian aims conceived within a segregated society may be difficult or impossible to achieve. There is an activist notion to aims-talk that needs to be conceptualized with a purpose to both challenge and change the social order so that the theorized aims of education can have any chance of being achieved.
Why reconceptualize this concept with evidence from the past? The JNE represents a continuous conversation of aims over time and during two decades of de jure segregation. The twin ruptures of depression and war added both urgency and texture to the conversation. The conversation about aims is complex. Aims reconceptualization should consider the dilemmas and conversations that went before to better frame the conversation of today.
These conversations in no way reflect the totality of the aims-discourse, but the conditions of de facto segregation exist today and there continues to be disparate impact on African Americans during economic booms, busts, and wars. The analysis of these 90 discourses is appositionally a good place to begin. Within this complexity are the elements that can begin the reconceptualization of aims-talk. Associated with these conversations are values: the value of work and what kind of work; the value of academic learning; democracy and its values; the concept of ―a new social order‖ and its meaning and purposes for a changing society. All engage the interplay of happiness, education as life, and can help us to consider how these external conditions can engage the individual.
91 Chapter 5—Segregation: A Value Statement
―Boy you are a fool,‖ he said. ―Your white folk didn‘t teach you anything and your mother wit has left you cold. What happened to you young Negroes? I thought you had caught on to how things are done down here. But you don‘t even know the way things are and the way things are supposed to be.‖ ―My God,‖ he gasped, ―what is the race coming to?‖203
Dr. Bledsoe, dean of the Negro college where the ―invisible man‖ was a student, chastised the young man for not understanding the social order, the order of existence in which the African American was required to live. As the fiduciary of great philanthropies‘ investment in the college, it was Bledsoe‘s sworn duty to preserve this social order.
This chapter explores the effects of segregation on the African-American community and more specifically, the schools. The extent to which segregation was the fundament and keel of the African American educational debate during the period examined in this study cannot be overstated. Therefore, it is important to understand what
―separate but not equal‖ means.
Joel Spring‘s definition of segregation, ―Segregated schooling was a means of conferring an inferior status on a minority group and of educating individuals for particular roles in the political and economic structure,‖204 will be used to consider segregation in context with its discourse in the JNE.
203 Ellison, Invisible Man, 109. 204 Spring, The American School 1642-1985, 186. 92 Carter G. Woodson summed up the dilemma of the school in segregation with the following quote from his 1933 treatise, The Mis-Education of the Negro:
When a Negro has finished his education in our schools, then, he has been equipped to begin the life of an Americanized or Europeanized white man, but before he steps from the threshold of his alma mater he is told by his teachers that he must go back to his own people from whom he has been estranged by a vision of ideas which in his disillusionment he will realize that he cannot attain.205
Segregation could also be considered in the context of G. E. Moore‘s paradox,
―…that saying ‗I went to the movies, but I don‘t believe it‘ is absurd, while saying ‗I went to the movies, but he doesn‘t believe it‘ is not in the least absurd.‖206
Yet, segregation begs the African American, as Woodson suggested, to make the absurd statement, ―I am equal to the white man, but I don‘t believe it.‖ However, it is not so absurd to say that, ―I am equal to the white man, but the white man doesn‘t believe it.‖
This is the true paradox of segregation. While African Americans were relegated to an educational discourse in an absurd environment, whites could maintain the separate but equal discourse within a separate but unequal environment. Gunnar Myrdal added dimension to this paradox:
A main difference between the types of rationalization in the two regions seems to be that the Southerners still think of Negroes as their former slaves, while the association with slavery is notably absent from the minds of Northerners. To Northerners, the Negro is. More abstractly, just an alien, felt to be particularly difficult to assimilate into the life of the community. But in the South the master-model of economic discrimination— slavery—is still a living force as a memory and a tradition.207
205 Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro, 10. 206 Krista Lawlor and John Perry, "Moore's Paradox," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86, no. 3 (2008): 421. 207 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 219. 93 Yet, researchers quite often expressed their realities pragmatically—―Get what we can out of the system now, and worry about changing the social reality later.‖ CRT considers this in its concepts of ―weighted pragmatism‖ and ―false consciousness.‖ Marie
Matsuda discussed both terms: ―As a method, pragmatism is attractive to subordinated people because it is often their indigenous method. Pragmatism recognizes multiple consciousness, experimentation, and flexibility as tools of inquiry.‖208 Matsuda continued:
In this, I side with Professor Cornel West‘s quest for a prophetic pragmatism, one that hears the human plea for decent lives.209
This is the ―false consciousness‖ problem. Various phenomenon, such as working-class authoritarianism, Asian-American homophobia, and women‘s internalization of patriarchical, body images, show how subordination can obscure as well as illuminate self-knowledge. The long, cold history of subordinated status generating subordinating impulses is well known to both scholars and targets of recycled hate.210
This argument is not dissimilar from Antonio Gramsci‘s, which suggested that the wisdom of the peasant who does not know will be bound up in the hegemony211—the false consciousness that Matsuda spoke of. Kate Crehan encapsulated Gramsci‘s ideas:
He was certainly deeply interested in mapping the cultural worlds of those he termed subaltern, the peasants and other non-elite groups, but his interest stemmed from his awareness that to have any chance of success, a revolutionary movement need to be generally popular with the mass population. For Gramsci any would-be revolutionaries need to understand the cultural realities they are bent on transforming, apart from any other reason because counterhegemonies, capable of challenging in an effective way the
208 Mari J. Matsuda, "Pragmatism Modified and the False Consciousness Problem," S. Cal. L. Rev. 63 (1989-1990): 1764. 209 Ibid.: 1768. 210 Ibid.: 1777. 211 Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology, 93. 94 dominant hegemony, emerge out of the lived reality of oppressed people‘s day-to-day lives.212
What Gramsci envisioned is a fateful few—the organic intellectuals—who would assess this false consciousness and its stories and work within the community to refashion consciousness as it learned of the falsity of the preeminent societal constructs that subordinated the peasant.213
Consider for a moment that the African American contributors to the JNE were
―organic intellectuals.‖ To do so, we must also consider them in light of Eddie S. Glaude,
Jr.‘s concept of ―nation language.‖ During the long march of the discourse in this study, and while there was consciousness-raising, false consciousness brought about by segregation did not disappear. It may be argued that within segregation even the enlightened were living in a time of falsehoods that could never be fully reconciled. In this light, these contributors were not to become the ―organic intellectuals‖ that Antonio
Gramsci called for. In fact, we might suggest that it was through the efforts of the
NAACP and later civil rights activists that the true ―organic intellectual‖ emerged.
However, we might also suggest that these educators writing in the JNE trained the generation that developed a critical mass of ―organic intellectuals‖ that brought about changes in segregation.
The facts of segregation are incontrovertible.
Gunnar Myrdal in his exhaustive treatise on segregation in America laid out his premises for his An American Dilemma:
212 Ibid., 5. 213 Ibid., 137. 95 The use of explicit value premises serves three main purposes: (1) to purge as far as possible the scientific investigation of distorting blares which are usually the result of hidden biases, (2) to determine in a rational way the statement of problems and the definition of terms for the theoretical analysis, (3) to lay a logical basis for practical and political conclusions.214
This chapter has similar objectives to present the empirical evidence of segregation‘s effects upon African Americans and America. Between the fall of
Reconstruction and 1944, segregation increased. Gunnar Myrdal observed:
Segregation is now becoming so complete that the white Southerner practically never sees a Negro except as his servant and in other standardized and formalized caste situations.215
Segregation in the US came in many guises. There was the de jure segregation of the South, made into law by the Supreme Court Decision of 1894, Plessy v. Ferguson.
The North was not legally segregated and there were many mixed-race schools, but economic segregation and community segregation was considerable. In the border states between the South and North existed a patchwork form of segregation that resembled the
South. In New Jersey, in deference to its Southern neighbors, Southern counties had segregated schools, including playgrounds and classrooms, while the Northern counties had integrated schools.216
In the South, the African American communities were predominantly rural and agricultural. Gunnar Myrdal observed that even the great migrations of African
Americans North during and after World War I to the towns and cities did not produce
214 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Ixxx. 215 Ibid., 41. 216 Ibid., 632. 96 advantage for African Americans because the white industrialists were loath to hire
African Americans.217 By 1935 Myrdal reported that half of the Northern African
Americans were on relief. Things were no better in the South during the depression, but relief, Myrdal reported, was significantly more difficult to obtain:
Economic conditions had become relatively worse For Negroes in the South during the depression. Whites who had lost their small farms or their better jobs in the cities began to encroach on the Negroes in the heavy unskilled occupations and even in the service occupations-the traditional jobs of the Southern Negro. Southern agriculture became worse, and the poorest owners and tenants-which included a disproportionate share of Negroes-were forced out.218
The Federal Agricultural Adjustment Administration program created other problems for African Americans. Most African American farmers were sharecroppers; they only ―rented‖ the land. The Agricultural Adjustment Program paid farm owners to keep their land fallow, providing the white landowners an opportunity to force tenant farmers from their land. Myrdal suggested that in the South there were, ―…192,000 fewer
Negro and 150,000 fewer white tenants in 1940 than in 1930…,‖ but that white ownership of land in the South actually increased.219
If this is a study about education, why the inclusion of, land, jobs, and opportunities? Return for a moment to Carter G. Woodson‘s observation—without jobs or opportunities beyond school—what was the point? Gunnar Myrdal echoed Woodson:
Therefore, if the Negro, in a sense, has become ―demoralized‖ it is rather because white people have given him a smaller share of the steady and worthwhile jobs than of the public assistance benefits…Since Negroes are seldom in demand for jobs for which
217 Ibid., 195 & 97. 218 Ibid., 197. 219 Ibid., 253. 97 education is necessary, there certainly is nothing surprising in the conclusion, that they, unlike whites, usually fail to improve their opportunities by staying in school longer.220
The exclusion of African Americans from middle-class jobs in the mainstream meant that theirs was a considerably smaller middle class. Yet, the paradox of segregation was not that African Americans were completely excluded, it was that they were only permitted the opportunities to become professionals such as doctors and lawyers and clergy in sufficient quantities to serve African Americans. Beyond local service professionals there were few opportunities for African Americans in engineering and other ―white‖ professions.
Where segregation was most complete, as Myrdal had earlier observed, there was also segregation of services. While there were African American merchants, in the South they served a much less affluent community, were required to pay the same rents as the white merchants, and were in direct competition with white stores. Smaller in size, the
African American shopkeeper was at a distinct disadvantage.221 Robert Margo supported this argument by suggesting that the number of black-owned businesses were too small to provide the Southern African American with significant numbers of jobs.222
Gunnar Myrdal observed, while African Americans could become professionals, in 1930 only 2.6 percent of black males and 4.5 percent black female workers were
220 Ibid., 301 & 03. 221 Ibid., 305 & 07. 222 Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History, 95. 98 teachers, clergy, doctors, artists and other professionals. On the other hand, 5 percent of white males and 15 percent of white female workers held similar jobs.223
The disparate impact of segregation on the schools was equally profound. Gunnar
Myrdal‘s research concluded that in 1934 there were 43 students per teacher in Southern
Black schools and 34 students per teacher in the white Southern schools. Classrooms in the Black communities on average were 25 percent larger.224
The Depression exaggerated this problem. Adam Fairclough observed that in the depression 84 percent of Black elementary schools but only 14 percent of white schools in New Orleans had more than 40 students per teacher.225
Funding was the other major issue. While separate but equal schools was the law, the states and local communities determined what equal was. The South, for even its white students, contributed less per student to education. For example, in 1935,
Mississippi and Arkansas contributed less than $30 per pupil, while California and New
York contributed $115 against the countrywide average of $74. 226
There was considerable disparity between Southern Black and white schools.
Gunnar Myrdal translated school funding into an expense in daily attendance in the ten de jure Southern states as $17.10 for blacks and $49.30 or nearly three times as much for whites. In Mississippi the ratio was five times. The border states of Delaware and
223 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 318. 224 Ibid., 319. 225 Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South, 281. 226 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 338. 99 Missouri funded both black and white schools the same and the ratio in Washington DC was almost one to one.227
Robert Margo quoted a superintendent of schools: ―We have twice as many colored children of school age as we have white, and we use their money. Colored children are mighty profitable to us.‖228 Robert Margo‘s superintendent provides testament to the problem that while taxes and state allocations were on a per-pupil basis, the local schools could allocate this money any way they liked. Since the Southern superintendents were white and black schools were part of their responsibility in name only, the white schools got the majority of the money.
The concept of education as property could be considered as being an adequate representation of this disparity, but there were more empirical reasons for the difference.
First, black teachers were paid less, there were fewer teachers, and the schools were less appointed. Any new buildings prior to 1930 had likely been built by philanthropies; any school books in the schools were used and often white cast-offs, and there were few or no school buses for the black schools.229 The justification for paying African-American teachers less than white was in that the black school years were shorter and, African
American teachers naturally could live on less than whites. Schools were often open only during the non-growing seasons of the year, which permitted the children to work in the fields.230
227 Ibid., 339. 228 Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History, 44. 229 Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South, 299. 230 Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History, 17. 100 Adam Fairclough suggested that that African American school enrollment increased in the South when the combination of a declining market for cotton and state enrollment and school year laws were passed in the 1930s. However, there was still significant absenteeism because of farm work. Adam Fairclough quoted Charles S.
Johnson (Fisk University), ―‘…when he can attend school‘ ‗when the crop is in‘ and
‗when the weather isn‘t too bad‘ ‗for him to walk his five to fifteen miles daily.‘‖231
Robert Margo found that the average school term in black schools fell after
Reconstruction and did not again approach parity with white schools until the 1940s.232
There were few, if any, black high schools in the South except in the cities.233
Robert Margo introduced another element of discontinuity to the economic argument for segregation. Margo suggested that the white schools in the South could have hired more ―lower cost‖ Black teachers to support their schools and to reduce class sizes, but did not. In fact, this question was posed to the Nashville, Tennessee school board in 1941 in a lawsuit that asked the school why, if the reason for disparate pay was based solely on the Black teacher‘s economic need, that the school had never employed a black teacher.234 The court was not impressed with the response of the school.
This ―maldistribution‖ as Critical Race theorists would call it, extended to all areas of education and society.235 Wealth distribution, as Cheryl Harris later put it, isn‘t just with money and political power, but also within the concept of whiteness as
231 Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South, 299. 232 Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History, 26. 233 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 339 & 632. 234 Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History, 64. 235 Cornel West, "The Role of Law in Progressive Politics," Vand. L. Rev. 43, no. 1797 (1990): 1798. 101 property.236 Thus, social redistribution in a capitalistic society is as problematic as wealth distribution when racial identity is associated with a construct of wealth within a theory of economics—ergo—whiteness as property.
The social implications of this disparity were profound. Gunnar Myrdal considered the impact of segregation on the African American psyche:
The ambition of the Negro youth is cramped not only by the severe restrictions placed in his way by segregation and discriminations but also by the low expectation from both white and Negro society. He is not expected to make good in the same way as the white youth. And if he is not extraordinary, he will not expect it himself and will not really put his shoulder to the wheel.237
The paradox is that it is the very absorption of modern American culture which is the force driving the Negroes to self-segregation to preserve self respect. It is, indeed, an impossible proposition to educate the American Negroes and at the same time to keep them satisfied with their lower caste position.238
E. Franklin Frazier of Howard University, in a study of African American schools during the period examined by this study, quoted students and how they felt about their schools, the white schools, and how they were treated in the schools. These quotations show how personal segregation was felt by all, even those who were not yet adults. They show the cynicism of youth confronted by barriers over which they could not hurdle:
A seventeen-year-old male was asked whether his school was as good as the whites‘:
Definitely, no! And I can prove it. In most of the schools, you can‘t get your mind on your work for watching out for ceilings falling…We always get the buildings after the whites have torn them up, or when they‘re about to fall to pieces. We get all the out-dated
236 Harris, "Whiteness as Property." 237 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 643. 238 Ibid., 657. 102 equipment and used stuff. We know the program is different. They have teachers who are more interested in their students than ours. They get all the athletic equipment they want, and have a real schedule of games. Roosevelt, Taft, Eastern, Western, and McKinley High Schools [white] make the Negro schools look like country schools. Compared to our buildings the white high schools look like colleges. Howard looks more like one of those big high schools, and I suppose Howard would compare the same with Harvard.239
A high school girl discussed class and color prejudice in her school:
There was another one at school I just hated. He was a tall brown-skin man. He was partial to position. It didn‘t make any difference to him what color you were. All he wanted to know was, ―Who are your people?‖ The first class you have under him, he spends asking you who are your people. He asked you where you live and what your parents do for a living. He came out in class one day and said, ―Blood will tell.‖ There is one teacher in Y School who is crazy about light girls. He don‘t say anything to dark girls but he is always fooling with light girls. Everybody knows it, too.240
A nineteen-year-old discussed his job prospects:
You know as well as I do that whites always have a better chance at jobs, especially fairly good ones, and if they‘re pushed, they‘ll take over the measly ones. I‘ve tried for a long time to get on WPA, NYA, and in the playground work. Always the same story—―no openings,‖ and whites walking in getting jobs every day. Then, too, they make it tough on Negroes anyway. They know how few of us get a chance to go to college, so they require a degree and so much experience. Usually, where a Negro has one, he lacks the other. Those who are lucky enough to have both still are not working. But such is life for Negroes. If you ain‘t white, you just ain‘t right!241
While the Julius Rosenwald fund provided more than four million dollars towards the construction of school houses across the South, this money was equally matched by
African American personal donations. 242So, in addition to paying taxes for schools,
African Americans provided some relief against the disparate allocations of the white school boards with what James D. Anderson called ―double taxation‖:
239 Frazier, Negro Youth at the Crossways, 93. 240 Ibid., 97. 241 Ibid., 137. 242 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 155. 103 The process of double taxation also reflected the manner in which Black southerners during the period 1900 to 1935 interpreted and dealt with their oppression. The submitted to the process because they felt that it was the only way they could secure an education for their children, a way to protect and develop their communities, a way to sustain passageways to better times.243
Robert Margo argued that the institutional and human capital explanations offered by Myrdal and others to explain segregation‘s effects were inadequate. Robert Margo introduced an additional concept called ―intergenerational drag:‖
Even if the equal part of the separate-but-equal doctrine had been enforced in the southern public schools, the educational achievement of black children would have lagged behind white children, because of ―family background‖ effects. Poverty and high rates of adult literacy as much as the poor quality of the schools, kept black children out of the classroom.244
Margo looked at parental literacy of the time and found that if both parents were literate, 57 percent attended schools compared to 37 percent if both parents were illiterate.245
E. Franklin Frazier of Howard University, speaking during the period of segregation, also blamed, ―…the absence of family traditions, the insecurity, and the instability of many lower-class families…‖246 In this environment, children learned on the streets where they were exposed to violence and street culture. E. Franklin Frazier did not give the church a pass in all of this. He said:
Paradoxical as it may seem, the Negro church, an institution which is the product of Negro leadership and cooperation, does little to give Negroes a sense of personal worth and dignity in a world where everything tends to disparage the Negro. This is due
243 Ibid., 185. 244 Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History, 4. 245 Ibid., 85. 246 Frazier, Negro Youth at the Crossways, 266. 104 partly to the fact that the outlook of the Negro church is otherworldly and the emphasis of its teachings is upon personal salvation. Moreover, the religious ideology of the Negro church tends to perpetuate such notions as a white God and white angels, conceptions which tend toward the disparagement of things black.247
Yet it was the teacher in the African American school who made the best out of nothing. R. Scott Baker provided some clues to the African American teacher‘s experience in his case analysis of the Charleston South Carolina Society Corners School and their teacher, Miss Fields. Baker described how the African American community chipped in through churches and lodges to provide what meager resources they could.248
Miss Fields had 49 pupils in 1937 but few books and a single dictionary. Yet Miss
Fields managed to teach racial pride:
Lessons in racial pride and self-respect were woven through the curriculum. No black teacher could succeed unless she instilled in students what the larger society tried to deny: a sense of black identity and dignity. ―We had to do more than teach reading, writing, and arithmetic‖ recalled Stokes, expressing sentiments echoed in the oral testimony of many black educators. (All the teachers had a hard time, as it was, trying to make each child understand that he was somebody,‖ wrote Fields. At Society Corner this meant challenging parents who taught their children to ―lower their eyes, curtsy and shuffle, and hang your head‖ when they encountered a ―superior person.‖ In the classroom students would ―shuffle to beg my pardon‖ as they approached her desk to ask a question. Such ―manners,‖ Fields noted, ―didn‘t help these black children come up in the world. [They] kept us in our place. They conditioned us in old South ways.‖ …‖Oh, how I had to fight with some of the people on James Island.‖249
Like Miss Fields, the majority of African American teachers were rural. Adam
Fairclough pointed out that these teachers worked alone, often had only limited
247 Ibid. 248 Baker, Paradoxes of Desegregation, 8. 249 Ibid., 15. 105 professional standing, and as state teacher accreditation laws became more robust, the only time she would be with other teachers was at an annual two week summer school.250
Yet Gunnar Myrdal and others observed that education, literacy, and learning were in a sense almost ―magical‖ for African Americans.251 The observation that the quest for education by African Americans was a profound aspiration has been frequently observed. James T. Anderson said, ―Blacks emerged from slavery with a strong belief in the desirability in learning how to read and write.‖252
Adam Fairclough said, ―Yet the former slaves and freeborn blacks who taught freedman‘s schools were buoyed by idealism, ambition, religious zeal, and the enthusiasm of a people who hungered and thirsted for literacy.‖253
Booker T. Washington devoted an entire chapter in Up From Slavery to his quest for education.254 W. E. B. Dubois spoke of the same yearning, ―It was the ideal of ‘book learning;‘ the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know.‖255 Yearning did not mean that the desired education was forthcoming.
Carter G. Woodson, in The Mis-Education of the Negro, spared few the blame for the problems of African-American education. Woodson suggested that the educational
250 Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South, 274. 251 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 884. 252 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 5. 253 Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South, 28. 254 Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (NYC: Signet Classic, 2000), 29-43. 255 W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1903, 1994), 5. 106 system in 1933 was even inadequate for whites.256 Yet, he provided even more damning evidence of racism and segregation in the schools. Woodson offered an example of a white instructor who taught from a book that said whites are superior to blacks;257 and that blacks were discouraged from the professions because, ―…whites can serve them more efficiently in these spheres.‖258 Then Woodson considered the difficulty of the
―educated Negro‖:
…is compelled to live and move among his own people whom he has been taught to despise. As a rule, therefore, the ―educated Negro‖ prefers to buy his food from a white grocer because he has been taught that the Negro is not clean.259
Even with the advantage of education, the issues of difference and subordination were never far away.
Nor did Gunnar Myrdal spare the middle- and upper-class African Americans from the problems of segregation and the emerging caste and class system developing among African-American populations:
In the Negro community education is the main factor for the stratification of the Negro people into social classes. The professionals who base their status upon having acquired a higher education form a substantial part of the Negro upper classes. And even in the middle and lower classes‘ educational levels signify class differences in the Negro community. In addition, education has a symbolic significance in the Negro world: the educated Negro has, in one important respect, become equal to the better class of whites.260
256 Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro, 5. 257 Ibid., 7. 258 Ibid., 22. 259 Ibid., 6. 260 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 879. 107 Finally, it is fitting that Myrdal quoted W. E. B. Dubois of Atlanta University and his description of segregation in a play on Plato‘s Analogy of the Cave:
It is difficult to let others see the full psychological meaning of caste segregation. It is as though one, looking out from a dark cave in a side of an impending mountain, sees the world passing and speaks to it; speaks courteously and persuasively, showing them how these entombed souls are hindered in their natural movements expression, and development; and how their loosening from prison would be a matter not simply of courtesan sympathy, and help to them, but aid to all the world.261
The researchers of the period of this study spent quite a bit of time talking about segregation but did little about it. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic explained that just talking about the problem is inadequate:
The belief that we can somehow control our consciousness despite the limitations of time and positionality we call the empathic fallacy. In literature the pathetic fallacy holds that nature is like us, that it is endowed with feelings, moods, and goals we can understand…Its correlate, which we term the empathic fallacy, consists of believing that we can enlarge our sympathies through linguistic means alone. By exposing ourselves to ennobling narratives, we can broaden our experience, deepen our empathy, and can achieve levels of sensitivity and fellow-feeling. We can, in short, think, talk, read, and write our way out of bigotry and narrow-mindedness, out of our limitations of experience and perspective.262 Yet Delgado and Stefancic also considered the difficulties associated with racial change:
Racial change is slow, then, because the story of race is part of the dominant narrative we use to interpret experience. The narrative teaches that race matters, that people are different, with the differences lying always in a predictable direction. It holds that certain cultures, unfortunately, have less ambition than others, that the majority group is largely innocent of racial wrongdoing, that the current distribution of comfort and well-being is roughly what merit and fairness dictate. Within that general framework, only certain matters are open for discussion: How different? In what ways? With how
261 Ibid., 680. 262 Richard Delgado, & Stefancic, Jean, "Images of the Outsider in American Law and Culture: Can Free Expression Remedy Systemic Social Ills," Cornell L. Rev. 77 (1991-1992): 1261. 108 many exceptions. And what measures are due to deal with this unfortunate situation and at what costs to whites? This is so because the narrative leaves only certain things intelligible; other arguments and texts would seem alien.263 Today, the problems associated with segregation persist. Despite the absence of a de jure environment, many minorities are not performing in schools to the level of their white peers. On December 17, 2009, Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia held a hearing on Capitol Hill, ―The Achievement Gap.‖264 While there is significant evidence of this gap from other sources, the numbers presented at this hearing represent a neat summary of the problem. The panel asked the question, ―Does the very existence of an achievement gap demonstrate that low-income and minority children have been deprived of equal educational opportunities in violation of the U.S. Constitution?‖265
Representative Scott reported that in 2009 the incidence of incarceration is higher for high-school dropouts, 6.3 percent overall but 22.9 percent for African American males,
10 times higher than males who graduate from high school. Weekly earnings are 38 percent higher for high school graduates and unemployment in 2008 was 57 percent lower.266
According to Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, Member of the Board of Directors,
National Council on Educating Black Children and Professor, Stanford University School of Education, the U.S. leads the EU in dropout percentage with 22 percent, with Italy the second highest at 16 percent, and with neighbor Mexico exceeding the U.S. at 30 percent.
263 Ibid.: 1257-58. 264 Bobby Scott, "Education: Closing the Achievement Gap," U. S. Congress, http://bobbyscott.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=463&Itemid=121 265 Ibid. 266 Bobby Scott, "Representative Robert C. ―Bobby‖ Scott Charts on the Youth Promise Act," (U. S. Congress, 2009). 109 Hammond reported that, on average, ―…schools that serve minority and low-income students have lower funding levels, larger class sizes, less well-qualified teachers, less engaging and challenging curriculum, fewer college preparatory or advanced placement courses, larger school sizes, fewer computers, books and supplies.‖267 Hammond explained that the increasing dropout rate and problems with college matriculation and completion are as the result of a change in policies in the 1980s including the reduction of anti-poverty policies, desegregation efforts, and Federal investment in education.
Hammond contrasted 2009 with 1979, when college-going rates were equal for blacks and whites.268
In closing, Moore‘s paradox provides additional guidance. Krista Lawlor and
John Perry suggested that the phrase, ―I am equal to the white man, but I don‘t believe it,‖ creates a clash in truth and accuracy, and not just absurdity:
We too think that the paradox arises because belief is involved. But that doesn‘t mean that the paradoxically of the assertion must be owing to something paradoxical about Moorean belief. Instead, paradoxically of the assertion might be owing to the fact that assertions about one’s belief create the possibility of a clash in truth and accuracy conditions. When one makes an assertion, one has to have the relevant belief for the assertion to be accurate. When one makes an assertion about one‘s belief, one has to have the relevant belief for the assertion to be true. So when one makes an assertion about one‘s belief, truth and accuracy demands are placed on the same subject matter— namely, one‘s beliefs. This creates the possibility of conflict. In the Moorean utterance, the possibility for conflict is exploited. Accuracy demands that X believes P and truth demands that X does not believe P. What‘s paradoxical about the assertion needn‘t be the
267 Linda Darling Hammond, "Securing the Right to Learn: Closing the Opportunity Gap in America," (U. S. Congress, 2009). 268 Ibid. 110 underlying Moorean belief, then, but the way an otherwise well-formed assertion can make contradictory demands on how things are.269 [Emphasis in Original]
Thus while the statement, ―I am equal to the white man, but I do not believe it,‖ accurately is absurd, the truth of the belief of the African American in the statement, while contradictory, is a statement of how things are.
Summary and Introduction to Next Chapters
This study has placed into context aims, ―peculiarities,‖ and other terms and considered how the discourse in the JNE was centered in the Moorean paradox called segregation. The chapters that follow will analyze the major individual discourses in the
JNE that considered the aims of education. The discourses, presented chronologically, present a matrix of ideas that cross over each other with relative ease. There were many articles that crossed discourses. For example, a single article might include aims, philanthropy, and industrial education with rural implications. Those articles that consider multiple discourses will be analyzed in these separate discourses. In some cases, singular paragraphs can apply to more than one discourse. Therefore, there will be some repetition of quotes and other information that will be considered in the context of each discourse.
269 Lawlor and Perry, "Moore's Paradox," 426. 111 Chapter 6—The Cardinal Principles
Live with your head in the lion‘s mouth. I want you to overcome ‗em with yeses, undermine ‗em with grins, agree ‗em to death and destruction, let ‗em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open…Learn it to the youngguns.270
Ellison‘s ―invisible man‖ heard his expiring grandfather‘s sick bed words of defiance of how to live in the world of whites. This was the dilemma for the African
America—how to live in the white democracy without the benefit of whiteness or many of the other benefits of American democracy. One of these so-called benefits of democracy was universal education and the universal aims of education, which had been codified by a federal commission in 1918 as The Cardinal Principles. Therefore, it is important to consider the historical position and influence of The Cardinal Principles on the aims discourse in the JNE.
Both the Committee of Ten in 1893271 and The Commission on the
Reorganization of Secondary Education of 1911272 addressed the problem of aligning the curriculum of the secondary school so that admission to college was possible. While only one in nine graduated from high school by 1918 when the Cardinal Principles report was issued, the country was evolving from its agriculture and pioneer ages into one of industry.273 World War I exacerbated the need for qualified high school graduates who would be trained in colleges to be officers, engineers, doctors, and other professional or technical industrialists. The Cardinal Principles report was written in the midst of war
270 Ellison, Invisible Man, 14. 271 Eliot, "Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary Schools Studies." 272 Kinglsley, "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education." 273 Ibid. 112 and during a period where the very existence of democracy was threatened. Therefore, it expressed a sense of urgency about the reorganization of the secondary school to meet its professed aims of: 1) health; 2) command of fundamental processes; 3) worthy home membership; 4) vocation; 5) citizenship; 6) worthy use of leisure; 7) ethical character.274
These aims were expressions of the ultimate goal of education in a democracy as defined by the commission:
The purpose of democracy is so to organize society that each member may develop his personality primarily through activities designed for the well being of his fellow members and of society as a whole…Consequently education in a democracy, both within and without the school, should develop in each individual the knowledge, interests, ideals, habits, and powers whereby he will find his place and use that place to shape both himself and society towards ever nobler ends.275
Thus democracy was the meta-value aims statement for the writers of this report.
Within this is the concepts of helping students find their place in the democratic society.
While democracy was the theme, change was the order of the day. Changing industrial jobs shortened the work week, introducing the concept of leisure time. Homes for many were no longer places of work, but just residences. Vocation meant many more opportunities than only fifty years before. The report became public during the worst influenza pandemic ever experienced.
Unlike the report of the Committee of Ten, the Cardinal Principles report did not offer a prescriptive curriculum. The Cardinal Principles report suggested that the aims be inculcated in the curriculum through the use of arts (leisure), health education, civics and
274 Ibid. 275 Ibid., 9. 113 community involvement. Vocational education, where it was feasible, could include actual shop or other instruction, but vocation meant socialization first:
Vocational education should equip the individual to secure a livelihood for himself and those dependent on him, to serve society well through his vocation, to maintain the right relationships toward his fellow workers and society, and as far as possible, to find in that vocation his own best development.276
That different individuals would desire to walk down different paths was understood by the commission. The Cardinal Principles report also acquiesced to the fact that many students would, at least for the foreseeable future, not complete secondary school. Therefore, it recommended that the course of study be organized so that if the student were to leave at any time that the material studied could be used, not in association with some future course that would never be taken, but independently and immediately.277 Thus, the commission suggested that not only should the curriculum be relevant to the seven aims of education, but that it be relevant to circumstance and condition of the individual. Perhaps this is why Nel Noddings said in 2004, ―I have always found the Cardinal Principles quite wonderful. I do not see how schools can operate as educational institutions without attending to at least these aims…‖ [Emphasis in original]278
What use of the Cardinal Principles did the contributors to the JNE make? The question can be asked of authors who embraced one or more of the aims developed from the study. However, the discourse associated with the Cardinal Principles was seldom
276 Ibid., 13. 277 Ibid., 17. 278 Noddings, "The Aims of Education," 333. 114 over the applicability of aims, but the applicability of the aims in context of the African
American in the social order of the period.
In 1935, T. Arnold Hill,279 a director of The Urban League in Chicago and advocate for the Vocational Opportunity Campaign to help African Americans aspire to industrial training and industrial jobs, echoed the Cardinal Principle’s socialization aims of a vocational education:
The type of vocational instruction most necessary for the vast majority of high- school students is not technical, but social….It is essential that students should be subjected to tasks and extra-curricular activities designed to develop thoroughness, accuracy, punctuality, and efficiency, as a parallel to instruction in shop and trade work.280
T. Arnold Hill asked for what many of the others in the JNE would ask for— acculturate the student in the mores and customs of business in the schools and leave the teaching of trades to business. However, the philanthropists often had different ideas.
Thomas Jesse Jones was a white education director for the Phelps Stokes Fund philanthropy that wanted to spread the concept of industrial education embraced by the founders of Hampton and Tuskegee colleges. Armed with a doctorate from Columbia and seminary work at Union Theological Seminary, Jones taught at Hampton during the heyday of industrial education after the turn of the twentieth century.281 In the July 1936
―Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education‖ yearbook, Jones suggested that,
―The use of the convenient and possibly justifiable term ‗Negro Education‘ has long
279 Quintard Taylor, "Hill, Thomas Arnold (1888-1947)," University of Washington, http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/hill-t-homas-arnold-1888-1947. 280 T. Arnold Hill, "Educating and Guiding Negro Youth for Occupational Efficiency," The Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 1 (1935): 29. 281 C. G. Woodson, "Thomas Jesse Jones," The Journal of Negro History 35, no. 1 (1950). 115 caused endless confusion and misunderstanding.‖282 Jones then dismissed the argument of the need for a separate Negro education and began to consider the universality of aims.
Within this discussion he defined aims in his own terminology, but included concepts of health, home membership, and leisure. Jones added to these, knowledge of agriculture and climate, religion, and a multicultural appreciation of others.283 Yet, there was more to his argument than the purity of his statement. Jones‘ rhetoric turned to that of the industrial educators of the post-Reconstruction era to admire their influence upon change:
While effective industrial schools are making genuine efforts to develop industrial skill, their fundamental skill is much broader than vocational efficiency or the resulting comfort and culture. The underlying principle of these schools is the adaptation of education, whether industrial or literary, to the needs of the pupil and community.284
Jones then suggested that it was because of new and more exacting state education requirements and certifications that the good work of the industrial educationalists has been undermined and that:
It is unfortunate but probably certain that Negro education must for a time, and possibly for a long time, give up the objectives and methods of the pioneers [Hampton and Tuskegee] who served the Negro people better than current opinion can possibly understand. When white education has moved on to the standards of the early organizers of Negro schools, Negro education as an integral unit of the American system will again regain the heritage which was lost.285
Jones elevated the Hampton and Tuskegee industrial educational programs above the white majoritarian curriculum of the African American school, dismissing with one
282 Thomas Jesse Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 407. 283 Ibid.: 407-08. 284 Ibid.: 410. 285 Ibid.: 411. 116 stroke the emerging state-mandated teacher and school development programs, which, at the time were improving teacher quality and school conditions even in the African
American schools. In a scathing obituary of Jones, Carter G Woodson accused Jones in his long career in philanthropy and industrial education both in the US and Africa of financial espionage, claiming credit for what others achieved—he was ―…narrow- minded, short sighted, vindictive and undermining.‖286 While this 1936 article may not represent the avarice that Woodson ascribed to Jones, evidence of a different agenda for
African American education was presented. James D. Anderson explained Jones‘ pedagogical theory while he was at Hampton:
From Jones‘ vantage point, black students‘ views of ―race development‖ were unnatural because blacks tended to interpret the social limitations imposed on them as arbitrary and unjust. The Hampton faculty taught black students that the position of their race in the South was not the result of oppression but of the natural process of cultural evolution. In other words, blacks had evolved to a cultural stage that was two thousand years behind that of whites and, therefore, they were naturally the subordinate race.287
James D. Anderson reported that as early as 1916, Jones decried the teaching of traditional subjects in the schools at the expense of industrial education.288 Just two years later, after a survey of African American colleges, backed both by the Federal Bureau of
Education and Northern philanthropies, Thomas Jesse Jones recommended that virtually all African-American colleges be devolved into secondary or normal schools.289
286 Woodson, "Thomas Jesse Jones," 108. 287 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 51. 288 Ibid., 198. 289 Ibid., 251. 117 What Thomas Jesse Jones represents in the aims-dialog is the white industrial training voice as self-appointed advocate for African American education in the vision that while the aims of education may be universal, they are universal only within the limitations of society and the society in which African Americans found themselves.
Within these limitations, then, the means or curriculum towards the ends of education were industrial and agricultural. This curriculum, even guised in the more progressive aims of the Cardinal Principles, served to certify the fact that few African Americans could aspire to the limited occupations beyond that of unskilled and semi-skilled labor.
While its aspiration may have been to make the African American more productive in these limited jobs, it served to strengthen the status quo.
In the same 1936 yearbook, Doxie Wilkerson, Assistant Professor of Education, at
Howard University, laid out the Cardinal Principles argument for other researchers in great detail and then proceeded to identify the problems associated with African
American life. Within this discussion, Wilkerson said that the Cardinal Principles,
―…define adequately the ultimate goals of education for American Negroes.‖290
Wilkerson was a sometime professor at Howard University, and educational advisor in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. For years, he was a Communist party leader, until the 1950s when he became disillusioned with Stalin. Wilkerson‘s career lasted into
290 Wilkerson, "A Determination of the Peculiar Problems of Negroes in Contemporary American Society," 327. 118 the 1980s, where he was associated with an organization that evaluated Head Start programs.291
Wilkerson was skeptical of the need for a separate Negro education because of the perceived racial differences. After suggesting that the Cardinal Principles were adequate for Negro education, he modified this proposition with:
The position is taken, however, that any peculiar social problems faced by the Negro constitute a valid criterion by which the specific objectives, procedures and materials of instruction in the schools for Negro children should be modified so as to achieve those broad educational aims.292
Throughout the remainder of the article, Wilkerson outlined the issues that affected African Americans at the time: funding, jobs, broken families, racism, etc., and it was these issues that required a change in curriculum to achieve the Cardinal Principles.
Wilkerson said, ―…the position is taken that the role of the Negro in American society should be one of deliberate challenge to the mores which define for him an inferior status, not a role of subordination.‖293 Unlike Thomas Jesse Jones, Doxie Wilkerson urged the educational community to challenge the fundamental ethic of segregation ever while striving to improve education within the specter of the existing social order. Wilkerson‘s comments suggest the activist role of aims-talk. Yet, this was just talk and very few of the problems Wilkerson suggested that needed to be change were actually changed even by degree during the period examined by this study.
291 Bruce Lambert, "Doxey Wilkerson Is Dead at 88; Educator and Advocate for Rights," New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/18/obituaries/doxey-wilkerson-is-dead-at-88-educator-and-advocate-for- rights.html. 292 Wilkerson, "A Determination of the Peculiar Problems of Negroes in Contemporary American Society," 327. 293 Ibid. 119 This dilemma of ―same as whites; different from whites‖ becomes a central discourse. If the suggestion was offered that African Americans and whites were fundamentally the same, then their aims and curricula should be identical. However, this did not square with the iniquities that segregation created culturally. Within these separate cultures, life was not the same. No matter how strong the argument for educational equality, the argument failed as long as the conditions of segregation continued to exist.
Nor was the federal government silent about education during the Depression.
The Emergency Education Program (EEP) was created during the Depression to provide pre-school opportunities for poor and even destitute children and education for adults, often to combat illiteracy. In 1938 James A. Atkins, Specialist in Negro Education in the
Works Progress Administration, outlined the objectives of the EEP. In addition to reducing literacy to both natives and immigrants, its goals included, ―…the economic, political and social problems‖294 of America. The EEP goals also included the Cardinal
Principles of ―home membership,‖ ―health,‖ and ―constructive use of leisure time.‖
The EEP put unemployed teachers to work and Atkins‘ article laid out the results of literacy training and the comparative productivity of African American teachers and white teachers in the program for which the study found little difference.295 Atkins‘ report was not filled with the same dichotomies of others who tried to consider whether the
Cardinal Principals‘ universality should be somehow differently applied to whites and
294 James A. Atkins, "The Participation of Negroes in Pre-School and Adult Education Programs," The Journal of Negro Education 7, no. 3 (1938): 346. 295 Ibid.: 346-47. 120 African Americans. The consistency of the EPP program was that regardless of race, the participants were all poor and many were also illiterate. While the program was more or less color-blind, a great proportion of needy African Americans were out of reach of the benefits because they lived in rural communities not served. Atkins urged greater participation for the rural needy, but as with other federal programs, even with recognition of a proportionally greater need for such services by African Americans,
Atkins acknowledged the percentage of support favored the white population.296
In 1940 as the Depression waned and the war in Europe began to feed the
American war machine, Walter G. Daniel of the Hampton Educational Department and
JNE contributing editor, re-engaged the discussion of aims and the need for separate education for African Americans. Within this article, Daniel outlined the African
American educational need within the bounds of reality, relating the need for ―health‖ education to the problems of health in the community. Daniel also called for the
―productive use of leisure time‖ but said that access to leisure activities was restricted by the bounds of segregation.297 Daniel supported the need for these two Cardinal Principles but then posed the obstacles that thwarted their achievement in society and schools.
Daniel‘s pragmatic analysis provided an almost clinical prescriptive to the developing of an effective curriculum in the African-American school. Daniels seemed to suggest that educators must ―get on with it‖—recognize the issues and problems facing the secondary
296 Ibid.: 355-56. 297 Daniel, "The Aims of Secondary Education and the Adequacy of the Curriculum of the Negro Secondary School," 469, 71. 121 schools and do whatever is necessary within fiscal and other constraints to engage the child in a process of adjusting to society.
In this context, Walter G. Daniel of Howard University embraced the concept of life adjustment in education that was a centerpiece of a companion report to the Cardinal
Principles: the Committee on Vocational Guidance. The Committee on Vocational
Guidance did not recommend prescribing in advance the vocational direction for the student, but instead suggested, ―The school must teach the youth not only how to adjust himself to his environment…but also how to change the environment when the need arises.‖298 While stopping short of the committee‘s second recommendation for changing the environment of segregation to eliminate these obstacles, this objective but pragmatic approach of Walter G. Daniel was simply more evidence of the difficulty of defining aims in a society where there were inextricable differences in experience between races.
Finally, in 1952, Edith M. Carter, Principal of Boylan-Haven School in
Jacksonville, Florida asked whether the newly branded curricular experiment called ―life adjustment education‖ presented barriers to college entrance. Carter found it did not.
Carter defined life adjustment education as:
…which better equips all American youth to live democratically with satisfaction to themselves and profit to society, as homemembers, workers, and citizens.299 300
298 Kliebard, Schooled to Work, 163. 299 Edith M. Carter, "College Entrance Requirements as They Are Related to Life Adjustment Education in the Negro Secondary School," The Journal of Negro Education 21, no. 1 (1952): 27. 300 Zilversmit, Changing Schools, 96. 122 Yet, what was life adjustment education? To many, it was nothing more than an attempt to provide alternative programs to students who would not qualify or would not consider college.301 Then at its core, was life adjustment, even if framed as Carter did with elements from the Cardinal Principles, in reality only the continuation of the industrial vs. traditional-academic debate? 302
While the Cardinal Principles report represents only one of the many federal initiatives over the past century to reform secondary schools, it did engage the JNE contributors in the consideration of education in a democracy. The Cardinal Principles
Report did not produce grandiose schemes or the myriad of specific objectives that educators like Franklin Bobbitt produced the same year that the Cardinal Principles
Report was issued.303 Instead, it asked educators to aim for the fundamental requirements to be an engaged and productive member of a democratic society. While there was only a limited discussion of the aims produced by this report in the JNE during the period of this study, it does show the tenacity of these principles well into the century. These were simple aims of living. It may be useful to question whether the Cardinal Principles are still valid today.
301 Ibid., 215-16. 302 Carter, "College Entrance Requirements as They Are Related to Life Adjustment Education in the Negro Secondary School," 33-35. NOTE: Carter‘s research discovered that non-traditional course names were not a barrier for entry of African Americans into traditional Negro Colleges and Universities. 303 John Franklin Bobbitt, The Curriculum (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918). 123 Chapter 7—Philanthropy
A Small dry mustached man in the front row blared out, ―Say that slowly, son!‖
―What sir?‖
―What you just said!‖
―Social responsibility, sir,‖ I said.
―You weren‘t being smart, were you, boy?‖ He said, not unkindly.
―No Sir‖
―You sure that about ‗equality‘ was a mistake?‖
―Oh yes sir,‖ I said, ―I was swallowing blood.‖304
The ―invisible man,‖ forced to fight other African American high school classmates, was urged at the fight‘s conclusion to recite his graduation speech to a group of white men who commissioned and then observed the fight. The white men thought they would be amused by this speech…However, they felt threatened by its call for equality. Yet these men gave the ―invisible man‖ a scholarship to the state Black college.
While they did not place further strings on the gift, what the ―invisible man‖ had to do to get this scholarship points to the cruelty of the times.
Philanthropy had a profound influence on African-American education. The kind of philanthropy that requires obeisance to a particular way of thinking about the needs of the African American became a critical discourse in the JNE. Philanthropy, though
304 Ellison, Invisible Man, 25. 124 desired and necessary at the time, came with a price. This chapter examines the discourse on philanthropy in the JNE from the multiple perspectives of its writers.
James D. Anderson in The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935 made a strong case for the aims of, the value of, and the influence of philanthropies on African-
American education. During early Reconstruction, the various denominations of
Christian churches established schools and colleges for African Americans in the South.
However, with Reconstruction‘s devolution, late nineteenth century recessions and other factors, the clerical funds dried up.305 Northern philanthropies such as the Jeanes and
Slater Funds and The General Education Board embraced the concept of industrial education as the education of choice for the African American who, they surmised, would benefit from such an education because they could not aspire higher in a subaltern society. Northern Philanthropist founded the Hampton Institute and funded Tuskegee
University. The Jeanes fund took industry directly to the community with home economics and other ―practical‖ education. The Julius Rosenwald Fund built schools but had limited influence upon the curriculum itself other than through the affordances and constraints of the design of the building.
The discourse in the JNE about philanthropy encompassed the long-running debate over industrial versus traditional education. The contributors listened to and debated industrial education proponents like Thomas Jesse Jones, Education Director of the Phelps-Stokes Fund. In the end, the African-American community rejected the
305 Miller, "The Past, Present and Future of the Negro College," 414. 125 concept that industrial education was the education for African Americans, but embraced the idea that there was a need for both industrial and traditional education. In this they not only began to accept the mainstream thinking that education is individual and its aims are intrinsic, but also began to elevate African-American education from that of being subordinate to that of being equal to that of whites.
There was but one problem—money. For half of the period of this study, the country was in depression or coming just out of depression. There was considerably less money for all education, and because the African American in the South received only a fraction of the funds for White students, the times were dire. The federal government, through New Deal programs, provided some assistance to increase literacy, to find jobs and the like, but left to the states the problems of funding schools.
The biggest blow to philanthropic influences over the curriculum came with the states increased rigor over the accreditation of schools and the licensing of teachers. Their increased interests in schools, in general, decreased the ability of philanthropies to press their agendas in the African American schools. The industrial curriculum in Hampton and
Tuskegee became academic and the Rosenwald fund stopped building schools in the
South in the early 1930s.306 The Jeanes fund kept its country training schools going well into the 1940s.307
In 1932, in his article ―The Curriculum,‖ Walter G. Daniel of Howard University began the discourse in the JNE by accounting for the contributions of the Northern
306 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 179. 307 McAllister and McAllister, "Adult Education for Negroes in Rural Areas: The Work of the Jeanes Teachers and Home and Farm Demonstration Agents." 126 industrial philanthropies. Daniel then suggested that rather than returning to the philanthropies for curricular guidance, that African Americans consult the Twenty-Sixth
Yearbook for the Study of Education and its product, The Foundations and the
Techniques of Curriculum Making for guidance.308 The authors of these works included
Franklin Bobbitt, George S. Counts, William Heard Kilpatrick, Harold Rugg and other renowned mainstream curricularists. Thus, Walter G. Daniel suggested that it was time for African Americans consider mainstream theories as they developed their curricular aims and content.
In the following year, JNE editor Charles H. Thompson considered the outcomes of philanthropic contribution to the study of African Americans and racial attitudes in the
South in his submission titled, ―Quest for Understanding.‖309 In this paper Thompson listed fellowship papers (many financed by the Phelps-Stokes Fund) at the Universities of
Virginia and Georgia. Thompson‘s list was an impressive array of sponsored and non- sponsored studies oriented towards improving racial understanding, multiculturalism and similar topics. Thompson provided a description of the major charities, foundations, advocacy groups, and philanthropies and the work they did, and the studies they considered. Thompson did this to show researchers on the education of African
Americans where they could go to find funding for their studies and what types of studies had received funding. While this paper was a factual account of the state of philanthropy,
308 Daniel, "The Curriculum," 280. 309 Thompson, "A Quest for Understanding." 127 it was also a call to researchers to consider conducting more research in the areas of improving race relations and the condition of the African American.
Later in the same year, Charles H. Thompson outlined the predicament of the
African-American College. Thompson noted that there was only one State supported
African-American liberal arts college in the country and that no African-American college or university had been accredited by the Association of American Universities.310
While Thompson did not blame the philanthropies or foundations for this, he was, in effect, damning the funders of higher education for African Americans and their approach to curriculum and aims associated with the education of children and young adults. Thompson suggested:
If one were to judge the objective of the Negro college by its graduates, he would conclude that its purpose, primarily, is that of training teachers, and secondarily, that of providing specific pre-professional training for the profession of medicine. [Emphasis in original]311
David A. Lane, Jr. son of an early supporter of African American History and The
Journal of Negro History312 was the dean of West Virginia State College Institute. Lane‘s
1933 study of the junior college movement for African Americans pointed out that most of the institutions had been founded or were funded by church groups.313 In this study,
Lane reviewed the professed aims of these junior colleges which ranged from character building to agriculture and home economics to ―gospel workers‖ to teachers, nurses, and
310 Thompson, "Introduction: The Problem of Negro Higher Education," 262. 311 Ibid.: 268. 312 Editorial, "David Alphonso Lane," The Journal of Negro History 27, no. 1 (1942): 130-31. 313 Lane, "The Junior College Movement among Negroes," 275. 128 pre-medicine, liberal education, and finally, as a way to prepare to obtain a bachelor‘s degree at a four year school.314 Lane found these aims statements wanting with the observation, ―[the junior college] It is usually not quite sure of its aims.‖315 One of the problems Lane observed is that the lack of teacher training and educational attainment of teachers at all but the public junior colleges fell below the level found by other researchers in mainstream junior colleges.316
With his study, Lane continued to uncover the evidence that while philanthropy aimed at beneficial outcomes, without accreditation and strong teacher certification laws, the quality of instruction and even the professed aims of teaching institutions were likely to be sub-par. Combine this with the special problem of the African-American lack of access to mainstream institutions and the recipe was for continuing ―mis-education‖ of the African American. The perpetuation of African Americans working in a narrow occupational band would continue because these junior college programs only taught the limited occupations of homemaking, service work and pre medicine—those occupations for which African Americans had access.
Kelly Miller of Howard University in his ―Past, Present and Future of the Negro
College‖ article explained the state of the African American College in 1933. Miller considered the Northern secular and clerical philanthropies and their positive influence of preparing thousands for careers in teaching and preaching and the foundation of an
314 Ibid.: 278-82. 315 Ibid.: 282. 316 Ibid.: 283. 129 educated class. On the other hand, Miller suggested that these same organizations and their schools had their failings:
Its most lamentable failure is seen in the domain of religious leadership…The college has also failed to develop leadership in the most strenuous and practical pursuit of life—in politics, business, secret and fraternal orders, or in the attempt to organize the mass life and action of the race.317
Kelly Miller pointed out that however liberal, most of the philanthropist leaders were white southerners: men like Jackson Davis and Leo M. Favrot of the General
Education Board; S. L. Smith, Fred McCuiston, Edwin Embree and James Hardy Dillard of the Julius Rosenwald Fund.318 As James T. Anderson suggested, the agenda of these southern philanthropists was often in the direction not of building leaders, but of productive workers. Anderson also said that in the South, the philanthropists knew better than to create programs that would upset the status-quo of segregation or press for a ―new social order.‖319
Thus, the aims of these institutions in order to gain Southern white tolerance would have to be that which would prevent the African American from obtaining social status or jobs that were otherwise reserved for the whites. By in large, white superintendents and college presidents presided while white boards rode herd over the curriculum and the actions of faculty and teachers, limiting the opportunity for leadership training that Miller suggested was lacking in the colleges.
317 Miller, "The Past, Present and Future of the Negro College," 416-17. 318 Ibid.: 415-16. 319 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 81, 127, 40-41, 98-99, 203, 07, 19. 130 In 1934 Howard K. Beale, Bowdoin College Historian, pointed to one of the fallacies of the philanthropy mainstays—industrial education—with the observation that,
―…good high schools and colleges are necessary for the training even of teachers of elementary subjects.‖320 Yet, Beale also suggested that during Reconstruction that the religious philanthropies would have deferred to ―vocational proficiency‖ curriculum rather than the academic excellence curriculum which would have angered the whites.321
By creating a separate program of African-American education, the philanthropists acceded to the white man, especially the white southerner only that which they would permit the African American to learn. The route out of this quagmire of weak aims, industrial curriculum, and white limitations only started to change with an increase in accrediting standards for the schools, colleges and teachers. The accreditation process began in earnest in the mid 1930s.322 Yet, it is likely that few segregationists understood the gradual but inevitable changes that were occurring in the African-American schools.
Certainly they were still poorly funded, but their teachers were better qualified than before. The removal of the yoke of industrial education, whether it existed in reality or as a threat, did offer the opportunity for the schools to teach culture, character, African-
American heritage and the beginnings of a leadership movement that became manifest in the 1950s. Things were inexorably changing at a pace that outran segregation, but not fast enough for the South to take up arms against the tides of change.
320 Beale, "The Needs of Negro Education in the United States," 15. 321 Ibid.: 8. 322 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 145. 131 In 1936 and as the depression began its long wane, the impetus for industrial education for African Americans had all but disappeared as a reality; not yet, as a topic.
Yet, the cries for change in the JNE became more determined. William Anthony Aery, the Director of Education at Hampton, the progenitor institution for industrial education
(a curriculum long since abandoned) called not for the end of philanthropy but of philanthropy in pursuit of justice.323 To Aery, justice meant using philanthropic funds to secure the African American‘s fair share of public funding for the schools. As for the private institutions like Hampton, Aery called for them to become the,
―…experimentation and pioneer work in the education of Negroes, while that in public institutions should be placed upon the education of all the children of all the Negro group.‖324
Interestingly, this approach to differentiating the schools was similar to the dichotomy that existed at the time in the white universities. The traditional private colleges like Harvard and Columbia were for the talented who would become the scientists and researchers, and the state universities were for the masses. Yet, Aery‘s was a different call for the philanthropies to challenge the existing social order; an early appeal for the liberal leaning to abandon their acquiescence to the southerner and his ability to maintain the status-quo of social order.
Rufus Clement of the Louisville Municipal College for Negroes commenting in the same issue as Anthony Aery suggested, ―There has been a woeful lack of
323 Aery, "New Emphases in the Education of Negroes," 404. 324 Ibid.: 404-05. 132 experimentation among the college for Negroes [and] …The Negro college stands about where it did in 1865; it is still training ‗teachers and leaders.‘‖325
Clement demanded the ballot in order to produce change and for the colleges to teach students how to use the ballot effectively.326 Voting and voting rights, while, a skirted subject in previous issues of the JNE, was more strongly worded by Clement, giving credence for the proposition that by the mid 1930‘s the African American contributor to the JNE had become more emboldened to challenge the social order. The year following this article, Clement became the sixth president of Atlanta University and served as such until 1967—deep into the civil rights movement.327
Future Nobel Laureate Ralph Bunche, then Head of the Department of Political
Science at Howard University, in the same 1936 issue reviewed the complexities of college funding in a capitalist society. In this article Bunche suggested that philanthropic moneys presented all forms of conflict of interest in African American education:
In truth, capitalism owns the colleges and universities by right of purchase…The universities themselves have a vested interest in the profit economy because of their investments in all sorts of capitalistic enterprises…Of necessity, American education thus becomes ―goose step‖ education. It can only be relatively free…Nor can it fearlessly teach the student the truth. It is compelled to pursue a policy of indoctrination—with all of the attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes, and prejudices which have been cultivated in the capitalist culture and which are vital to it.328
325Rufus E. Clement, "Redirection and Reorganization of the College for Negroes," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 476. 326 Ibid. 327 Reinette Jones, "Notable Kentucky African Americans Database," (Unversity of Kentucky Libraries, 2003-2010). 328Bunche, "Education in Black and White," 355. 133 What is the return of the philanthropies but the acceptance of their aims, objectives, and philosophies as evidenced by curriculum, attitude, and whatever results they can point to after graduation? In the South, the return is the expectation that the
African American schools will return to society the African American who knows his/her place. Ralph Bunche magnified the problem of deviating from course, ―In fact, most
Negro schools tread very lightly in the purely academic fields of the social sciences. They cannot afford the risk of losing their financial support.‖329 This, of course, applies whether privately or state funded. Ralph Bunche called for eliminating these special interests in return for the following objectives:
Its primary task should be to develop the highest academic standards possible under the recognized limits of financial support and personnel. Secondarily, it should face its task realistically, with a clear conception of the Negro group in the American society and a recognition of the limitations which the controlling and dominant group in that society place upon the function of education. Thirdly, it should interpret its primary obligation to be that of giving the Negro student good, sound, (though necessarily orthodox) training in the fundamentals of education. Fourthly it should certainly take advantage of the opportunity to fill in the gaps in respect to the particular role and function of the Negro in society, which white schools generally neglect.330
The pragmatist Bunche, while pointing out the conflicts of interest associated with the various groups associated with African American education, was hesitant to call for a change in the social order itself.
Thus the JNE discourse on the improvement of African-American education was united for change but in different increments—with some calling for external societal changes and others more organic change within the institutions themselves.
329 Ibid.: 356. 330 Ibid.: 358. 134 Edwin Embree was president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which built many of the schools in the South before the Depression. Edwin Embree maintained the latter-day fund‘s skepticism towards the old ―manual training‖ concepts.331 However, Embree had been heavily involved in the campaign to build a trade school in New Orleans which eventually failed because of lack of support by the African-American community. During this campaign Embree said:
At no time should the school be regarded as another academic high school for Negroes…It should be an out and out trade schools, the fundamental purpose of which would be the trade training and preparing Negroes as fast as possible for jobs.332
Most of the Rosenwald schools were built in rural areas—thus Embree‘s choice of title for his 1936 article ―The Education for Rural Life‖ was appropriate. Note that the article title as quoted does not use the word ―Negro,‖ nor is it written ―Education of the
Rural Person‖ or ―Negro.‖ This title is emblematic of the aims of African-American education at the time. Not only were programs directed at available occupations but also for their student‘s current residences. Many assumed that the African American would be born and would die in the same community. This is why many industrial educational programs were designed for jobs available in the local area Of course, in the rural areas, likely the few available jobs were directly in agriculture or in operations that supported agriculture. Embree said:
Without divorcing Negro education from the main stream of American practice, I believe it is possible, and very desirable to shift the emphasis in the education of the whole group destined for life in the rural South.333
331 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 214. 332 Ibid., 221. 135 Nor did Embree suggest that this effort be made just for African Americans, but also for the whites destined to live in rural areas. Embree noted that the Agricultural colleges had not turned out farmers, only teachers. Embree‘s suggested curricula for rural schools included: reading and writing, some figures, farming knowledge including biological processes, manual dexterity and the handling of farm-type materials and mechanics.334
Nor did Embree require that this be an optional track for those destined to leave the rural South for the North or for academic training. This community-centric form of education was not uncommon among the philanthropists. Yet, it ignored the existing and coming mobility of African Americans and whites even in the depression as share- cropping declined and people moved north to look for work. During World War II, this trend became a torrent.335 What the site-specific aim of education ignored was the possibility of mobility and this was its ultimate cardinal flaw.
Fellow philanthropist and JNE contributor Leo M. Favrot, general field agent of
The General Education Board had, in 1917 written a course guide called ―Suggested
Course for County Training Schools.‖ James D. Anderson noted that this was nothing more than an outline of what had been promoted by Hampton and Tuskegee.336 In 1925
Leo M. Favrot was a member of a philanthropic symposium on secondary education for
African Americans. In this conference the philanthropies acknowledging the fact that
333 Edwin R. Embree, "Education for Rural Life," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 440. 334 Ibid.: 442-43. 335 Frazier, "The Role of Negro Schools in the Post-War World," 469. 336 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 144. 136 secondary education for African Americans had begun to prosper in the South, but they philanthropies still wanted academic control. Wallace Buttrick, also a participant in this conference exhorted, ―There is No need to stimulate it. The main thing is to control it and direct it into the right channels.‖337 As a result, and has been previously discussed, these philanthropies began to offer to help fund an industrial school in New Orleans and in other cities in order to maintain their influence over the aims of education through the industrial curriculum.
What happens to a philanthropy that sees its objects become obsolete—how does it justify its continued existence? One way is to redirect the funds to another target. Yet this may be complicated by restrictive covenants imposed by donors who have long ago died. The second approach is to continue to try to influence despite the change in the fund‘s target needs. With long-tenure and deep-rooted beliefs in their missions, these philanthropies did just that—they continued to promote variations of the same solutions to a problem that still existed but had become significantly different. In many respects, this was their property right of ―reputation and status‖ in the ownership and use of their philanthropic monies. The philanthropists had staked their reputation in the North and in the South on the fact that they understood what the African American needed and to abandon that stance might have led to reputation or even status loss. In the end even with the promise of money to a starving people, the industrial model was rejected.
337 Ibid., 205-06. 137 In his 1936 article, ―How the Small Rural School Can More Adequately Serve its
Community,‖ Leo M. Favrot reported the numbers: half of African Americans lived rurally, half of the students in rural communities came from farms, and 90 percent of rural schools had from one to three teachers.338 Yet, at this stage in his career, Favrot‘s concept of the rural school was much more progressive. Favrot called not only for better teachers, but community involvement in the schools, longer school hours, and:
The notion that all learning has to come through the slavish use of textbooks must be supplanted with the idea that the curriculum should include materials that are familiar to the pupils and materials drawn from their experiences…The present objective of those concerned with improving this type of school should be to emphasize the school‘s relationship to life.339
Experiential, community-based, use of natural surroundings, academics sound like appropriate solutions that, while they used the nature of rural life as meaningful and relevant to the student, they did not impose the education of place in place. Nor did
Favrot define a singular curriculum with the aim of providing only such education as would be appropriate to the occupations and life in that singular community. Yet, in the end, Favrot called for the rural teacher to work with the Jeanes Funds and other rural outreach organizations, ―…for the small rural school to play its part in making rural community life more attractive and satisfying.‖ 340
338 Leo M. Favrot, "How the Small Rural School Can More Adequately Serve Its Community," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 31. 339 Ibid.: 434-38. 340 Ibid.: 438. 138 The Anna M. Jeanes Fund341 was a rural outreach organization that helped teachers and African American communities develop trade and homemaking skills in rural communities. By ―…making rural life more attractive and satisfying‖ 342 had multiple meanings. First, it could be as read simply as—give the students an opportunity to thrive in the community they now live. ―Attractive rural life‖ could also have meant to make the community attractive so that the African American would stay in a place where he/she belonged. Given Favrot‘s background and history, we cannot rule the latter out as one of his objectives for rural education.
In 1937 Edward E. Redcay was a recently appointed professor of education and philosophy at Plattsburg State University in New York. Redcay had done studies for the
John F. Slater Fund, including one in 1925 titled, ―Public Secondary Schools for Negroes in the Southern States of the United States.‖343 For purposes of his 1937 article, Howard
E. Redcay extolled the Slater Fund and its original 1882 mission, ―…uplifting the lately emancipated population of the Southern states and their posterity by conferring upon them the blessings of a Christian education.‖344 Within the article, Redcay recited the history of the Country Training Schools and their accomplishments including the consolidation of one room school houses, some education for teachers, industrial and
341 Later in this chapter is a review of the Jeanes fund and whether it performed according to its mission and vision. 342 Favrot, "How the Small Rural School Can More Adequately Serve Its Community," 438. 343 Edward E. Redcay, "Pioneering in Negro Education," The Journal of Negro Education 6, no. 1 (1937): 38. 344 Ibid.: 39. 139 agricultural education and, ―The [Country Training School‘s] willingness to cooperate in order to secure the support of a philanthropic organization.‖345
Redcay‘s suggestion encapsulates the dilemma posed by philanthropy: ―If we give you money we get to impose our aims, our curriculum, and our values.‖ Who in the rural communities who had less than nothing and yearned for education would say no to a consolidated school, well constructed, run for longer periods and staffed with better trained teachers? The industrial agenda tried to keep the rural African American both rural and a subject of segregation‘s social order.
In conclusion, Redcay suggested that the Country Training Schools were probably, ―…the most noteworthy cooperative effort to be found in the annals of
American public education.‖ Yet, as James D. Anderson noted, these schools were little more than the secondary school version of the industrial education rubrics of Hampton and Tuskegee.346 When industrial education lost favor at both schools and the African
American community, the Country Training Schools shouldered onward with their rural industrial brand of education.
Kelly Miller, professor emeritus from Howard University at the time of the writing of his 1936 article was not of the opinion that strings necessarily should come with philanthropic funding. For Howard and other universities, Miller suggested that the
African American needed voices on the boards of trustees to, ―…keep the membership
345 Ibid.: 41. 346 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 109. 140 properly related to the sentiment and aspiration of their race.‖347 This implied, of course, certain deference to the fund raising capabilities of white trustees, but that the context of any fundraising or discussion of curriculum would have been amply represented by
African Americans who would express the needs of the race. This assumes that a free- thinking African American would have been appointed to the board. Someone who was a pawn of others could have done more harm than good.
Tokenism would have been another problem. Tokenism implies that a small representation of the race on the board means the tacit approval of the whole race to the curriculum, aims, programs, and aspirations the board approves. With the cacophony of voices in Eddie S. Glaude‘s theory of ―nation language,‖ a single titular representative could not have represented the views of all constituents.
Like the political scientist Ralph Bunche, the sociologist Kelly Miller was pragmatic about racism and its pervasiveness. Kelly Miller said:
There should be frank recognition, on the part of Negro faculties, that the segregated college is an institution for Negroes, of Negroes, if not wholly by Negroes. Racial segregation should be recognized and acknowledged as the outstanding controlling fact, which Negroes have little power to remove or seriously modify. This educational segregation should be recognized, not merely as a fact imposed upon the Negro by the prejudice of the white race, but should be utilized as an agency for developing the best powers and possibilities of Negro youth, partly under their own auspices.348
Kelly Miller was born in 1863 in South Carolina. Miller represented the group of retiring academics who broke the university barriers of post-Reconstruction and who had
347 Miller, "The Reorganization of the Higher Education of the Negro in Light of Changing Conditions," 489. 348 Ibid.: 491. 141 either been slaves and/or were educated during Reconstruction but who had endured the long slide into segregation.
This attitude and feeling that racism is pervasive and everlasting is what Derrick
Bell called, ―racial realism.‖ In an eponymous treatise of the term Bell said:
Black people will never gain full equality in this country…Realists accept a critical and an empirical attitude towards the law, in contrast to the formalists who insist that law is logically self-evident, objective, a priori valid, and internally consistent…They stress the functions of the law, rather than the abstract conceptualization of it.349
In 1936 R. O‘ Hara Lanier of the Houston Junior College for Negroes echoed
Derrick Bell‘s much later comment with, ―Negro Education assumes that some form of segregation is inevitable for generations to come, whether partial or complete, from cradle to grave.‖350
Kelly Miller continued with his thoughts, ―The Negro College must carefully safeguard its students from drinking in racial poison along with the sweets of the white man‘s curriculum.‖ Miller then called for the colleges become proficient in research.351
In Miller there was a hint of defiance against the prevailing social order. This hint of defiance was directed towards the development of a generation of thinkers. While
Miller had no answers and was stymied by the existing social order, there was a modicum of direction towards the development of a far-thinking intellectual African American who could possibly affect the social order of segregation and racism.
349 Delgado, ed., The Derrick Bell Reader, 74. 350 Lanier, "The Reorganization and the Redirection of Negro Education in Terms of Articulation and Integration," 370. 351 Miller, "The Reorganization of the Higher Education of the Negro in Light of Changing Conditions," 493. 142 Regardless of Kelly Miller‘s call for African American trustees, even in 1939
Charles H. Thompson, JNE editor observed that the only state-supported college for
African Americans in the US with an African American trustee was Lincoln University in
Missouri.352
In 1940, S. L. Smith of the George Peabody College reported that the Julius
Rosenwald Fund paid for the development of libraries associated with colleges. Naturally they turned to Hampton and its Library School to provide a ―well balanced‖ list of books for these libraries. In 1929 the Rosenwald fund extended this offer to build libraries to high schools, with a similarly prepared list.353 To review these ―well balanced‖ lists of books, is beyond the scope of this paper, but their analysis would provide evidence of the influence of Hampton and the philanthropies on the availability of reading choices of
African Americans, especially in regions where there blacks had no access to public libraries.
The Jeanes teachers were still at work in 1945. Jane E. McAllister Chairman of the Division of Education at Miner Teacher‘s College and Dorothy McAllister, Library supervisor at Howard University did a survey of 100 of the 449 employed Jeanes teachers. They found:
…even this small number of respondents indicates an awareness on the part of a few Jeanes teachers of the meaning of adult education and the need for it. To these 100 Jeanes teachers, adult education functions as coordinated community action radiating
352 Thompson, "The Status of Education of and for the Negro in the American Social Order," 501. 353 S. L. Smith, "Library Facilities in Negro Secondary Schools," The Journal of Negro Education 9, no. 3 (1940): 505-07. 143 from the community school as a center, and helping adults, out-of-school youth and children on problems of health, making a living, recreation and home making.
Comparatively few of the 100 Jeanes teachers, however, have carried on formal activities in illiteracy irradiation, and none of the extension workers makes any special mention of illiteracy eradication.354
Jane E. McAllister & Dorothy McAllister compared the work of the various state cooperative extension services and found:
The aims of the Jeanes teacher in adult education are far less clearly and specifically defined than those of the Extension Service Program. It is only within recent years that people have believed that the success of the public school system depends upon its service to the whole community—adults along with the children.355
Adam Fairclough suggested that the Jeanes fund and its companion, the General
Education Board were given much autonomy and authority to supervise the teachers in the rural schools.356 This strange mixture of state authority and private funding and philosophical direction would likely produce what Jane E. McAllister and Dorothy
McAllister discovered, that the philanthropy because of the money it supplied could also supply its own agenda. If this agenda were questioned even by the states the fund could withdraw that money.
Summary
Philanthropy had been involved in the education of African Americans in the
South since Reconstruction. Philanthropists along with the minimal contribution from the states and local school boards and the generous contributions from local African
354 McAllister and McAllister, "Adult Education for Negroes in Rural Areas: The Work of the Jeanes Teachers and Home and Farm Demonstration Agents," 335. 355 Ibid.: 339. 356 Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South, 255-56. 144 Americans built the school system across the South. They built schoolhouses and then larger regional centers. They sent individuals into the communities to teach health, worthy home membership, and made efforts to improve literacy. Yet the need for philanthropies‘‘ services began to wane in the 1920s and 1930s as states began to require teacher certification and took over school building responsibilities. The Federal New Deal programs of the 1930s assumed many of the duties in the community that the philanthropists had performed.
Without a mandate any longer in the local schools, the philanthropists turned towards secondary and higher education to make their arguments for industrial and vocational education in the schools. While they argued vociferously for change and forms of industrial education in the higher grades and colleges, the schools rejected such exhortations. In fact, as we will see in the chapter on industrial versus traditional discourses, the discourse evolved to consider both industrial and academic education but from a needs point of view rather than a mandated approach.
Finally, the philanthropists, while well intentioned, ultimately provided substandard work. The researchers in this study noted the lack of accreditation of black colleges, the lack of direction and aims in the Jeanes schools, and the lack of purposefulness in the junior colleges. All of these had been funded, managed, or were directed by the philanthropies. The Northern secular philanthropies were more active in the twentieth century than the religious philanthropies. Their agendas on education quite often conflicted with the African American community and they walked a fine line
145 mollifying the white community that their aims were not to upset the existing social order.
The tragedy of all of this is that the well intentioned philanthropists put millions of dollars into an unsustainable system. The question for other researchers is whether their efforts and support for this system served to extend the social order of segregation or, in fact, served to ameliorate the conditions of segregation. We heard Thomas Jesse
Jones hint at the gratitude accorded the philanthropists when he said, ―Negro Education must for a time, and possibly for a long time, give up the objectives and methods of the pioneers [Hampton and Tuskegee] who served the Negro people better than current opinion can possibly understand.‖ 357 Gunnar Myrdal considered that the debt accorded to the philanthropies came at a price:
In the author‘s judgments, Northern philanthropy in its grand-scale charity toward the South, incidental to its positive accomplishments has also had a demoralizing influence on the South. The South has become accustomed to taking it for granted that not only rich people, in the North, but also poor church boards, should send money South thus eternally repaying ―the responsibility of the North for Reconstruction.‖358
Not only demoralizing for the Southern whites, but for the Southern African
Americans who were the subject of this charity. This is likely why proud people endured
―double taxation‖ in order to stand up for themselves.
The undercurrent of the discourse of philanthropy in relationship to whiteness as property was underscored by Ralph Bunche of Howard University when he said, ―In
357 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 411. 358 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 905. 146 truth, capitalism owns the colleges and universities by right of purchase…‖359 Thus the philanthropists used their property ―rights of disposition‖ to grant the funds, but equally asserted their rights to influence the aims and curricula through their ―right to use and enjoy‖, but had the power to assert their ―absolute right to exclude‖ and withdraw funding if they did not achieve a result satisfactory to their interests.360 Money given to fund African American colleges once given was jointly held by both the philanthropists and the African Americans. The debate extended, however, to the ownership over aims and curriculum. The ―right of reputation and status property‖ was heatedly debated on both sides.361 The philanthropists like Leo F. Favrot of The General Education Board,
Edwin Embree of the Julius Rosenwald Fund needed to defend their reputation established in both the North and South that they understood the needs of African
Americans and that industrial education met those needs.362 The African American researchers like Ralph Bunche and Kelly Miller both of Howard University wanted to improve the status of the African American through education.363
The philanthropy debate also complicates Eddie Glaude‘s concept of nation language. Can the well intentioned oppressor be part of this nation language building?
With the early Hampton and Tuskegee discourse, industrial education was imported into
359 Bunche, "Education in Black and White." Miller, "The Reorganization of the Higher Education of the Negro in Light of Changing Conditions." 360 Harris, "Whiteness as Property," 1732-36. 361 Ibid.: 1734. 362 Favrot, "How the Small Rural School Can More Adequately Serve Its Community." Embree, "Education for Rural Life." 363 Bunche, "Education in Black and White," 355. Lanier, "The Reorganization and the Redirection of Negro Education in Terms of Articulation and Integration," 370. 147 the consensus by the philanthropists and adopted as part of the African American nation language associated with educational theory, principally through its embrace by Booker
T. Washington. As this chapter shows, the discourse about the benefits of philanthropy fractured into factions with mounting evidence of how poorly some of the curricular initiatives had been implemented and/or what value the African American student could obtain from participating in the philanthropic paradigms.
Within the philanthropic discourse there was evidence of Gramscian hegemony at work in the early adoption of industrial education in the African American schools.
Following this implementation was the continued effort on the part of the philanthropists to press their industrial mythology well into the period of this study. However there emerged a form of Freierian praxis in the debate that desired the financial assistance of these organizations, but no longer accepted the mythology of the industrial program, offering instead a multitude of counterhegemonic solutions.
These same theoretical underpinnings, the need for both philanthropists and
African Americans have for the ―right of reputation and status property,‖ and its nation language constructed from hegemonic and counterhegemonic discourses will be more fully developed in this study‘s chapter on Industrial Vs. Traditional Academic Schools; and a Philosophy of Negro Education: Same As vs. Different from Whites.
148 Chapter 8—Democracy and the Social Order—Living the Amphibious Life
I looked at Ras on his horse and at their handful of guns and recognized the absurdity of the whole night and of the simple yet confoundingly complex arrangement of hope and desire, fear and hate, that had brought me here still running, and knowing now who I was and where I was and knowing too that I had no longer to run for or from the Jacks and the Emersons and the Bledsoes and Nortons, but only from their confusion, impatience, and refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American identity and mine. . . . And I knew that it was better to live out one‘s own absurdity than to die for that of others, whether for Ras‘s or Jack‘s.364 Ras had threatened to kill the ―invisible man‖. Yet, in a moment of lucidity, the
―invisible man‖ realized the absurdity of trying to be all things to others and nothing to himself. At the same time the ―invisible man‖ considered the complexity of American life and him in it and contemplated its own brand of absurdity. If the individual cannot live for another, the ―invisible man‖ reasoned, then his only meaning for existence, however absurd, was for himself and this he began to consider in the final chapters of the book.
In the chapter on ―The Cardinal Principles,‖ we noted that it related the principles to a definition of education promulgated by the Commission on the Reorganization of
Secondary Education:
The purpose of democracy is so to organize society that each member may develop his personality primarily through activities designed for the well being of his fellow members and of society as a whole…Consequently education in a democracy, both within and without the school, should develop in each individual the knowledge, interests, ideals, habits, and powers whereby he will find his place and use that place to shape both himself and society towards ever nobler ends.365
364 Ellison, Invisible Man, 422. 365 Kinglsley, "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education," 9. 149 Democracy was discussed early in the JNE (outside its context in association with the Cardinal Principles) as something of an enigma—something for which there was an ideal, but which in practice in America was less than ideal. Then, in1941 Charles
Merriam, Vice Chairman of the National Resources Planning Board366 and Visiting
Lecturer on Government at Harvard University provided a pre-war consideration of the meaning of Democracy in its purest sense. Merriam‘s postulates were:
The essential dignity of man…The perfectibility of man…That the gains of commonwealths are essentially mass gains rather than the efforts of the few and should be diffused as promptly as possible throughout the community without too great delay or too wide a spread in differentials…Confidence in the value of the consent of the governed…the value of decisions arrived at by common counsel rather than by violence and brutality.367
Merriam‘s postulate of diffusion without widespread differential was the discourse that the authors of the JNE launched in 1933. However, the problem is that within the conditions of the American social order, diffusion was through the eyes of the majority who fashioned a defective sieve that filtered most democratic, economic, educative, and social value to them, with little left for minorities.
In 1933 Ambrose Caliver, Senior Specialist in the Education of Negroes, U. S.
Office of Education noted:
366 The National Resources Planning Board was chartered in 1933 to ―plan public works initiatives for the Depression-era relief projects undertaken as a part of the New Deal.‖ It released a report on its progress just days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The report received little attention and Congress terminated the agency in 1943. National Resources Planning Board, "Security, Work, and Relief Policies a Report by the National Resources Planning Board," (Washington, D. C.: Social Security Administration, 1942). 367 Charles E. Merriam, "The Meaning of Democracy," The Journal of Negro Education 10, no. 3 (1941): 309. 150 We further appreciate and subscribe to the thesis that since Negroes are an integral part of our democratic life, carrying the same responsibilities as other citizens, that Negro children require the same general type of preparation for productive and happy citizenship as white children, and in consequence teachers of Negro children should be as well prepared as teachers of white children. 368 Caliver then asked the questions which are also a part of the title of this study,
―What and how shall we teach? Are the questions: For what shall we teach and why?
[emphasis in original]‖369 Caliver then qualified these questions with reference to the
American dilemma of social order:
These questions cannot be answered without reference to the larger problems of education in our American democracy, nor can they be adequately considered apart from the practical life and necessities of the Negro race in its relationship to our social order.370 Caliver called for ―…a new philosophy of Negro Education…‖ one that ―…will not stigmatize the Negro as something inferior because of his differences, but will develop the distinctive qualities of those who are different…‖371 Caliver then suggested that this new philosophy must, ―not limit and restrict educational advancement, but one which permits the fullest possible contribution to society commensurate with capacity, interest, and effort.‖372 Later Caliver suggested that another reason for formulating a philosophy of Negro Education was to ―reconstruct our social order.‖373 But Caliver remained pragmatic in conclusion:
368 Caliver, "The Negro Teacher and a Philosophy of Negro Education," 439. 369 Ibid. 370 Ibid. 371 Ibid. 372 Ibid. 373 Ibid. 151 In addition, while endeavoring in every possible way to improve their condition and to become full-fledged citizens of our democracy, they must not be blind to the peculiar problems facing the Negro at present.374 Within this article, Caliver centered the democracy discourse in JNE that would flow throughout the period of this study. With his statements and questions Caliver provided the issues for which the discourse on aims began. First, should there be a separate philosophy of Negro Education and if so, what should it look like? Second, if there should not be a separate philosophy of Negro Education, what was the alternative?
Are African Americans truly different from others, and if so, how, and how do we educate to these differences? A corollary to difference—was this difference internal i.e. a part of the nature of the African American, or was this difference because of external conditions that created difference? Next, was there a social order in the American democracy and, if so, what were its implications? Finally, how was the American
Democracy defined during the period of segregation and what were its implications to both education and African Americans?
We have seen the absurdity of segregation and the ―peculiar‖ arguments required to explain it. The discourse of ―social order‖ both explained segregation and asked educators to disabuse the society of the concept. The democracy discourse intersected with the ―social order‖ discourse and added dimension, depth and division. Democracy contained elements of the discourse on social order, e.g. the separate democratic realities for African Americans and whites through poll taxes and other voting restrictions, but it also spoke to the egalitarian nature of the term ―democracy‖ and the unique brand of
374 Ibid.: 447. 152 democracy that was American. This unique brand of democracy was also ―peculiar‖ in that it differed from other countries, precisely because within this democratic structure was a mediated and mandated social order.
Kelly Miller in 1936 had retired as professor of Sociology at Howard University.
Miller called the African American life within the American democracy and social order,
―amphibious:‖
The recognized Negro college must prepare the Negro to live an amphibious life. He must live in two different Media—one submerged, and the other more rarified. The curriculum should preserve a just balance between those subjects which are universal in their application and those which apply especially to the restricted racial life for the most part he is forced to live.375 The ―amphibious life‖ is one of dual consciousness, first coined by W. E. B.
Dubois, ―One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.‖376
R. D. Barnes considered Dubois further in 1990:
This powerful depiction of dual consciousness delineates the conscious perception of people of color as they are perpetually reminded that their lives, their existence, and their concerns are valued differently, when at all, by the white majority. Their statements and actions are judged by different standards of right and wrong, of morality and immorality.377 To consider the ―amphibious life‖ we must review the democracy and social order discourse as it occurred together in the JNE.
375 Miller, "The Reorganization of the Higher Education of the Negro in Light of Changing Conditions," 494. 376 DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 3. 377 Robin D. Barnes, "Race Consciousnness: The Thematic Content of Racial Distinctiveness in Critical Race Scholarship," Harvard Law Review 103, no. 8 (1990): 1866. 153 In 1932, Mary R. Crowley of the Cincinnati School System conducted a comparative study of mixed and segregated schools in Cincinnati. Crowley laid out the considerable difference in thoughts about segregation in society—those who support it as a social necessity; those that consider it undemocratic; and those that consider segregation undemocratic, but necessary for African American students. Crowley said about the third group:
They further agree that in a model democracy it would not exist. As society is organized at present, however, they find certain values in the segregated schools.378 Crowley suggested that the thinking of this third group included the concept of instilling racial pride in children and showed white neighbors that the African American deserves better opportunities.379 Thus for Crowley‘s third group, the separate school could have value in and of itself and would have had value even in a non-segregated environment, but that in the future this need for difference might not exist as the African
American gained respect of white peers.
In this study, Crowley found little difference in the academic achievements whether the student was in a white or mixed-race school.380 Crowley suggested, ―If the
Negro child profits from attendance in one as compared with the other type of school, it is in terms of other than academic growth.‖381 Crowley then asked a series of questions
378 Mary R. Crowley, "Cincinnati's Experiment in Negro Education: A Comparative Study of the Segregated and Mixed School," The Journal of Negro Education 1, no. 1 (1932): 15-27, & 27. 379 Ibid.: 27. 380 As noted elsewhere in this study – both the mixed race and segregated schools had similar aims, curricula, funding, and educated and experienced administrators and teachers. 381 Crowley, "Cincinnati's Experiment in Negro Education: A Comparative Study of the Segregated and Mixed School," 32. 154 for researchers to consider, including: what were the benefits of separate schools, if any; and if there were, what might they mean to the African American child and community; and what, if anything would these considerations be when applied to the white child?382
Crowley asked important questions that needed to be considered. Yet there is little evidence that Crowley‘s questions received adequate attention in future research.
Also in 1932 W. E. B. Dubois of Atlanta University suggested that the Negro college did not to understand the needs of students in light of the present society:
On the other hand, there cannot be the slightest doubt but that the Negro college, its teachers, students and graduates have not yet comprehended the age in which they live: the tremendous organization of industry, commerce, capital, and credit which today forms a super-organization dominating and ruling the universe, subordinating to its ends government, democracy, religion, education, and social philosophy; and for the purpose of forcing into the places of power in this organization American black men either to guide or help reform it, either to increase its efficiency or make it a machine to improve our well-being, rather than the merciless mechanism which enslaves us; for this the Negro college has today neither program nor intelligent comprehension.383 Dubois noted that the separate Negro college (as opposed to the secondary school) was not adequate in a separatist environment simply because it failed to grasp the enormity of change in society. Throughout this article Dubois did not encourage school integration in any meaningful way, but encouraged the schools to reconsider its aims in light of the changing nature of work and society.
In the limited discourse for 1932, Crowley considered the possibility of positives in a separate education in a democracy; and Dubois saw that the separate colleges had not capitalized on the opportunity of the ―super-organization‖ to empower American black
382 Ibid.: 33. 383 DuBois, "Education and Work," 63. 155 men to change the current oppressive state of democracy. Neither addressed the abolishing of separate schools but both asked that even with their separate existence, that the separate schools provide the best possible education even in a democracy with such a construct as segregation.
In 1933, Jackson Davis, field agent for the General Education Board, reported on the changing nature of education in relationship to changes in society and the social order. Davis suggested that the emphasis on education had shifted from teaching and learning.384 As a result, said Davis:
These procedures are making an impact upon the old-fashioned subject-centered college curriculum, which must take into account the needs of a changing society and of the individual student in finding his place and his relationships in this society… [in relationship to college] This is the period in which the student must come into possession of his social heritage and orient himself to a changing social order.385 Finally Jackson Davis observed, in contrast to W. E. B. Dubois only a year earlier, that:
Many of the Negro Institutions face the present period of ferment in a spirit of initiative, a willingness to experiment, a purpose to integrate with the offerings of the college with the needs of the individual students and his complex relationships to a changing society. Increasing attention will, no doubt, be given to the distinctive gifts and opportunities of the race, with the expectations that the cultural life will be enriched by the fullest possible contribution of the Negro. Education beyond this point becomes a matter of further training for a smaller number of more talented youth, from whom a fair proportion of the leadership of the next generation may be expected.386 Who was Jackson Davis? Davis was a white specialist in rural education, first as one of the developers of the Jeanes teachers program through the Jeanes Foundation, and
384 Jackson Davis, "The Outlook for the Professional and Higher Education of Negroes," The Journal of Negro Education 2, no. 3 (1933): 409. 385 Ibid.: 410. 386 Ibid. 156 later with the General Education Board as field agent and finally as president of the
Phelps-Stokes fund many years after writing this article.387
In his article Davis extolled the virtues and international prominence of Hampton and Tuskegee, the two bellwether schools that created and proselytized the curriculum across the South with help from the Northern philanthropies with their, ―…distinctive type of education having to do with rural life, agriculture, trade and industry.‖388 In other words, despite the experimentation and opportunities Davis professed for the race, they were through the lens of an industrial curriculum which, was by the accounts of its supporters, both black and white, appropriate for African Americans in the democratic social order of the times.
In Contrast, W.E.B Dubois at the time this 1933 article was written was Professor of Sociology at Atlanta University. In an essay written in 1903, Dubois had called for a system of higher order training for the few who would become leaders for African
Americans—his so-called ―talented tenth.‖389 With this, and with subsequent writings, including his heralded and long-running debate with Booker T. Washington, Dubois fought for a more academic college and not the industrial version that the Jeanes teachers brought to communities and was otherwise supported by both the General Education
Board and Phelps-Stokes fund. Unlike these Northern philanthropists who called for industrial education for most African Americans, Dubois did not call for the abolition of
387 Wikipedia, "Jackson T. Davis," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_T._Davis. 388 Davis, "The Outlook for the Professional and Higher Education of Negroes," 407. 389 Dan S. Green, "W. E. B. Du Bois' Talented Tenth: A Strategy for Racial Advancement," The Journal of Negro Education 46, no. 3 (1977): 359. 157 industrial education, but the development of a Black college that would prepare leaders to create a new social order that recognized knowledge and character over wealth.390
In an NBC broadcast in 1934, Harold I. Ickes Secretary of the Interior in the
Franklin D. Roosevelt administration said:
It be admitted that education is fundamental to a democratic form of government, then it does not have to be argued that our form of government will be broad and fine and secure just in proportion as the education of the people composing it is universal and thorough and comprehensive.391 Ickes did not qualify his radio address with anything about how African
Americans are different or the place they fit into the social order, but considered them the same as any other citizen. Ickes further suggested that every child be educated to his/her capacity to learn.392 Yet Ickes admonished the country for its failure to educate African
Americans:
Unless improvement is made in his education he will not be able to keep pace with the rapid movement of our present age. This will not only handicap him personally but will constitute a serious detriment to the state….In view of the notable record along educational lines that he has already made there can be no doubt that he will eagerly use every advantage that may be given him not only for his own benefit but for the benefit of society.393 Thus Ickes suggested that a central aim of education was to serve the ―state‘s‖ interests in the economic and social well being of society. This, too, was a central theme of Gunnar Myrdal‘s 1944 American Dilemma—that the economic well being of the country is not well served by undereducated African American populations and that the
390 Ibid.: 363. 391 Harold L. Ickes, "The Education of the Negro in the United States," The Journal of Negro Education 3, no. 1 (1934): 5. 392 Ibid.: 6. 393 Ibid.: 7. 158 expense of maintaining separate school systems not only was irrational but fiscally unsound.
Gunnar Myrdal considered education in context as a great equalizer; and qualified it as the enabler of what he called the ―American Creed:‖
As background for our discussion we shall have to remember the role of education in American democratic thought and life. Education has always been the great hope for both individual and society. In the American Creed it has been the main ground upon which ―equality of opportunity for the individual‖ and ―free outlet for ability‖ could be based. Education has also been considered as the best way—and the way most compatible with American individualistic ideals-to improve society.394
Yet the Depression dampened this central discourse simply because there was little money for subsistence, let alone to improve education of African Americans. The discourse did not gain traction until after the economy improved, Myrdal‘s report was published, and war forced the country to realize that it was harmed by an undereducated segregated population that could not perform the tasks required of the war economy. The aim of education to serve ―society‖ and not just the individual or the African American would prove to be a guiding force in the discourse in the JNE during the war and its companion discourse related to the position of the African American in post-World War
II reconstruction.
Howard K. Beale, historian of Reconstruction at Bowdoin College, asked in 1933,
―Shall education bulwark the status quo or take the lead in creating a new and better social order?‖ [Emphasis in original].395 Beale suggested that these were questions for all
394 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 882. 395 Beale, "The Needs of Negro Education in the United States," 8. 159 educators, but that ―The Negro‘s answer to them is complicated by special problems of his own.‖396 Beale then said that ―Confusion of purpose is one of the most serious handicaps of Negro schools.‖397 Thus, Beale is suggesting that without well-defined aims, how can a new and better social order be effected? A cause of the problem, Beale said, is that, ―…the responsibilities of citizenship are a forbidden subject in Negro Schools.‖398
Beale told a story about a meeting of the South Carolina State Teachers Association where participants declined to call a new program, ―Training for Citizenship,‖ deferring to the less sensitive, ―Character Training.‖399 While Beale asked educators to step into the breach to provide better definition to their aims and objectives, he also maintained that until there are fundamental changes in society, this will be difficult. Yet Beale suggested that it was not the whites who needed to become involved in this struggle for equality, but that this was the responsibility of African Americans:
But essentially the problem is one Negroes must solve. Those who have had advantages must help others. They must grasp every opportunity to improve the quality of Negro teachers and schools.400 Beale followed with an emotion laden exhortation:
But patience and courage which can strive ceaselessly and effectively for justice and the power that will secure justice without succumbing to overwhelming discouragements—patience to effect a great revolution without being destroyed by it.401
396 Ibid. 397 Ibid. 398 Ibid.: 17. 399 Ibid. 400 Ibid.: 19. 401 Ibid. 160 Within this oratory there was the practical reality of which Beale also spoke—that being patient to effect a great social revolution was fraught with the many potholes of the time, the least of which was second-class citizenship.
In a 1934 editorial, JNE Editor Charles Thompson quoted Ambrose Caliver of the
U. S. Department of Education, who pointed out that Federal funds for African American education were not only inadequate, but that, ―…inequalities in many instances have been increased.‖ Caliver bolstered this argument by saying that while in the Southern states
African Americans represented 23 percent of the population, 62 percent of the schools that were closed for lack of funds were Negro schools.402
Given the circumstances of the times, from where would this revolution spring?
W. E. B. Dubois and others frequently noted that the creation of an African-American middle class had not engender a revolutionary movement; instead it created individuals who became complacent in their position in the higher order in the lower social order.
Paulo Freire commented on this problem in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
But almost always, during the initial stage off the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or ―sub- oppressors‖…Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is oppressors.403
Thus for many of these authors and likely for Freire, this complacent middle class of African Americans would have become part of the oppression ―sub-oppressors‖ per say because of their complacency and the fact that the adoption of the middle-class is a feature of white domination. Gunnar Myrdal directly referenced the problem:
402 Thompson, "Editorial Comment: The Federal Government and Negro Education," 566. 403 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 46. 161 Repeatedly we have pointed out the fundamental dilemma of the Negro upper classes. On the one hand, upper class Negroes are the ones who feel most intensely the humiliations of segregation and discrimination. They are also in a position where they, more than the masses, can see the limits set by the caste system to their personal ambitions. They need to appeal to racial solidarity against caste if only to avert the aggression against themselves from the lower classes and to direct it upon the whites. On the other hand, segregation and discrimination create an economic shelter for them.404
For Freire, two things would need to occur to begin the change in the social order:
In the first stage, this confrontation occurs through the change in the way the oppressed perceive the world of opposition; in the second stage, through the expulsion of the myths created and developed in the old order, which like specters haunt the new structure emerging from the revolutionary transformation.405
Thus, for these individuals to consider change, they would have to expurgate the myth of the middle class as achievement in and of itself, unless it could bring along others of the oppressed class.
Would the development of creativity by the schools foster a new way of thinking and even a separate culture for the African American? This was the question that L.
Virgil Williams, Principal of the Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas asked. In
1935 Virgil Williams reported on the experimental program in his school that he believed could develop a separate and distinct Negro culture through the development of creativity.406 Williams then suggested that:
The education of the Negro in our American democracy demands that as a student, he should be inspired, that he should have confidence in himself and the Negro race. This can be best and most effectively accomplished through the development of the
404 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 794. 405 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 54-55. 406 L. Virgil Williams, "The Need for the Development of Creative Abilities among Negro Students," The Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 4 (1935): 504. 162 creative abilities of the Negro student which will make him a vital and integral factor contributing toward a new social order.407
This presents a slightly different twist to the idea that social order could be fabricated through the use of creative technique in the school. Williams did not call for a separate school, per se, but appeared to subscribe to the theory that African Americans were different and out of this difference could create a separate culture that would alter the social order. Whether Williams believed that developing creative skills would add value to the African American in the eyes of the dominant whites and alter the social order or whether this creative individual would seek to modify the social order through legal or other means, he did not say. Virgil Williams does, however, provide the possibility for the development of Gramscian organic intellectuals. Antonio Gramsci said:
If such conceptions are to merge and achieve hegemonic dominance, as for example in the case of the bourgeois accounts of the world that supplanted the old feudal ones, the new class must be able to bring into being its own ―organic‖ intellectuals who are capable of elaborating and giving coherence to its embryonic imaginings.408
To consider Gramsci ―organic intellectuals‖, we must also consult Paulo Freire‘s praxis in context of creativity:
One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings‘ consciousness. Functionally, oppression is domesticating. To no longer be prey to its force, one must emerge from it and turn upon it. This can be done only by means of praxis: reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it.409
407 Ibid. 408 Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology, 115. 409 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 51. 163 If one can reasonably equate the development of creativity which L. Virgil
Williams, Principal of the Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas, defined as,
―…any experience or activity which represents for the individual or creator a new meaning, an new analysis, a new synthesis, a new control, or a new product,‖ with Paulo
Freire‘s praxis, there is opportunity for this approach to be helpful in creating the context and perhaps the environment for a change in the social order.410 Yet, for this to be possible, as Freire explained, movement must come from both the oppressor and oppressed to better understand each other.411
If educators could have met Harold Ickes‘, Howard K. Beale‘s, and Virgil I.
William‘s expectations and created a significantly educated population of African
Americans in the depression, there were likely no jobs that could utilize these talents. Not until World War II was there a demand for talent to build the war machine, which created the need for better educated persons. The demand in war was so strong that it required the whites to recruit African Americans to become part of the mainstream workforce.
In 1935, Horace Mann Bond of Dillard University reviewed three movements to reform school curricula in the South, including: Carter G. Woodson‘s campaign for materials dealing with Negro life; The Commission on Interracial Cooperation, and the third; state efforts in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia to revise their curricula.412
Toward this end Horace Mann Bond suggested that the central aim of this effort should be, ―…the development of a body of study materials for use in the schools which will fit
410 Williams, "The Need for the Development of Creative Abilities among Negro Students," 500. 411 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 56. 412 Bond, "The Curriculum and the Negro Child," 160-61. 164 the children enrolled more suitably for life as American citizens.‖413 Horace Mann Bond deftly critiqued the existing process of curriculum building:
It should be realized that the method of ―activity analysis‖ in the construction of a curriculum presupposes an elastic, democratic social order in which there are no artificial barriers set against the social mobility of the individual. In such a society classes are assumed to be highly fluid, and there can be no such thing as caste. Beginning with such a theory—and the ―activity‖ curriculum can have not other justifiable basis—any activities peculiar to Negro children and no susceptible to inclusion in a ―Negro‖ curriculum are a defect in the social order. The construction of a ―Negro‖ curriculum concedes the falsity of the initial premise.414 Bond‘s argument was simple: if democracy presumes equality, then the premise that there should be a separate ―Negro education‖ is false, or democracy as equality is a falsehood. Bond clarified with, ―Curriculum building on an activity-analysis basis for
Negro children must abandon either the concept of racial adaptations, or the concept of equalitarian democracy.‖415
Bond then suggested that while the schools have never constructed social order, they perpetuate the social order.416 David Tyack and Larry Cuban in Tinkering Towards
Utopia suggested that teachers tended to maintain the status quo in their teaching even when asked to change. 417 Horace Mann Bond and David Tyack and Larry Cuban present a dilemma for aims-talk. If the schools perpetuate the order and are slow to change, how can they engage in aims-talk that will change the social order? This dilemma requires
413 Ibid.: 162. 414 Ibid.: 167. 415 Ibid.: 168. 416 Ibid. 417 Tyack, Tinkering toward Utopia, 64. 165 answers to the question, ―Where should aims-talk occur if aims-talk is involved in both the critique of society and the changing of the social order?‖
By suggesting the impossibility of his earlier statement about democracy and curriculum reform, Horace Mann Bond also considered that these efforts will do nothing more than perpetuate the status quo unless educators and leaders considered the,
―profound social and economic changes which are now taking place in the world.‖418
Bond closed with, ―Negroes, of all people, can least afford to labor for curriculum revision with no understanding of the real sources of their toil, or the ultimate direction of their efforts.‖419
It may be argued that what Bond was saying was that there is little point in changing a curriculum in a society where a change to a more egalitarian democracy is not also a part of the change process. If it is more of the same; retain the existing black curriculum for it perpetuates what is reality. If, however, the leaders, educators, and others can reconceptualize and define the democracy in terms other than the existing social order, then the curriculum can be redefined in terms of the new environment.
In the same year, E. Franklin Frazier of Howard University parsed the social order into economic and societal order. Frazier said:
The distinction which these sociologists have made between the position of an individual or group in the economic order and the status of the individual or group in society tends to obscure the fact that the latter is dependent upon the former; for in the
418 Bond, "The Curriculum and the Negro Child," 168. 419 Ibid. 166 final analysis the status of an individual or group is determined by his or its position in the economic organization.420 Given this dilemma from E. Franklin Frazier, Horace Mann Bond‘s argument against changing the curriculum without changes in the social order becomes more complex. Therefore it is not only a matter of adjudicating or mandating cultural change but also that economic change must be concurrent.
If this is true, Frazier‘s theory has ramifications even today. While the laws have been changed to mandate equality, there is a significant economic difference between white and African American populations. Frazier‘s theory points to the disparity between test scores in communities of color versus white communities. Frazier‘s theory says that simple curriculum change is not efficacious unless both economic and cultural changes are forthcoming.
A decade after Frazier wrote these words, Gunnar Myrdal in An American
Dilemma, made even a more compelling case for the economic necessity of an America without segregation. Myrdal noted the cost of separate but equal schools, ―Moreover, maintaining two separate systems of schooling, one white and the other black, was very costly, with low levels of spending on education in the South being particularly debilitating to African Americans.‖421 Throughout the book, Myrdal made the case that segregated schools not only provided a substandard education to African Americans, they hurt whites because the separate schools cost more than just one system. They hurt the
420 Frazier, "The Status of the Negro in the American Social Order," 293. 421 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 132. 167 American economy by preserving the economic order of subordination. Myrdal quoted
Thomas Nelson Page422:
Viewing the matter economically, the Negro race, like every other race, must be of far more value to the country in which it is placed if the Negro is properly educated, elevated and trained than if he is allowed to remain in ignorance and degradation. He is a greater peril to the community in which he lives if he remains in ignorance and degradation than if he is enlightened. If the South expects ever to compete with the North, she must educate and train her population, and, in my judgment, not merely her white population but her entire population.423
In 1935 Howard Long asked and answered the question, ―Why Separate Schools in a Democracy?‖424 At the time of this writing Long was the superintendent in charge of research in the Washington D.C. School System which, according to Gunnar Myrdal, was a segregated system but one considered to have equal funding.425
Long provided six reasons (or excuses) often proffered by society for the need for separate schools: (1) preserve the biological status of the dominant race; (2)
―unassimilably different‖ (without being inferior); (3) ―Negroes do not adjust well to the
American Curricula,‖ probably because of inferior mental equipment; (4) ―Negroes are largely a servant class;‖ (5) Exploitation—certain individuals profit from separate schools; and, (6) ―competition for status.‖426 Item six—competition for status—poses an argument similar to what CRT makes about the whole concept that whiteness or status as
422 Ironically, Thomas Nelson Page wrote many books about the glories of the antebellum South. His comment in context might not seek the expurgation of segregation, only its economic effects. Anne E. Rowe, "Thomas Nelson Page, 1853-1922 " University of North Carolina, http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/pageolevir/bio.html. 423 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 895-96. 424 Howard Hale Long, "Some Psychogenic Hazards of Segregated Education of Negroes," The Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 3 (1935): 341. 425 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 632. 426 Long, "Some Psychogenic Hazards of Segregated Education of Negroes," 341-42. 168 white is a form of property or possession that is coveted for its value. To eliminate competition for status, the theory of whiteness as property develops exclusivity for whiteness. Whiteness as property maintains that all who are not strictly defined as white could never attain that status which is the same argument that was made in the Supreme
Court case, Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which codified segregation into law.
Howard Long did not condone these reasons for separate schools, but he added a third dimension of the dominant race‘s conception of the race to Horace Mann Bond‘s and E. Franklin Frazier‘s arguments of culture and economic status having to change.
While the reasons had elements of both culture (assimilability and servant class) and economics (profit and competition) of previous discourses, they also dug into the dominant race‘s psyche related to their concept of African Americans as mentally inferior and a possible threat to white biological purity. If Howard Long was correct in his assumptions and if we must add the dominant race‘s conception of African Americans to the necessary conditions for change, the problem becomes one of three dimensions and one even more complex to resolve without systemic alterations that dig not only into the economy and legal structure of society, but the thought patterns of the dominant race.
In the same JNE issue with Howard Long, Alaine Locke, Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Howard University considered ―The dilemma of Segregation.‖ Locke suggested that even not considering the ―…psychological damage to the minority, and impairment of the basic social democracy of the community…,‖ the facts were, there
169 were few cases where separate schools were equal.427 There is significant evidence of this fact in this study‘s chapter on Segregation. Yet, Locke brings up what Howard Long alluded to—that is the psychic damage done to the subaltern in a segregated society. The subaltern begins to believe in his/her inferiority and this compounds and even validates the reason for separate schools. Antonio Gramsci said:
Firstly, culture is understood as thought in action, as a means by which people are able to understand their place within the reality within which they live.428 If culture is understanding, then how does the dominant group get the subaltern to believe its view of his/her place? Gramsci called this concept hegemony and defined its phenomena it as follows:
The intellectuals are the dominant group‘s ―deputies‖ exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government. These are: 1. The ―spontaneous‖ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ―historically‖ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production. 2. The apparatus of the state coercive powers which ―legally‖ enforces discipline on those groups who do not ―consent‖ either actively or passively. This apparatus, however, is constituted for the whole of the society in anticipation of moments of crisis of command and direction when spontaneous consent has failed.429 Thus, if we subscribe to Antonio Gramsci‘s conception of hegemony, we not only need to change the mind of the dominant group, but the mind of the subordinate. This brings us back to aims and Horace Mann Bond‘s original premise—change in society must happen first, before we can redesign the curriculum to produce any desired effect.
427 Alain Locke, "The Dilemma of Segregation," The Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 3 (1935): 407. 428 Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology, 73. 429 Ibid., 102. 170 This complexity to which the authors of the JNE allude and later theorists have considered, suggest to today‘s theorists that the curricular solution (revisions of the curriculum; high stakes tests; longer class days; even better teachers) in and of itself is not a solution unless the society‘s fundamental construct is changed and the subaltern is given opportunities to gain economic equality. Equally, there is the need by both persons of color and whites alter their conceptions of the races as having difference and place in a hierarchy.
Paulo Freire later agreed with the premise that both the oppressor and oppressor must change and the oppressed must liberate both themselves and the oppressor:
This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well… Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both. Any attempt to ―soften‖ the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this.430
Within the 1930‘s democratic social order was a considerable bit of Socialism in the form of New Deal programs. In 1936, Ralph Bunche, Associate professor of Political
Science, Howard University critiqued the New Deal and its effects on African
Americans. Bunche said,
The explanations of the New Deal and of its apparent failure are not far to seek. The New deal merely represents our domestic phase of the almost universal attempt in capitalistic countries to establish a new equilibrium in the social structure; an attempt made necessary by the fact that the collapse of the economic structures under the world- wide depression brought out, in bold relief, the developing capitalistic economies had nurtured.431
430 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 45. 431 Bunche, "A Critique of New Deal Social Planning as It Affects Negroes," 59. 171 Bunche said that the middle class was, ―weak‖ and called them ―…uncourageous and unskillful. In the US today they are largely petty bourgeois.‖432 This statement is in line with Freire‘s conception of the ―sub-oppressor.‖433 Bunche also compared the New
Deal with, ―…measures of state capitalism which have already been employed by social democratic and fascist governments in Europe.‖ and suggested that these had fared no better.434 For the African American, Ralph Bunche found more of the same experience that existed before the depression and the New Deal. Bunche said, ―…the New Deal at best, can only fix the disadvantages, the differentials, the discriminations, under which the Negro population has labored all along.‖435
Bunche saw the same racial stereotypes and even suggested that African
American was still in a ―servile condition‖ and ―a profitable labor supply‖ and that these conditions had actually worsened under the New Deal.436 Thus, while the New Deal did create some opportunity it had not done what Ralph Bunche said it should which was to,
―…assuring Negro workers that real wage which would make possible for them a decent standard of living.‖437 Ralph Bunche simply added more evidence to the issues raised by this study and the authors of the JNE that addressing one element—economic—without addressing culture, social order and attitude will not produce a satisfactory result.
432 Ibid.: 60-61. 433 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 46. 434 Bunche, "A Critique of New Deal Social Planning as It Affects Negroes," 61. 435 Ibid.: 62. 436 Ibid. 437 Ibid. 172 W.E.B. Dubois of Atlanta University in the same year asked the question in an article ―Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?‖ Dubois responded, ―…they are necessary so far as they are necessary for the proper education of the Negro race.‖438 Yet
Dubois said that he would welcome the time when, ―…separate schools will be anachronisms…,‖ but admitted that, ―...either he will have separate schools or he will not be educated.‖439 Finally, Dubois said, ―…theoretically the Negro needs neither segregated schools nor mixed schools. What he needs is education.‖440
This was Dubois at his most pragmatic. While his other writings hinted at the same definition of the dilemma as Horace Mann Bond, the anachronism of it all is that regardless of the social order that existed, the students still needed an education.
This battle between the aims of curriculum and aims of society in the American social order moved the debate off center and into different camps. In the societal aims and social order camp, society must change before curricula can change and be of any value. In the pragmatic camp, education is socialization and perhaps with enough educated people—however that education is constructed—the social order can be changed by their efforts. The polarization created a kind of ―chicken or egg‖ discourse that was difficult to reconcile into a singular discourse for change. This may partially explain why the discourse in the JNE and in the education community in general never did produce significant change. In the end, society changed so that African Americans
438 W.E.B. DuBois, "Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?," The Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 3 (1935): 328. 439 Ibid.: 328 & 29. 440 Ibid.: 335. 173 were needed as valuable contributors to the effort in World War II. At the same time,
African Americans migrated to cities from rural lands and gained a new cultural experience, and by the mid-1950‘s and Brown v. Board of Education, the courts began to shift the social order towards the original precept of democracy as equality.
In 1939, the JNE revisited the subject with its yearbook, ―The Present and Future
Position of the Negro in the American Social Order.‖ While many of the articles covered societal issues that are outside the scope of this study, there was a considerable discussion of education and its impact on the African American in the American social order.
JNE Editor Charles H. Thompson was explicit:
…the presence of the Negro in the American social order constitutes a problem because the dominant white majority refuses to accord the Negro minority the same rights and privileges as other citizens, and insists upon assigning the Negro a place in American life inferior to that held by Americans in general which the Negro refuses to accept except through ignorance or coercion.441 The gist of the article related to education was to provide quantitative data of the expenditure differences that still existed between white and African American schools and that the disparity had actually increased over time rather than decrease. As a consequence, Thompson said:
…that the inferior educational status of the Negro is not only a consequence of the inferior educational opportunities per se which are provided for Negroes, but equally a result of the debilitating effect of the Negro‘s caste position in the American social order.442
441 Thompson, "The Status of Education of and for the Negro in the American Social Order," 489. 442 Ibid.: 496. 174 Nor did Thompson subscribe to the need for a separate curriculum for African
Americans:
Ignoring all of the nonsense that is generally raised about special curricula and the like for Negroes, I think everyone agrees that the preparation of Negro youth for life and work in a society which in practice (contrary to expressed theory) attempts to restrict them to an inferior caste in the American Social order comprises a task for the teacher in the Negro schools which is not shared to the same extent by other teachers.443 Thompson suggested that teachers need to understand the problems that their students face pragmatically and, ―…that if they would help to prepare Negro youth for life and work in the present American social order, they must be conscious of their problems and their needs, and attempt to do something about them.‖444 Yet, Thompson said, that the, ―…proper education of Negroes is to a great extent a ‗working class problem.‘‖ This should not to be construed that Thompson had reopened the ―vocational versus traditional‖ debate but that he acknowledged the fact that most African Americans would be workers and, ―…that even more important than providing for the purely technical requirements of the modern occupational world is the task of the socialization of the worker.‖445 The question needed to be asked: ―Socialization for what?‖ Thompson concluded with:
The writer has indicated…that the education of and for the Negro in the American Social order is conditioned by the same framework of proscription and segregation that characterizes the Negro‘s relationship to all other aspects of Negro life.446
443 Ibid.: 505. 444 Ibid. 445 Ibid.: 507. 446 Ibid.: 510. 175 Once again the argument became more circular and circumscribed because the socialization of the worker would likely be for jobs that were prescribed for African
Americans and, for many, these were menial and manual labor or agricultural. Thompson provided no way out of the ouroboros447 of the social order of segregation.
CRT considers that even in present day society, long after the specter of segregation is gone, that there is a false promise of classlessness. Alan D. Freeman explained in 1988:
A key presumption for equal opportunity theory is that ―abilities‖ and ―talents‖ are widely distributed in our ―classless‖ society, so that any enterprising individual possessing a socially desirable talent can reap rewards through will, hard work and perseverance in educational endeavor.448 However, Freeman said, ―For the moment, however, the basic point about equality of opportunity is its failure, historically and presently.‖449 Freeman noted that those born in lower classes tend to stay there, regardless of talents or abilities.450
Nor did W. E. B. Dubois of Atlanta University in 1939 offer any more guidance than he did in 1932 or 1935. In 1939 Dubois pointed out that the African American continued to be a problem in the social order because the dominant majority did not want the African American to realize his/her goals.451 W. E. B. Dubois echoed Charles H.
Thompson‘s observation that the African American was worse off in 1939—New Deal or
447 The snake that consumes itself tail-first 448 Alan D. Freeman, "Racism, Rights and the Quest for Equality of Opportunity: A Critical Legal Essay," Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 23 (1988): 377. 449 Ibid.: 378. 450 Ibid. 451 W. E. Burghardt DuBois, "The Position of the Negro in the American Social Order: Where Do We Go from Here?," The Journal of Negro Education 8, no. 3 (1939): 551. 176 not. W. E. B Dubois suggested that many who enter college were handicapped by the weak education they received in secondary schools.452 Dubois called on the African-
American intellectual to lead in the fight to have, ―…their wishes and needs considered in the general social objects of the nation…‖ but, ―…to consider the building-up of democracy and democratic power among themselves.‖453 Dubois equated this development of democracy from within with, ―…the economic ladder by which the
American Negro, achieving new social institutions, can move pari passu with the modern world into a new heaven and new earth.‖454 W. E. B. Dubois‘ ―talented tenth‖ and
Antonio Gramsci‘s ―organic intellectual‖ and Paulo Freire‘s ―praxis‖ seem to play out in
W. E. B. Dubois‘ discourse with the theme that ―we can do it ourselves if we have and develop the right intellectual talent.‖
This, of course, generates many questions. Some of the best, brightest, most vocal and influential African American and researchers of African American educators participated in the change dialog in the JNE. Yet, between 1932 and Dubois‘ 1939 article—even with considerable exhortation and commentary—none of the rhetoric in the
JNE had made significant changes to the social order or the educative product. In fact, the researchers had watched the gap in educational funding and quality increase over the first seven years of the JNE. If these talented and influential orators could not generate positive changes or at least positive dialog towards change, how many others would it
452 Ibid.: 561. 453 Ibid.: 568. 454 Ibid.: 570. 177 take to make these changes happen? Or, is it, as we have discovered: if only one piece changes—it‘s not enough. Antonio Gramsci discussed this problem:
Can there be cultural reform, and can the position of the depressed strata of society be improved culturally, without a previous economic reform, and a change in the position in the social and economic fields? Intellectual and moral reform has to be linked with a programme of economic reform—indeed the programme of economic reform is precisely the concrete form in which every intellectual and moral reform presents itself.455
Without the other pieces, true and lasting and positive change in educative result would not occur. And, too, if the aims of education in the African American schools were somehow changed to reflect a democratic ideal of a new social order—would it be believed by the teachers, the white school boards, the students and the families who saw otherwise in their daily lives? Yet, at the same time, while individual experience and environment are important—if these are toxic, is there any point in teaching the experience in the existing social order? There may be a third option—Teach how to emerge from a subaltern existence by creating a new social order through new experiences without white school board and educational department concurrence. How likely would have this in-your-face change in social order succeeded?
While in this status quo of segregation, it is as if African Americans were like
Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Becket‘s Waiting for Godot. The two mendicants were paralyzed in doing anything, even killing themselves, while waiting for Godot.456 Yet,
Vladimir and Estragon knew or understood little about why they were waiting other than
455 Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology, 93. 456 Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (London: Faber and Faber, 1965). 178 Godot was a promise of something—perhaps a way out or a way onward. African
American education was stuck in a very solid social order that required endless discourse with itself, facing an obdurate white majority wedded to a Reconstructive Era concept of industrial and/or special Negro curriculum because of its conception of the American social order.
Horace Mann Bond (who had become Chairman of the Department of Education at Fisk University), W.E.B. Dubois of Atlanta University and Buell Gordon Gallagher,
President of Talladega College all wrote pieces in 1939 about ―the Position of the Negro in the American Social order in 1950.‖ However, William H. Hastie, U.S. District Court
Judge in the U.S. Virgin Islands, provided a most insightful presentation on the subject.
Hastie accurately predicted that the courts would become engaged in the education equality of the United States and understood correctly that Federal law would trump state resistance to such changes—but did not consider how long this would take. Hastie could not see America in World War II yet, but predicted that there would be fluctuations in labor, which, of course, there were with the massive buildup for the war machine and recession following the war.457
In 1940 Walter G. Daniel of Howard University asked:
What are the aims of secondary education for Negroes? Should they be any different for those of white adolescents…Do these aims [health, cooperating member of society, economically productive, good leisure time utilization] apply to the Negro
457 William H. Hastie, "The Position of the Negro in the American Social Order: Outlook for 1950," The Journal of Negro Education 8, no. 3 (1939): 597-99. 179 adolescents who are the victims of racial discrimination characteristic of American Democracy? 458
Daniel then suggested that while curriculum in 1940 was inadequate for the Negro adolescent, it was similarly inadequacy for whites. Daniel noted, however, that the
African American‘s curriculum was at least ten years behind the whites.459 This, of course, implied that unless changes were made to correct this discrepancy, in ten years in
1950 the African American curriculum would be equivalent to the white 1940 curriculum.
William H. Hastie‘s and Walter G. Daniel‘s articles are a fitting place to conclude the depression-era discourse on education, aims, democracy and social order in the JNE.
While African Americans still lived the ―amphibious life‖ during the war years we will see that the discourse evolved to something closer to a mainstream discourse.
The War Years
Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, Charles H. Wesley, dean of the Graduate School at Howard University considered the world events by suggesting that, ―Education for citizenship in a democracy must differ radically from education for citizenship in a fascist state, a communist, or an autocratic state.‖460 Charles
H. Wesley embraced John Dewey‘s aims of educating for citizenship in a democracy to deal with the great questions of civilization first.461 Wesley echoed that: ―If democratic
458 Daniel, "The Aims of Secondary Education and the Adequacy of the Curriculum of the Negro Secondary School," 466. 459 Ibid.: 472. 460 Wesley, "Education for Citizenship in a Democracy," 73. 461 Ibid.: 72. 180 government is to be kept workable, we must be prepared to introduce sweeping changes in practice.‖462 Of these sweeping changes Wesley included suffrage, corruption, the labor movement, agricultural reform, public ownership of natural resources, social control of banking, and socialized medicine. Toward this end Wesley developed aims for,
―...a philosophy of a program of education for citizenship.‖ 463 These aims were,
―Development of an intelligent appreciation for the democratic way of life…,‖
―…Development of the capacity for cooperation in a Democratic Society…,‖ and,
―…Development of the character most needed in Democratic Society.‖464
These were not just for African Americans—Wesley targeted the entire democracy and its entire citizenry. Yet in conclusion, Wesley exhorted only the teachers of African Americans to lead the charge.
The JNE devoted its 1941 yearbook to ―Racial Minorities and The Present
International Crisis.‖ The yearbook included titles such as, ―The Crisis of Democracy in the British Empire,‖ ―Alternative Proposals to Democracy,‖ ―Fascism, Neuropa: Hitler‘s
New World Order,‖ and ―Russia‘s Proposed New World Order of Socialism.‖ The issue concluded with a section called ―The Stake of the Negro and Other Minorities in the
Present world Crisis‖ in which the authors discussed the plight of Jews, Native
Americans, Latin Americans, Brazilians, and African Americans. This study is devoted to the African-American related articles in this section.
462 Ibid. 463 Ibid.: 74-77. 464 Ibid. 181 Charles S. Johnson, Director, Department of Social Science at Fisk University
(and later, first African American president of Fisk University)465 raised the issue of
―…how the role of the Negro in America is involved in the issue of the present contest between the democratic and totalitarian economic controls.‖466 The war had brought to light with the atrocities of Germany that these oppressions were not that dissimilar to that of the plight of the African American. Johnson explored other social orders: the Nazi
Aryan and Non Aryan and the inferior whiteness of Jews.467
Johnson pointed out, ―Fundamentally, political democracy at home depends upon an effective international organization of democracies.‖468 Yet, what would be the place of segregated America and colonial Britain in this international body? The implicit question that Johnson asked was, ―How could this international body justify its similar caste and social ordered society when it considered the situation in mainland Europe and
Asia to be an anathema?‖ Johnson suggested that universal education and the disintegrating caste structure had become exemplified by the stratification of cultural classes in and among African Americans.469 There was an African American middle class, but how large was it in 1941? We have seen scant evidence of solid stratification in the contemporary literature, especially with JNE Editor Charles H. Thompson‘s 1939 exploration of the actual widening of disparate funding for African American education,
465 Wikipedia, "Charles S. Johnson," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_S._Johnson. 466 Johnson, "The Negro and the Present Crisis," 585. 467 Ibid. 468 Ibid. 469 Ibid.: 587. 182 not its amelioration.470 Could things have changed so quickly in two years, or was this a result of empowerment related to the African American having a voice in politics? (E.g. if you fight against Aryan oppression in Europe, you must also fight against the oppression of African Americans at home.) Charles S. Johnson hammered home what others in the long discourse to this point have said, ―The result is that there can be no segregation without discrimination, and discrimination is neither democratic nor moral.‖471 Then Johnson brought in the Nazis with:
If, thus, the structure of the democratic theory is equality of opportunity, the defect in the theory is not so much that it is decadent, as the Nazi spokesmen have so eloquently asserted, but that it is immature and untried.472 Charles S. Johnson looked North to Canada and their integrated military for guidance.473 Johnson suggested that in South America, the importance of the non-white population was greater than in the US or Europe.474 In conclusion, Charles S. Johnson quoted Archibald MacLeish, ―For democracy is active—the unending labor of creating liberty for every man—democracy in action is a cause for which the stones themselves will fight.‖475
Horace Mann Bond, now President of Fort Valley State College waxed poetic in his critique of the 1941 yearbook‘s articles, ―…the papers of this Tenth Anniversary
470 Thompson, "The Status of Education of and for the Negro in the American Social Order." 471 Johnson, "The Negro and the Present Crisis," 589. 472 Ibid.: 590. 473 Ibid. 474 Ibid.: 594. 475 Ibid.: 595. 183 Yearbook come freighted with a dreadful imminence of disaster.‖476 The premise of his treatise, however, was that minorities had, including the Nazi‘s in Germany, the
Mormons, the Quakers, the early Christians, all imperiled the social order from which they were subject.477 Within these comparisons and with their central figures of authority and activism as change agents (Hitler, Joseph Smith for the Mormons, etc.) was the notion of activism by the minority to effect change. Horace Mann Bond lamented that activism had not yet happened for the African American and wondered what the converted leadership would look like and how many they would need to become to effect this change.478 Bond mused, ―How can one express a faith in the perfectibility of man, and yet console himself with faith in imperfectability.‖479 Bond suggested that the
African has become emboldened—had become more self conscious, will learn to borrow from other ―persistent minority cultures‖ and its scholars will speak cogently to the masses.480 Bond, not ever a ―shrinking-violet‖ in his consideration of the plight of the
African American had become eloquent in suggesting that the race was becoming empowered to create a new social order. For Bond what was lacking was leadership and leadership without fear of the suffering and torture that will occur along the way. Toward this end, Bond concluded with:
476 Horace Mann Bond, "The Educational and Other Social Implications of the Impact of the Present Crisis Upon Racial Minorities," The Journal of Negro Education 10, no. 3 (1941): 617. 477 Ibid.: 619. 478 Ibid. 479 Ibid. 480 Ibid.: 621. 184 If we enter, in this decade, the land of dreadful night, the lengthy history of humankind gives testimonial that he who brings again the light may well be, not the man of the majority, but rather he of the minority.481 Also in 1941, Edwin R. Embree, President of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, suggested that the economic status of the African American, while still far less than the majority, had improved and noted that African-American home ownership had doubled since 1900 and that African-American farm acreage encompassed geography bigger than the combined states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.482 Yet, despite these gains, Embree said:
The masses [of Negroes] are still far below the average American standard in almost every phase. They are therefore still far from making their full contribution to American culture and prosperity. We must go much further in equalizing opportunities before Democracy can be anything but a high-sounding term to Negroes or have any real meaning as a way of life in America.483 Embree did not revert back to his regionalist thinking from his 1936 submission to the Journal, ―Without divorcing Negro education from the main stream of American practice, I believe it is possible, and very desirable to shift the emphasis in the education of the whole group destined for life in the rural South.‖484 Yet Embree did separate minorities into their stereotypical images. For example:
The Negro has made unique contributions to the arts. He has furnished America‘s distinctive folk music and folk art: the spirituals, jazz and swing, the dance, and the folklore…The graceful arts of living so beautifully develop in Bali…the intellectual
481 Ibid.: 617. 482 Edwin R. Embree, "The Status of Minorities as a Test of Democracy," The Journal of Negro Education 10, no. 3 (1941): 455. 483 Ibid. 484Embree, "Education for Rural Life," 440. 185 keenness and nervous energy of the Jews…the daring and hardihood of the American Indians…the calm dignity of the Chinese…485
Embree then said that African Americans have made advances in many professions.486
There is no doubt that the Julius Rosenwald Fund and Edwin Embree did a lot of positive things for African Americans but there is a bit of what K.W. Crenshaw calls
―objectification‖ in his actual discourse. In objectification, the individual or a complex race is reduced to ―nervous energy‖ or ―calm dignity‖ or, in the African American‘s case, musicians and artists.487
We turn again to Charles E. Merriam of the National Resources Planning Board and his ―Meaning of Democracy.‖ Merriam didn‘t speak to minorities or classes in 1941 but to democracy itself. Merriam suggested that democracy requires power and that dictatorships arise because of a power void.488 Yet, to effect change requires a unique brand of individual. For example, Merriam said, ―But it is an old saying that the sons of revolutionists are seldom revolutionists, and democracy once established may find itself attempting to defend itself against change.‖489
In 1942 Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University suggested that the time for change had arrived in the form of a changing world order, ―The role of race, color, and
485 Embree, "The Status of Minorities as a Test of Democracy," 455 & 59. 486 Ibid.: 455. 487 Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, "Forward: Towards a Race Conscious Pedagogy in Legal Education," National Black Law Journal 11, no. 2 (1988-1990): 4. 488 Merriam, "The Meaning of Democracy," 309. 489 Ibid.: 311. 186 imperialism in the thought patterns and national policies of the western world is undergoing a profound change.‖ 490
Toward this end Charles S. Johnson predicted:
This struggle for status, and these conflicts, may be expected to continue after the war. Much of it will be below the level of acute attention, and there will also be a large element of the Negro population more interested in emotional security than in racial advance at a rate more rapid than can be tolerated. 491
In the same year, Walter G. Daniel of Howard University also saw change and observed three major ―democratic‖ changes: changes in democratic administrative control in educational institutions, the appointment of African American faculty to other than traditionally African-American universities, and democracy for students, with some fraternities admitting minorities.492
Herman Branson, Assistant Professor of Physics at Howard University, writing in
1943, noted resistance by African American colleges to change their curricula towards the war effort—apathy towards scientific training because of cost, a conviction that student training not specifically towards war should be for life after war, and the tendency of the colleges to produce only graduates destined for professions like teaching and medicine.493
Lewis K. McMillan, Professor of History at Wilberforce University asked rhetorically in 1943, ―Does this war reveal any fundamental changes in the race‘s
490 Johnson, "The Negro in Post-War Reconstruction: His Hopes, Fears and Possibilities," 467. 491 Ibid.: 470. 492 Daniel, "Negro Education Progressed in 1942," 107-08. 493 Branson, "The Training of Negroes for War Industries in World War I I," 384. 187 position in the years between the two wars?‖ McMillan answered, ―World War II like
World War I found the Negro still out on the fringes of the nation‘s economic life.‖494
McMillan concluded with, ―The American Negro suffers all the ills and more, over which our nation is shedding ‗crocodile tears‘ for the oppressed people of the earth.‖495
Ira De A. Reid, Professor of Sociology at Atlanta University, found minimal differences in 1943 between the treatment of African Americans in World War I and
World War II. Differences noted included: the promotion of one African American to general, The Committee on Fair Employment Practices Executive Order of 1941 that reduced discrimination in employment, and the inclusion of African Americans
(segregated) in all branches of the military.496 Ira De A. Reid did suggest that African
Americans had improved their educational opportunities by moving to areas of better employment.497 Finally, Ira De A. Reid noted that, ―Never before has the press and the magazine estate given such attention to the problem of the Negro.‖498 Reid did not elaborate with examples.
In 1944 John A. Davis, Director, Division of Review and Analysis, President’s
Committee on Fair Employment Practice, reported that not only had unions begun to mollify their racist heritage, but they had actually developed successful education programs but much more work in the area of integration and education of minorities was
494 Lewis K. McMillan, "Light Which Two World Wars Throw Upon the Plight of the American Negro," The Journal of Negro Education 12, no. 3 (1943): 432. 495 Ibid.: 437. 496 Ira De A. Reid, "A Critical Summary: The Negro on the Home Front in World Wars I and Ii," The Journal of Negro Education 12, no. 3 (1943): 519. 497 Ibid. 498 Ibid.: 520. 188 needed.499 Davis also looked at industry and was heartened by the American
Management Association‘s program, ―…to educate management on the true value of
Negro labor and on the problems involved in the achievement of a satisfactory non- discriminatory use of this labor.‖500
E. Franklin Frazier of Howard University in his article ―Role of Negro Schools in the Post-War World,‖ said that by 1944 that in the US, 50 percent of African Americans were living in cities and in the South this percentage was nearly 37 percent—a significant change from fourteen years earlier when most African Americans lived rurally.501 Frazier encouraged the African American colleges to effect change:
No one of intellectual intelligence who believes in a democratic society can justify a caste system which is based upon ignorance and superstitious beliefs concerning racial differences.502
In 1945 William H. Brown, Associate Director, Secondary School Study at
Atlanta University reported on workshops conducted for African American secondary school teachers in 1940 and 1941 conducted by the Secondary School Study of the
Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes.503 In 1944, the workshop program expanded to 100 schools, but then ceased to exist in 1948.504 During these workshops, teachers developed curriculum and aims for their schools in groups and
499 John A. Davis, "Educational Programs for the Improvement of Race Relations: Organized Labor and Industrial Organizations," The Journal of Negro Education 13, no. 3 (1944): 342. 500 Ibid. 501 Frazier, "The Role of Negro Schools in the Post-War World," 469. 502 Ibid.: 473. 503 Brown, "An Experimental Study of Workshop-Type Professional Education for Negro Teachers," 48. 504 Craig Allen Kridel, "Introduction to the Secondary School Study," University of South Carolina Museum of Education, http://www.ed.sc.edu/museum/secondary_study_intro.html. 189 workshops. The association made consultants available during the school year and followed up with surveys and analysis six months after the summer sessions. This project was not significantly different in purpose from the Eight Year Study, a program to do the same in 30 public white, mixed race, and private schools which ran from 1932-1944.505
However, like other programs and initiatives for African Americans by African
Americans it had limited funding and was supplanted following the war by the general decline in separate school initiatives for education and the increase in State and Federal interest in education.506
The war ended in 1945. In 1946, Herbert Aptheker was a Guggenheim Fellow in
History. Aptheker‘s subject: literacy in World War II. Having rejected many applicants for illiteracy just prior to the war, the government mandated in 1941 that all inductees must have a fourth-grade education. Despite such a low standard, .38 percent of whites and 1.12 percent of African Americans were rejected.507 This was problematic for the government because of the numbers that would be rejected who could otherwise serve. In response, the government relaxed the requirement if the individual could pass intelligent tests.508 Even after testing, nearly 340,000 Americans were rejected because of their illiteracy. Many, including African Americans, were placed in literacy classes and were tested after. Aptheker found that the African Americans did as well as, if not better than,
505 Aikin, The Story of the Eight-Year Study, with Conclusions and Recommendations. 506 Kridel, "Introduction to the Secondary School Study." 507 Herbert Aptheker, "Literacy, the Negro and World War I I," The Journal of Negro Education 15, no. 4 (1946): 599. 508 Ibid.: 599-600. 190 their white counterparts on these literacy tests after taking these classes. Aptheker deduced:
…do not only constitute a shattering blow at racists, but present a challenge to their opponents to urge and to demand that their government do in peacetime what if felt it had to be done and what it at least began to do in wartime—namely, conduct and all- out scientific and democratic assault upon the twin disgraces of illiteracy and educational inequality that remain as huge blights upon the lives of untold millions of its citizens.509 There was now substantial empirical evidence, at least in literacy learning, that
African Americans did not have ―peculiar‖ problems that required separate curricula or aims.
Virgil A. Clift was Professor of Education at the Agricultural and Technical
College of North Carolina. In 1948 Clift considered the aims of higher education as juxtaposed with the concept of and ideals of democracy. This article stemmed from
Clift‘s participation in a panel discussion at a meeting of the North Carolina Teacher‘s
Association colloquy on how to make higher education for Negroes more democratic.510
The lack of democracy in the higher education institution (consider Dr. Bledsoe from
Invisible Man as the caricature of how African American education was administered) for
African Americans was a sore point in the discourse. Much of this stemmed from the structure of African American higher education. Most African American colleges had been founded by philanthropies that had religious, industrial, or other narrowly defined occupational purpose. The few state schools did not stray far from the agricultural- technical school model of the land grant school. For whites, there were many mainstream
509 Ibid.: 602. 510 Virgil A. Clift, "The Role of Higher Education in Transmitting Democratic Ideals into Behavior Patterns," The Journal of Negro Education 17, no. 2 (1948): 134. 191 agricultural and engineering schools that were more highly focused, providing tenure and substantial research opportunities. In contrast, many of the African-American colleges provided little faculty tenure. Their governance structure and hiring practices, especially in the South, were controlled by whites who often had conceptions of education for
African Americans that were related to the social order and image of the African
American in a segregated society. Higher educational institutions were slow to embrace change and were unwilling to consider the ideas of students and others on how to make the school more democratic.511 Of the conditions up through 1935, James D. Anderson pointed out:
Black college educators had to steer between two equally critical courses. On the one hand they were dependent on the benevolence of the industrial philanthropists for the very survival of the private black college that formed the backbone of black higher education. On the other hand, it was their mission to represent the struggles and aspirations of black people and to articulate the very source of the masses‘ discomfort and oppression. One course propelled them into conflict with the other because the industrial philanthropists supported black subordination.512
In 1948 Virgil A. Clift considered the institution holistically in the concept of democracy: content, student, instruction, and the institution itself. The aims of education
Clift suggested were as follows:
…to transmit bodies of information and skills which are part of our cultural heritage…to give guidance in moral training by helping the individual to acquire habits of conduct and social ideas which conform with a way of social living.513
Democracy Clift defined as:
511 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 239, 40, 57. 512 Ibid., 278. 513 Clift, "The Role of Higher Education in Transmitting Democratic Ideals into Behavior Patterns," 134. 192 …refers to a way of social living where individuals are free to share in creating and achieving goals of common concern; it is a way of life where individuals cooperate in the application of intelligence in resolving conflicts and in promoting common interests.514
Contrast this with Charles E. Merriam‘s definition:
The essential dignity of man…The perfectibility of man…That the gains of commonwealths are essentially mass gains rather than the efforts of the few and should be diffused as promptly as possible throughout the community without too great delay or too wide a spread in differentials…Confidence in the value of the consent of the governed…the value of decisions arrived at by common counsel rather than by violence and brutality.515
Communities, common goals, cooperation versus violence were common elements to both theorists. However, Virgil I. Clift did not venture into the equal distribution of cultural and other capital the way that Charles E. Merriam did. Virgil I.
Clift outlined the ideals of democracy which he said, ―…lie within the domain of human relationships and which can be achieved.‖516 These were:
…freedom…to make possible the attainment of distinctive personalities and to provide an opportunity for the development of unique capacities…reliance upon cooperation and intelligence in the creation of techniques, ideals, and goals which are of common concern.517
Clift introduces another dimension of the concept of aims. If educational aims are individual and intrinsic as John Dewey, R. S. Peters, and John Goodlad suggest, then how do democratic aims of education become that, ―…which are of common concern?‖518
Perhaps this is a structural problem for the discourse on aims altogether. That it is
514 Ibid.: 135. 515 Merriam, "The Meaning of Democracy," 309. 516 Clift, "The Role of Higher Education in Transmitting Democratic Ideals into Behavior Patterns," 135. 517 Ibid.: 135-36. 518 Barrow, "‗Or What‘s a Heaven For?‘ the Importance of Aims in Education," 16. Goodlad, What Schools Are For, 37. 193 considered by many to be the province of democracy to establish educational aims by democratic means conflicts with the intrinsic nature of educational aims when considered at the individual level. This conflict in values should be considered by researchers in context of the macro and the micro. The macro is society‘s need to educate its children, and in a democracy, to develop its content and context democratically. However, the individual is not a democracy. The individual may not identify with the prescriptive curriculum or see the relevance in his/her concept of the democracy. Even more relevant is this disconnect in college, where by now, the student has a well-developed image of self and of other in the society.
Virgil I. Clift‘s democratic curriculum would be designed to inculcate or teach democratic ideals—to, as he said, ―…chart a direction for institutions which are committed to teaching the democratic way of life.‖519
However, Clift did not ask an important question of the democratic institution— what if the institution is democratic, but the society is not? What if there is a need to challenge the social order—how is this accomplished in the curriculum that teaches democratic ideals? Building collaborative constructs of scientifically and intelligently designed curriculum to exist within an egalitarian curriculum is one thing; but to effect change in a challenged democracy requires different thinking. Earlier writers in the JNE called for such thinking but nowhere in the journal were solutions designed. Clift provides part of the discussion by linking democracy, aims, curriculum, and institution,
519 Clift, "The Role of Higher Education in Transmitting Democratic Ideals into Behavior Patterns," 138. 194 but does not engage the discourse about social order which might have suggested to him and to others different approaches to the design of curriculum and instruction All this not to embolden the status quo, but to find ways to challenge it through the democratic change process.
This change process is not often neat, nor is it necessarily without violence from those within the democracy who are resistant to change. Consider Paulo Freire‘s commentary on such changes:
Consciously or unconsciously, the act of rebellion by the oppressed (an act which is always, or nearly always, as violent as the initial violence of the oppressors) can initiate love. Whereas the violence of the oppressors prevents the oppressed from being fully human, the presence of the latter to this violence is grounded in the desire to pursue the right to be human.520
Summary
Democracy, educational aims, and the African American were a complicated conversation during segregation. They were complicated because any conversation regarding the segregated social order is antithetical to reason. They were further complicated because of change—the change from a welfare economy to a highly productive demand-side war economy that required full employment to survive. This was further complicated by the nature of the African-American college, which was not given the same academic freedom of the white colleges.
Finally, there was the conflict between individual educational aims and the aims of education developed democratically, and likely done so, without the involvement of
520 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 56. 195 the individual being educated. As a corollary problem to consider is, ―Does the culture create aims or do aims create culture?‖ There is ample evidence of the profound influence of democracy as a driver of aims-talk during the period of this study. Democracy‘s drivers became even more influential when democracy was threatened by war. Yet, before the war the American social order prescribed one form of democracy for whites and another for African Americans. Horace Mann Bond provided credible evidence in
1941 for how this was an untenable argument when democracy was being theorized as egalitarian. In this context, Bond also demolished the need for separate schools for
African Americans.521
Yet the discourse on democracy troubles the John Dewey and R. S. Peters theory that aims are intrinsic and not extrinsic.522 This is even more troubled by Charles E.
Merriam‘s postulates of democracy:
The essential dignity of man…The perfectibility of man…That the gains of commonwealths are essentially mass gains rather than the efforts of the few and should be diffused as promptly as possible throughout the community without too great delay or too wide a spread in differentials…Confidence in the value of the consent of the governed…the value of decisions arrived at by common counsel rather than by violence and brutality.523
Thus if life in a democracy is within the masses and shares in its commonwealth, where are the opportunities for the development of intrinsic aims that could likely conflict with the mass gains of democratic society? Gunnar Myrdal defined his
521 Bond, "The Educational and Other Social Implications of the Impact of the Present Crisis Upon Racial Minorities." 522 Barrow, "‗Or What‘s a Heaven For?‘ the Importance of Aims in Education," 16. Goodlad, What Schools Are For, 37. 523 Merriam, "The Meaning of Democracy," 309. 196 ―American Creed as a commitment to ―Liberty, equality, justice, and fair opportunity for everybody.‖524 The question for future aims-talk that arises out of this is, ―What kinds of intrinsic aims are possible within a democratic society that professes equal treatment to all.‖ What aims can be internally constructed by personal discourses within an individual in relationship to the world and experience? Are these limited to choice of occupation or other narrow paths, or are do they involve more layers of experiences that can help the individual coexist within or change and even improve the society. Even more complex is what in aims-talk changes when the pledges of equanimity are unfulfilled in the social order called democracy. The researchers in the JNE struggled with democracy in a social order that was not at all equal. If similar conditions exist today, contemporary researchers should spend more time considering the arguments from past discourses to provide additional ways of looking at present-day dilemmas.
This chapter also underscores how the discourse can coalesce in a period of rupture. Whiteness, property, and democracy were threatened by World War II. At the same time there was an interest convergence that required whites to accord to African
Americans some of the rights they had exclusively held onto in the form of jobs and occupations. The nation language of the JNE also coalesced around these burgeoning new opportunities to show to the world that the African American deserved and could capitalize on the same things that whiteness once exclusively possessed. The federal government with its GI literacy program not only manufactured productive soldiers, it
524 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, xlvi-xlvii. 197 proved to be counterhegemonic in that it destroyed certain myths about the need for separate education programs for blacks and whites.525
What of the discourse on the philosophy of democracy and aims that occurred in this journal of disparate authors can be reconceptualized and utilized today? First, if there are similar conditions today, what elements of the discourse could have value?
Concomitantly: what worked; what didn‘t? Second, initiatives like the literacy education of GIs was both successful in improving literacy and it also disproved any theory that
African Americans had inferior intelligence. What do these types of programs used by the armed forces suggest to educational researchers? Third, the secondary education symposiums provided value to teachers to build better curricula—what about their process of collaborative discussion, on-location consultants, and follow up could be reconsidered? Is there value revisiting these initiatives for guidance? Fourth, how can the extrinsic aims discourse of democracy inform aims theory? Finally, can we learn from the enigmatic history of segregation that without equal access to both democratic and fiscal resources, that any discourse about change will likely ring hollow or be hobbled because the options for change are subjugated or are bastardized by the tentacles of power that reach deep into the social order.
525 Aptheker, "Literacy, the Negro and World War I I." 198 Chapter 9—Industrial vs. Traditional Academic Schools; and a Philosophy of Negro Education: Same As vs. Different from Whites
So you see, young man, you are involved in my life quite intimately, even though you‘ve never seen me before. You are bound to a great dream and to a beautiful monument. If you become a good farmer, a chef, a preacher, doctor, singer, mechanic— whatever you become, and even if you fail, you are my fate.526
The ―invisible man‖ had taken Norton, a wealthy philanthropist, on an eventful ride. The ―invisible man‖ was confounded by this statement by Norton and literally did not know how to take it. Even to the casual reader this statement might seem odd. Yet, it represented a side of the story that considered the thinking of the philanthropist in relationship to his target of generosity. In effect, Norton assumes control of the ―invisible man‘s‖ fate by making it part of his own. Ownership, agency, and difference were issues that the writers of the JNE struggled with. The colonial philanthropists wanted more industrial education mostly for the rural jobs that Norton listed. Others were skeptical and even hostile to the implications and consequences of this approach in preserving the social order.
Herbert M. Kliebard‘s analysis of life adjustment education was that while it had a short history as a movement and a curriculum, it had a long history in the industrial school discourse throughout the first half of the twentieth century.527 Yet the industrial dialog for whites and blacks were different. For the whites, industrial education had been
526 Ellison, Invisible Man, 34. 527 Kliebard, Schooled to Work, 205. 199 the offered alternative for those students who could not or would not aspire to college.
For African Americans it was offered as the alternative.
Gunnar Myrdal summed up the debate:
This has, among other things, the implication that in the South the problem of ―industrial‖ versus ―classical‖ education for Negroes is not, and has never been discussed merely in terms of pedagogical advantages and disadvantages. The political caste problem is always and necessarily involved. And the type of education to be given Negroes is always and necessarily connected with the amount of education and the financial obligations to be undertaken.528
Throughout this discourse, contributors wrestled with the problem of difference and sameness. Critical race theory considers this problem through the use of the term
―symmetry.‖ T. Ross considered symmetry from the perspective of the law:
One of the central abstract principles is ―symmetry.‖ Equal protection, it is said, demands symmetry. A law drawn on racial lines favoring whites is the same as one drawn to favor blacks. Turn about is not fair play. There is only one level of scrutiny— and on and on. The principle of symmetry tells us that once we know that a law is drawn on racial lines, we know what we must do. We walk up to the law with the same presumptions, suspicions, and level of scrutiny, regardless of the race advantage and regardless of the concrete circumstances surrounding the law529 In the JNE, symmetry was considered in light of the different needs and experiences of the African American. Even if, for example, the schools were equally taught and equally funded, and the social order was somehow changed to be more egalitarian, would there still be an asymmetrical need for separate curricula for African
American students?
528 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 897-98. 529 Thomas Ross, "The Richmond Narratives," Tex. L. Rev. 68 (1989-1990): 397-98. 200 Charles Prosser head of the Dunwoody Institute launched the discourse for the life adjustment education movement at the end of World War II with a study on industrial education authorized by the Commissioner of Education.530 Prosser had been the principal advocate for the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 that provided money and support for teaching the industrial and agricultural arts.531 Prosser suggested:
It is the belief of this conference that with the aid of this report in final form, the vocational school of a community will be better to prepare 10 percent of youth of secondary school age for entrance upon desirable skill occupations; and that high school will continue to prepare 20 percent of its students for entrance to college. We do not believe that the remaining 60 percent of our youth of secondary school age will receive the life adjustment training to which they are entitled as American citizens—unless and until the administration of public education with the assistance of vocational education leaders formulate a comparable program for this group.532
The discourse within the white community dating back to the Committee of Ten report533 was how to properly provide a secondary school curriculum that could serve two disparate masters with equanimity. First, what curriculum is required to engage the student who will likely enter college? Over the decades, the number of matriculating college students had increased, from a very small 4 percent in 1890 to 7 percent in 1900, to the nearly 20 percent in 1944.534 535 Yet, this was the white view of industrial education. In effect, if the schools got the curriculum right, it could successfully educate, or later ―adjust‖ children to their chosen academic or vocational path. The ratio of students in the college program versus the industrial program could simply move
530 Kliebard, Schooled to Work, 204. 531 Ibid., 132-34. 532 Ibid., 204. 533 Eliot, "Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary Schools Studies." 534 Tyack, The One Best System, 7. 535 James C. Mackenzie, "The Report of the Committee of Ten," The School Review 2, no. 3 (1894): 148. 201 resources from one curriculum to the other as the need for college and industrial work evolved.
There was not the same discourse in the African-American community. The resource of the secondary school in rural communities was non-existent. In the cities of the South it was marginal at best. Few white colleges even in the North accepted African
Americans and the traditional African American colleges could not accept the same proportion of high school graduates as the white schools. Nor, as we have seen in the chapter on segregation, were the opportunities for jobs that required a college education that plentiful. Teachers and preachers were the most abundant career opportunities for the trained African American professional.
Yet for much of the early twentieth century, the African American educator received little or no college training. If the teacher had post-secondary education, it was probably at a Normal school. Carter G. Woodson said he did not blame the teachers, but the system of teacher education.536 Yet, this too began to change as more states began certifying teachers in the 1930s, requiring more skill in subject matter and administration.
Thus, few blacks attended college, not for a lack of aspiration for or intellectual qualification, but for the sheer paucity of college opportunities and the lack of academic secondary education pathways to the colleges and universities.
Before we enter the discourse it is important to frame the industrial education movement in context. While the industrial model of Hampton and Tuskegee were
536 Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro, 48 & 104. 202 influential and important in the African American educational discourse and a favorite crusade of the Northern philanthropists, industrial education curriculum adoption was limited at best.537 The community of African Americans in the South, North and elsewhere preferred the academic curriculum.538 While the schools were under control of mostly distant white superintendents, as long as the teacher in the South did not teach controversial subjects or foment dissent, the teacher and the community had a large say in what the schools taught.539 Likely, with limited resources, modestly trained teachers, larger classrooms, and smaller school years and days, the academic curriculum would pale in comparison with whites, but it was still largely an academic curriculum.
Robert Margo explained that even in Miss. Field‘s classroom in tiny Society
Corner of South Carolina, the elementary education curriculum was decidedly academic:
…the school day at Society Corner was divided into ten- to thirty-minute periods, beginning with conversation, inspection, and devotions at 9:00, followed by number work, word drills, reading, writing/ language, and other activities. In the afternoon students had a story hour, recess, silent reading, phonics drill, and a lecture before dismissal at 1:30. Fields wanted these students to learn how to count, read, and write numbers, to become familiar with foot and inched dime and nickel, and pint and quart, and to know the days of the week. In teaching arithmetic, most teachers, she warned, ―try to do too much and are not thorough.‖ Instruction began smith drills on counting, using rhymes such as ―1, 2 buckle my shoe,‖ and ―I, 2, 3 Little Indians.‖ Students loved ―unison work,‖ she recalled. In math Fields urged her colleagues to ―focus on concrete objects‖ and to have students count such things as the number of children in the room or the number of desks. Students were expected to master counting and learn concepts before they were taught how to write numbers or symbols. ―If a student hesitates,‖ she
537 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 77. 538 Ibid., 67; 212-21. This segment of the book shows how local African American leaders, even with the financial offer from the Slater fund to build an industrial high school in New Orleans, eventually refused the money. The leaders suggesting that there was a more urgent need for a traditional high school in the city than a low-level industrial high school. 539 Myrdal, An American Dilemma; the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 880. 203 told her colleagues, ―quickly help them, before a guess forms in his mind. Help him be accurate, [but] don‘t make these facts too formal.‖540
Within this historical context and within the limited quota of secondary education and college opportunity, is the consideration of the aims-talk of the JNE in the industrial versus traditional academic curriculum debate. Couched within this discussion but tangential to it is the notion that the education of African Americans could or even should be different from whites—or should it be the same as whites—either way, how could this be defined?
In 1932 and his study of ―The Curriculum,‖ Walter G. Daniel of Howard
University discussed the philanthropic programs of the Slater funds and the aims and purposes of the country training schools. Daniel quoted the aims from the school‘s training manual that were associated with African American educational goals:
To lay emphasis on thorough work in all common studies, to relate these studies to the lives of the pupils, and to develop standards of achievement.
To prepare Negro boys and girls to make a good living and lead a useful life by knowing how to care for the home, utilizing the land, to make home gardens, to raise their own meat, poultry products, milk products, etc.
To give industrial education…541
The Jeanes Fund for Negro Rural Schools practiced similar industrial education, teaching ―…the life of the home and of the farm.‖542 Yet, Daniel pointed out what others had observed: that stronger state boards of education with their separate branches for the
540 Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History, 13. 541 Daniel, "The Curriculum," 284. 542 Ibid.: 283. 204 education of Negroes had mitigated the influence of these philanthropies on the curriculum and professed aims of industrial and agricultural education.543
Daniel dismissed the philanthropic movement for industrial education. In reality, the movement had lost most of its momentum by the 1930s. The question then needs to be asked, ―How do we educate the African American if the industrial education movement is not a viable or desirable or acceptable solution to African Americans?‖ In his article titled ―The Curriculum,‖ Daniel called for a scientific discussion of how groups differ and what their needs are and how these needs can be met.544
At the same time Daniel suggested that there were universal aims that could be applied to public elementary education. Walter G. Daniel referenced Franklin Bobbitt, G.
G. Bonser, and the Committee on The Reorganization of Secondary Education and discovered their consensus that, ―…the school should direct its task toward the provision of those experiences that other educative influences do not provide.‖545 What the community/family could offer and school should provide Walter G. Daniel did not elaborate. Daniel continued:
In the light of the assumption and principles of aim and standard for elementary education, shall special curricular provisions for the Negro child be made? It is at this point that we face the paradox of the racial problem in education for those who control the policies and determine the practices of the education of the Negro child make an exception in providing for him as distinguished from the white child. They assume one of two points of view or both: either that the Negro is not educable to the extent of normal, successful completion of an elementary education, because of what is termed his mental
543 Ibid.: 284. 544 Ibid.: 285. 545 Ibid. 205 inferiority; or that he possesses certain racial needs that demand a differentiated elementary education for him.546
Daniel offered evidence from other researchers to debunk the myth of inherent mental inferiority, and the need for industrial education targeted at the African American in elementary school.547 Daniel suggested that he was not opposed to industrial considerations, but desired practical industrial arts education, not industrial training such as offered by the Jeanes and Slater Funds and promoted by the early curricula of
Tuskegee and Hampton.548
Even if Daniel could have dismissed the arguments of systemic difference between the African American and the white, the arguments of segregation presented challenges to any equality of aims debate with the white curriculum. First, the culture of segregation demanded subordination. Carter G. Woodson explained:
The present system under control of the whites trains the Negro to be white and at the same time convinces him of the impropriety or impossibility of his becoming white. It compels the Negro to become a good Negro for the performance of which his education is ill-suited…The result, then, is that the Negroes thus mis-educated are of no service to themselves or the white man.549
Within this contingency of subordination, how can any education for the oppressed be equal in aims, curriculum, and result? If aims are outcomes, and the life of the African American is necessarily subordinated in segregation, then the egalitarian aim is impossible to attain. The only way out of this dilemma is to expunge the firmament of
546 Ibid.: 285-86. 547 Ibid.: 286-87. 548 Ibid.: 287-89. 549 Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro, 21. 206 segregation. Unfortunately the effort to dismantle segregation just in the schools would take decades. Until then, a proper education for African Americans was needed.
In discussing what the school could do that the family could not, Walter G. Daniel hinted at the need for industrial arts education which could be construed as providing basic concepts associated with the home and the job within the curriculum. Daniel suggested, in a progressive educative fashion, that, ―…the difference in location of a child may, for example make a difference as to what he needs locally, or in that which he has a maximum of lifelikeness for him.‖550 Thus, in an agricultural community, a math example could include the counting of local farm animals or the number of acres of specific crops. Stories and examples in the cities might involve street cars and the like.
Daniel also argued for the study of Negro life and history as a means of engaging the students.551 Daniel did not suggest here what had been the common thread of the industrial discourse: that African Americans must be trained for jobs that are available to
African Americans.552 In fact, Daniel took this argument a step further:
The most recent frontier thinkers in the field oppose this position. They suggest that the environment of the rural child should determine the adaptation of subject-matter to his shortages differing in degree than in kind from that of the urban child. Furthermore, the rural environment offers abundant opportunities for utilizing and enriching the curriculum, because of the natural phenomena that provide a constant laboratory and museum.553
550 Daniel, "The Curriculum," 290. 551 Ibid.: 289. 552 Ibid.: 290-91. 553 Ibid.: 291. 207 Daniel continued to defy conventional wisdom by suggesting that though African
Americans were in the lowest economic strata, there existed similar strata in the white community, so the argument for a separate educational curriculum was moot. Daniel suggested that curriculum adaptation to the child and the enrichment of the curriculum with the affordances of the local environment to build the lifelikeness of the experience for the child was no different in white versus African-American communities.554 Daniel considered Louisiana which was the only state to create a separate school curriculum for
African Americans but suggested that while the white curriculum had been adapted to fit into a shorter African American school term, the curriculum was essentially the same.555
Yet, how could the rural schools, isolated, with well-meaning but marginally educated low-paid teachers realize this dream? Daniel directed the earliest of salvos at teacher education in the JNE when he argued for better education, more supplies, reduced teaching loads, and the like.556
To support his argument Daniel reviewed the curricula of three progressive
African American Schools, Harriet Beecher Stowe School in Cincinnati, The Colored
Schools of Charlotte, North Carolina, and the Matoaca and Cook Training Schools of
Virginia State College. Daniel‘s conclusions regarding these curricula were as follows:
1. These schools indicate that separate Negro elementary schools can do progressive work in adapting the curriculum of the schools to the needs of the pupils who attend them.
554 Ibid. 555 Ibid.: 295. 556 Ibid.: 291-92. 208 2. Such adaptation as they make does not consist in the setting up of separate objectives of elementary education for the Negro child, but rather in the appropriate selection of, approach to, and organization of the experiences of the curriculum so that each individual receives the most favorable opportunity for his maximum growth.557
The arguments for and against separate curricula for African Americans only began with Walter G. Daniel. What Daniel did, however, was lay down the gauntlet for additional discourse related to the innate abilities of African Americans compared to whites. Daniel challenged anyone to find a compelling and scientifically based reason for separate education for African Americans against the backdrop of providing a relevant and well taught curriculum that was identical to whites. For the next decade, the discourse continued.
In his 1930 commencement address at Howard University, reprinted in the July
1932 issue of JNE, W.E.B. Dubois of Atlanta University addressed industrial education directly. For Dubois, Reconstruction was a part of his past. Dubois located the discourse in the generation that was born after the Civil War and in the midst of what might be considered the reconceptualization of the Negro. During Reconstruction, Dubois suggested that it was not known (or perhaps was feared) whether the African American as ascendant would seek to build a parallel nation or even to replace the whites as leaders.558
At the same time, the South, as well as the nation, had become more industrial by the end of the nineteenth century, but the South was still mostly agricultural. In this environment
W. E. B. Dubois saw that the task was that:
557 Ibid.: 302-03. 558 DuBois, "Education and Work," 61-62. 209 …the Negro first should be made the intelligent laborer, the trained farmer, the skilled artisan of the South. One he had accomplished this step in the economic world and the ladder was set for his climbing, his future would be assured and assured on and economic foundation which would be immovable…Let us have, therefore, not colleges but schools to teach the technique of industry and to make men learn by doing.559
The ladder analogy bears further analysis. The ladder requires climbing one rung at a time from the bottom. Skipping rungs risks a fall to the bottom. Dubois also suggested that the ladder was intergenerational and that the philosophy of education of the white leaders of the time was that a people who left slavery without possessions or literacy would need several generations to become qualified for full society membership.
Thus, like childhood, there would need to be generational evolution for the African
American to be someone who could take advantage of college. Dubois suggested that this stepwise approach had the benefit of, ―…the South to accept Negro Education, not simply as a necessary evil, but as a possible social good.‖560 On the other hand, Dubois observed, ―…it has tempered and rationalized the inner emancipation of American
Negroes. It made the Negro patient, when impatience would have killed him.‖561 Dubois seemed to accept that a certain period of adjustment for the African American as worker and not slave was warranted. Yet, in the presence of Howard University and its graduating class, Dubois suggested that it was time for a change:
The industrial school acted as a bridge and buffer to lead us out of the bitterness of Reconstruction to the tolerance of today. But it did not place our feet upon the sound economic foundation which makes our survival in America or in the modern world
559 Ibid.: 62. 560 Ibid.: 65. 561 Ibid. 210 certain or probable; and the reason that it did not do this was as much the fault of the college as of the trade school.562
Dubois then offered the challenge to the colleges to:
…graduate to the world men fitted to take their place in real life by their knowledge, spirit, and ability to do what the world wants done…The technical training of men must be directed by vocational guidance which finds fitness and ability.563
Like Walter G. Daniel, W. E. B. Dubois asked for more highly trained teachers who were sensitive to individual needs. Dubois called for laboratories and apprenticeships in science to build relevancy and even lifelikeness for the young adult and college student.564 But Dubois tempered the need with change with the parallel need for ideals in education. For Dubois these were the ideals of ―poverty,‖ ―work,‖
―knowledge,‖ and ―sacrifice.‖565 Within the logic of these ideals, for Dubois, was a concept of culture building that begins with the knowledge that poverty is not the opposite of wealth if the community sacrifices together and builds its society through work and knowledge. Dubois asked African Americans to sacrifice personal happiness for the happiness of others, ―But with the death of your happiness may easily come increased happiness and satisfaction and fulfillment for other people…‖566
Dubois‘s aims for education went beyond the industrial versus academic debate into the realm of culture building created from sacrifice of a whole people‘s happiness for better times in the future for all. Yet, Dubois provided no rubric for this transformation
562 Ibid.: 70. 563 Ibid.: 70 & 71. 564 Ibid.: 70-71. 565 Ibid.: 72-73. 566 Ibid.: 73. 211 other than his rhetoric. Dubois‘s ideals not only offered a pragmatic understanding of the socioeconomic condition of African Americans as a people, but also they contained the seeds for what was later to become the civil rights movements where the few sacrificed for the many.
V.V. Oak, professor of Education at North Carolina College for Negroes in
Durham, North Carolina, provided the 1932 July yearbook with an empirical look at twelve African American colleges and their industrial curriculum. Oak discovered that the curricula offered were secretarial training, teacher training, accounting and general business. Secretarial programs were disappearing for two reasons: 1) no jobs and 2) the concern that teaching typing and other manual office tasks did not offer a commercial education program anyone could use in general business.567 Without using the ladder analogy, Oak suggested that the African American adopt,‖…only such tools as would suit his present needs best without being sensitive about this procedure.‖568 While Oak suggested that at some point the need for separate Negro education and White education will lose its meaning, in 1932 there was a need for two tracks. As Oak suggested colloquially, ―Until then it will be unhealthy to try to ‗ape‘ Wall Street psychology of business. A child cannot learn to run before it begins to walk.‖569 Thus Oak brought to the discourse the generational developmental path that Dubois introduced with his ladder.
567 V. V. Oak, "Commercial Education in Negro Colleges," The Journal of Negro Education 1, no. 3/4 (1932): 400-02, 05. 568 Ibid.: 407. 569 Ibid. 212 The discourse in 1932 suggested that the purely industrial education programs introduced in the 1890s in Hampton and Tuskegee and proselytized by the Northern secular philanthropies were theoretical backwaters. That there was a need for academic education was understood, but there was not the complete realization that the African
Americans were quite yet ready developmentally to embrace academic education. The reality of jobs, poverty, and the need to train many more teachers and professionals weighted upon some educators as impasses towards this objective.
The July 1933 yearbook of JNE looked at the Negro college in depth. Kelly
Miller was a member of the JNE editorial staff and a professor of Sociology at Howard
University. Miller was the first African admitted to Johns Hopkins, where he studied mathematics. Miller also received a law degree from Howard University.570 Taking a historical look at the past, present, and future of the African American college, Kelly
Miller described the positive contributions of white philanthropists, whether clerics or industrialists. Miller had, however, little faith in the African American to lead colleges into the foreseeable future. Miller said, ―You cannot change the nature of the race by a few years of schooling.‖571 Miller complained that the African American schools were trying to imitate Harvard and Columbia but had other missions:
The Negro college has to deal with a segregated minority which is more definitively prescribed and proscribed than either of these other categories [e.g. a college for women or a Hebrew college as concepts of limited curriculum], and therefore, calls
570 Wikipedia, "Kelly Miller (Scientist)," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Miller_(scientist). 571 Miller, "The Past, Present and Future of the Negro College," 417. 213 for educational statesmanship that will wisely and justly adapt matter and methods to the peculiar needs of its own field.572
For Miller, the problem was leadership and the problem was that African
Americans were now in charge. Miller said:
But, unfortunately, the race is not yet sufficiently experienced in handling large affairs of a practical business character to justify assuming complete guardianship of higher institutions of learning.573
Kelly Miller then suggested that white boards of trustees should be engaged to assist African American college presidents. Miller justified this by suggesting that the
Southern white schools already had brought in more qualified Northern professors because the schools understood their own ―…educational backwardness.‖574 Miller did not call for a movement back to the crude industrial education of Hampton and Tuskegee that had all but disappeared, but he did require it to be vocational:
The higher education of the Negro must be essentially vocational, leading to a practical livelihood. The Negro must make a living before he can make a career. His higher education, therefore, finds outlet in teaching or in the practice of one of the professions or in some or other form of immediate remunerative work.575
Miller made allowances for the exceptional talent with, ―Genius will take care of itself whenever or wherever it occurs.‖576 Miller then called for the colleges to become agricultural with the following observation:
In view of the economic and industrial readjustment which the race is rapidly approaching, where technocracy will dominate and the mere handworker will be at a
572 Ibid.: 418. 573 Ibid.: 419. 574 Ibid.: 420. 575 Ibid.: 421. 576 Ibid. 214 discount, the bulk of the Negro race will be thrown back on the farm by the expulsive power of race prejudice.577
August Meier later said of Kelly Miller that, ―Thus, combining the economic arguments of Washington with the talented tenth theme of W. E. B. Dubois, Kelly Miller essayed a compromise of synthesis.‖578 Having observed over his lifetime the change from the Tuskegee and Hampton models to a more academic approach, Miller suggested that this change perhaps was both premature and not well managed. The aim of the
African American college for Kelly Miller was to get a job. The role of the college was to understand socioeconomic conditions and evolve as jobs evolved. While he suggested that the academically talented will find their own way, Miller let them fend for themselves because the African American college was for the average student who would need to find jobs wherever they were available.
Howard K. Beale was an American historian of race, tolerance, and educational freedom at Bowdoin College. Beale footnoted his 1934 ―The Needs of Negro Education in the United States‖ with the following:
No attempt has been made to discuss general needs which Negro education shares with the education of whites. Only those problems are discussed which are peculiar to Negroes.579
Beale did not advocate for separate African-American schools. In fact, his entire article was an indictment of the entire system of education for African Americans. Beale spared no sector, especially the white educators, legislators, and others who created the
577 Ibid. 578 August Meier, "The Racial and Educational Philosophy of Kelly Miller, 1895-1915," The Journal of Negro Education 29, no. 2 (1960): 123. 579 Beale, "The Needs of Negro Education in the United States," 8. 215 system. In addition to critique, Beale offered suggestions on what the aims should be to improve the system:
The great task today is to transform schools intended to make good cooks and efficient but docile workmen into institutions that will develop self-respecting, intelligent citizens.580
Beale suggested that one positive impetus for change was the development of
African American Culture:
One of the effects of the newly developing racial pride of the young Negro is an increasing tendency among Negro teachers to turn education into a creation of Negro culture.581
Beale called for the Negro to ―…cease imitating whites,‖ but in the same sentence suggested that they, ―…cease futile plans for constantly violated legal rights and to educate Negro men and women who can command the respects of whites.‖582 What Beale suggested was that the act of creating useful citizens will limit the scourges of segregation. As a result whites would willingly accept the newly cultured and schooled
African American into society. But there was no need to fight for legal rights because they would come as a result of this new-found respect. Nor did Beale explain what kind of curriculum he would support in the effort to ―…develop self-respecting, intelligent citizens.‖583 Howard K. Beale suggested many avenues for righting past wrongs, including more adequate funding, teacher tenure, African American control of schools,
580 Ibid.: 9. 581 Ibid. 582 Ibid. 583 Ibid. 216 elimination of censorship, and community involvement.584 Yet Beale did not address the problem in segregation that simple culture building and education had not altered the minds of those bent on complete separation. Even more difficult to break with such a strategy was the stranglehold on the scarcity of property (including education) that whiteness possessed.
William Anthony Aery in 1936 was Director of Education at the Hampton
Institute, the originator of the industrial education program for African American colleges. By this time, Hampton‘s industrial educational heritage had passed. Aery added to the discourse when he suggested that colleges need to be mindful of the times:
The present economic situation, especially in the United States, demands that education be looked upon as a unitary process in which all citizens need general education, supplemented by vocational and/or professional education, because men and women are called upon to make their way in a world of expanding knowledge, of industrial organization, and of diversified wants. No one theory of education is a panacea. Modern educators must synthesize the best elements in many theories.585
Aery summarized his article with, ―…it appears true that the soundest educational practice is found wherever men and women have become conscious of the need of reorganizing and redirecting their thinking in the field of educational history.‖586
Buell Gordon Gallagher was president of Talladega College at the time of his
1936 article on ―Reorganizing the College to Discharge its Social Function.‖ Talladega had been founded by The American Missionary Association. Earlier in the century, then
President Henry S. Deforest said the college, ―…had not forgotten the industrial
584 Ibid.: 14-18. 585 Aery, "New Emphases in the Education of Negroes," 405. 586 Ibid.: 406. 217 education…,‖ but instead offered students, ―choice scholarship.‖587 Buell Gordon
Gallagher continued in this vein, but added to William Anthony Aery‘s argument that both forms of education required further scholarship:
The time-honored argument between the classical and the vocational educators becomes somewhat irrelevant when it is suggested that both kinds of education need to be reoriented. 588
Buell Gordon Gallagher explained this comment by suggesting that the classical educators did not use their training to acculturate the student towards work. On the other hand, the vocational educators realized soon on that their industrial education was obsolete to the student soon after graduation. 589 Gallagher suggests that a good first step is to, ―Let the college begin by analyzing social need; and let the continuing analysis of social need determine its choice of ‗desirable‘ habits and attitudes and therefore also be the determinant of its program and procedure.‖590 Within this process Gallagher provided three aspects for consideration: the identification of social deficiencies, directions for social movement, and value judgments.591 Gallagher then called for action:
In terms of the college for Negroes, this means that the organizing objective of a college in our segregated society will need to include an explicit and direct effort to cultivate a strategy for minority group action—even more, for the action of a minority within that minority group. This means facing all the usual problems faced by other colleges educating members of the dominant group plus the special problems confronted by members of a small minority within the submerged group who are to be expected to
587 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 69. 588 Gallagher Buell Gordon, "Reorganize the College to Discharge Its Social Function," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 465. 589 Ibid.: 465-66. 590 Ibid.: 466. 591 Ibid. 218 provide the leadership necessary to bring themselves and their fellows into emergence. [Emphasis in original]592
What Gallagher called for was the college to become the place that builds the
Antonio Gramsci‘s ―organic intellectual‖593 who will be empowered and engaged to assist an oppressed people, first see their oppression, and second, help themselves overcome that oppression. Thus the colleges for Buell Gordon Gallagher were not only an academic exercise or educator for jobs, but also for some students, they became an educator to develop not only cultural concepts for African Americans, but also radicalize their existence in the form of a new social order.
The evolving discourses of the colleges and their ultimate aims and objectives suggests, that there was, in some cases, too much faith and reliance in white support and leadership and for others there was not enough white leadership. Others seemed convinced that white support and leadership was not what is needed, but what was needed was organic change from within the African American academic community to provide its own direction and guidance. The colleges were seen as a place to do this, not the courts, which to this point had been hostile to African Americans. Nor could the
African Americans turn to the Federal Government which had continued to favor whites in the New Deal and other depression-era programs.
In 1938, JNE Editor Charles H. Thompson approached vocational education from a different angle. Thompson said that the schools could not provide appropriate education for industry, ―The school does not seem to be able to catch up with the demands of our
592 Ibid.: 467-68. 593 Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology, 115. 219 more rapidly mechanized civilization.‖594 Thompson suggested that the school
(principally elementary and secondary), ―…must recognize that even more important than providing for the purely technical requirements of the modern occupational world is the task of the socialization of the worker.‖595 This thinking was very much in the same vein as what would later be called ―life-adjustment‖ education. Note the Similarities to
Charles H. Thompson‘s proposal as expressed by JNE researcher Edith M. Carter of the
Cincinnati School District and referenced later by historian Arthur Zilversmit who said of
―life-adjustment‖ education, ―…which better equips all American youth to live democratically with satisfaction to themselves and profit to society, as homemembers, workers, and citizens.‖596 597
Thus the effort was not to develop a worker for a specific task but to develop the worker so that he/she can be employable in any number of changing industries. Charles
H. Thompson called on business to train its own in the skills of the job, but required that the school‘s aims be oriented toward acculturating the student to industry by educating the student to understand things like timeliness, taking orders, industry in the productivity sense, cleanliness, and the fundamental processes in the Cardinal Principles of reading, writing, and mathematics. Nor did Thompson call for the elimination of academic work,
594 Charles H. Thompson, "Editorial Comment: A Neglected Phase of Vocational Education among Negroes," The Journal of Negro Education 7, no. 1 (1938): 2. 595 Ibid.: 3. 596 Carter, "College Entrance Requirements as They Are Related to Life Adjustment Education in the Negro Secondary School," 27. 597 Zilversmit, Changing Schools, 96. 220 but asked for the recognition of the fact that few still matriculated to college and that there was a pragmatic need to prepare the masses for their inevitable fate.
Undergirding this concept of preparation for vocation was the recognition that, in
1938, that the Depression was decreasing in intensity and that new jobs and even better jobs than before the Depression would soon become available. Such availability would engender more opportunities for whites and brought about the eventual need to seek
African Americans to fill the gaps in production lines as the war machine built in the early 1940s.
In 1940, Harold Farmer, a physician from Pennsylvania, punctuated the pre-war discourse with a treatise on classical education. Farmer regaled against the optional curricula that Charles Eliot of Harvard and The Committee of Ten598 introduced earlier in the century. Farmer vigorously opposed industrial education:
Vocational ends of supremely practical issue have no place on a liberal arts program which applies to the blackest man alive as well as to the whitest; and Negroes have no specific problems of any kind that justify an exception in this case. The Negro is not the only man in the world who has to earn a living. The pages of this Journal bear testimony that our Negro educators have been in disagreement and confusion on the aims of Negro education; it cannot always be discerned whether their own perspective is foreshortened or whether they are paid middlemen and mouthpieces of white philanthropists.599
World War II brought many changes to society in general, and African Americans in particular. There was more work, many joined the military, but there was also rationing. Many African Americans migrated north to industrial jobs and settle in the
598 Eliot, "Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary Schools Studies." 599 Harold E. Farmer, "The Revival of Classical Learning as the Most Potent Force in Negro Progress," The Journal of Negro Education 9, no. 4 (1940): 593. 221 cities. These new opportunities emboldened educators to consider what life and education should be after the war. In 1942, Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University noted:
The necessary defense training which many Negro workers have received over the recent years will widen the range of available skills, thus increasing their capacity for open competition…The negroes with sound academic preparation now working in industry have the unprecedented opportunity to orient themselves toward labor leadership rather than the less attainable positions of management.600
In 1944 E. Franklin Frazier of Howard University considered ―The Role of
Schools In the Post-World War‖ and attempted to put a stake in the heart of the debate over industrial versus academic schools. Frazier said:
Anyone viewing realistically the education of the Negro today might wonder why there should have been any controversy at all, for it is generally acknowledged that both types of education are necessary for the Negro.601
E. Franklin Frazier looked back at the historical argument in context of the
W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington debate. E. Franklin Frazier suggested that W.
E. B. Dubois was opposed to the industrial approach because it was supported by both the
South and philanthropies and because, as Dubois saw it, ―…was designed to prepare the
Negro to live as a subordinate class.‖602 Booker T. Washington, on the other hand, was an artisan and, ―…hoped that, through industrial education, the Negro would acquire skills and thereby regain his place in the industrial organization of the South.‖603 However, what E. Franklin Frazier suggested was that the institutional aims had become perverted and that, ―…these institutions were more concerned with some theory or belief as to the
600 Johnson, "The Negro in Post-War Reconstruction: His Hopes, Fears and Possibilities," 465. 601 Frazier, "The Role of Negro Schools in the Post-War World," 465. 602 Ibid.: 466. 603 Ibid. 222 Negro‘s place in Southern society than with the real problem of education and the creation of intellectual leadership.‖604
Frazier‘s tone was different from the tone of the writers before the war. In depression, there was little work and opportunity. The Depression-era arguments for change were couched in the pragmatism of an unyielding social order of segregation and separation. The war increased opportunity and mobility and as Frazier said, ―Although the increasing mobility of the Negroes is causing considerable social disorganization, it is nevertheless widening their mental horizons and giving them a new conception of themselves.‖605 Frazier continued and suggested that the aims of the schools before
World War II prepared students, ―to take their places in a rather stable world behind the walls of segregation.‖606 E. Franklin Frazier took counsel from Horace Mann Bond when he encouraged the post-war education to consider that it is a ―social process‖ involving both African American and American culture. Frazier through Gunnar Myrdal suggested:
…that the Negro must not simply receive an education but he must be made ―educable‖ for the changing world in which he must live. This is probably more necessary for the Negro student since he will be called upon to be more adaptable than the white student.607
E. Franklin Frazier continued to paint the picture of a larger world for African
Americans after the war and called for the schools to, ―…provide him with this social intelligence, so that he can adapt to changing conditions because of both increased
604 Ibid.: 467. 605 Ibid.: 469. 606 Ibid.: 471. 607 Ibid.: 472. 223 mobility and the evolution of the society and its technology.‖608 Frazier asked African
Americans to no longer ―…count on the best white folks…‖ but to solve problems and to face the issues of caste and segregation in the South head on. Frazier concluded with,
―And if the Negro school is going to perform its proper function, it must equip Negroes for intelligent participation in the task of bringing real democracy to the South.‖609
Frazier urged the end of the social order that existed prior to war. Circumstances of the war, including African American mobility, job opportunities, military experiences in non-segregated countries and the experience of whites having to defend segregation in light of Nazi and Japanese atrocities had created a new environment and provided cultural and developmental opportunities that were difficult to consider or even articulate in the darkness of pre-war segregation.
Gunnar Myrdal‘s treatise on segregation, An American Dilemma, was published in the same year that Frazier penned his article. E. Franklin Frazier, the sociologist, drew inspiration from Gunnar Myrdal, the economist, and Carter G. Woodson, the historian, to frame his discourse that, did not call directly for revolution, but asked the schools and society to recognize that a new social order exists for African Americans and the schools need to prepare to engage this new order and seize its opportunity for change.
Summary
This chapter extended debate that was first considered in the chapter on philanthropy. The disparate discourse of nation language considered Kelly Miller of
608 Ibid.: 473. 609 Ibid. 224 Howard University—teach to make a living.610 Howard K. Beale of Bowdoin College— create citizens who will be respected by whites.611 William Anthony Aery of the
Hampton Institute– synthesize the best elements of many theories to survive in the changing industrial environment.612 Buell Gordon Gallagher of Talladega College— analyze the social needs first and then build organic intellectuals.613 Charles H.
Thompson JNE Editor—socialize the worker i.e. the beginning calls for adjustment education that began in earnest after World War II.614
E. Franklin Frazier from Howard University punctuated the discourse by recommending that African American schools consider the mainstream discourse that both types of education are needed. During the height of World War II, Frazier was emboldened to add to his recommendations that these organic intellectuals would,
―…equip Negroes for intelligent participation in the task of bringing real democracy to the South.‖615
Yet regardless of whether the debate centered on an academic approach or some combination of industrial and academics, the discourse was all about aims as ends and those ends that led to a kind of socialization that would make the graduate more productive in the evolving industrial economy. This discourse also showed that as more opportunities opened for African Americans the aims of education broadened to meet
610 Miller, "The Past, Present and Future of the Negro College." 611 Beale, "The Needs of Negro Education in the United States." 612 Aery, "New Emphases in the Education of Negroes." 613 Buell Gordon, "Reorganize the College to Discharge Its Social Function." 614 Thompson, "Editorial Comment: A Neglected Phase of Vocational Education among Negroes." 615 Frazier, "The Role of Negro Schools in the Post-War World," 473. 225 their demands. This culminated in E. Franklin Frazier‘s call for the widest possible spectrum of educational opportunities to meet the demand of the post-war world.
Both E. Franklin Frazier and Buell Gordon Gallagher called for the aim of building organic intellectuals who would bring changes to society. This was not the same call Howard K. Beale made to graduate respectable African Americans so that they would eventually become accepted by whites and be granted privileges as a result.616
Both E. Franklin Frazier and Buell Gordon Gallagher called for something more substantial but could not define how these individuals would accomplish change in society through their education. Would it have been enough as Kate Crehan said of
Antonio Gramsci:
For Gramsci any would-be revolutionaries need to understand the cultural realities they are bent on transforming, apart from any other reason because counterhegemonies, capable of challenging in an effective way the dominant hegemony, emerge out of the lived reality of oppressed people‘s day-to-day lives.617
Yet Paulo Freire says that understanding is not enough. Understanding must evolve to solidarity:
Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is solidary; it is a radical posture. If what characterizes the oppressed is their subordination to the consciousness of the master, as Hegel affirms, the true solidarity with the oppressed means fighting at their side to transform the objective reality which has made them these ―beings for another.‖618
Yet, if the theory of nation language suggests that problem solving involves the development of different consensuses that only overlap, how can such solidarity be built?
616 Beale, "The Needs of Negro Education in the United States." 617 Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology, 5. 618 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 49. 226 This dilemma of solidarity portends the problem of the subaltern to produce change in a so-called democracy if there is not agreement on what exactly that change will be and what the process will be to effect that change.
What this discourse also considered was the extrinsic nature of ―jobs‖ as aims.
When, as E. Franklin Frazier and others observed, the opportunities for a greater variety of jobs became available the aims consideration became more and more intrinsic as individual students could then consider their aims and objectives in relationship to their experiences, skills, and desires for careers. At the opposite extreme during reconstruction, when fewer categories of jobs were available, the extrinsic imposition of industrial education was a logical extension of the aims discourse. However, as the needs of society changed to where the African American‘s services were in greater demand, the discourse evolved to consider the intrinsic nature of aims associated with life choices.
Nor was this a linear conversation. African American communities and teachers in the local schools had rejected the industrial education approach before this study began. This brings us back to Antonio Gramsci‘s organic intellectual. Both Buell Gordon
Gallagher and E. Franklin Frazier called for the development of ―problem solving‖ individuals without a prescribed change agenda. This thinking comes closer to what John
Dewey had in mind with helping the student to creating his/her own understanding of the world through experience.619 ―Problem solving‖ then becomes both an extrinsic aim as it is theorized by society and also an intrinsic aim as the experienced gained by learning
619 Goodlad, What Schools Are For, 37. 227 problem solving skills helps the individual gain sense of the world. If one extends the extrinsic-intrinsic nature of the ―problem solving‖ aim further, it is possible to envision problem solving as both means and ends. Thus ―problem solving‖ becomes both curriculum and aims.
Are there more aims conceptualizations like ―problem solving‖ that can both enable the objectives of society and equip the individual to engage in valuable experiences that will broaden and not restrict opportunities in society? If there are, how can individuals capitalize on these experiences? We have already seen what the dark oppressive forces of segregation did to the experiences of African Americans during the period of this study. How can the use of aims conceptualizations such as ―problem solving‖ be used to alter the condition of the subaltern? These are all important questions for the aims discourse to consider going forward.
228 Chapter 10—“Getting Out of the Dog House”: The Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education—July 1936
I‘s big and black and I say ‗Yes, suh‘ as loudly as any burrhead when it‘s convenient, but I‘m still the king down here. . . . The only ones I even pretend to please are big white folk, and even those I control more than they control me. . . . That‘s my life, telling white folk how to think about the things I know about. . . . It‘s a nasty deal and I don‘t always like it myself. . . . But I‘ve made my place in it and I‘ll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am.620
Dr. Bledsoe rebuked the ―invisible man‖ for taking Mr. Norton, the school‘s benefactor, on a ride through the old slave quarters and into a bar. Bledsoe lapsed into colloquial speech to show how he kept the support of his white mentors. Yet, Bledsoe used the lynching metaphor to explain his nearly pathological need for power to maintain his control over the institution. This reaction to power of the dominant whites and his own dominance through intimidation and unbridled authority make him appear complicit with the oppressive forces. The caricature that is Dr. Bledsoe is an illustration of the dichotomies of the time, including the discourse and deliberation over whether educators could conceive of a change in social order or would be better served to consider how to live within the status quo. What did these polarized arguments mean to the aims of education?
620 Ellison, Invisible Man, 109-10. 229 The fifth yearbook of the JNE asked contributors to consider the following question: ―Does ‗Negro Education‘ Need Re-Organization and Re-Direction?‖ [emphasis in original].621 JNE Editor Charles H. Thompson explained this further:
Thus, the purpose of this yearbook is to take a comprehensive look at the education of Negroes as a whole, to ascertain, what, if any reorganization or redirection may be necessary and how they may be most expeditiously effected.622 Thompson suggested that included within this scope was ―…a broad appraisal of present status…‖; the identification of current needs in order to establish a baseline for change recommendations; and, finally, what direction the redirection and reorganization should take, if any.623 Thompson then qualified the scope:
First, it is not the purpose of this yearbook to gather additional facts, but rather to interpret and synthesize the facts already gathered…Second, it should be observed that the statement of the problem is meant to carry no implications. It is neither implied that ―Negro Education‖ needs reorganization because it should be different from American education in general but is not, nor because it is different and should not be different. [Emphasis in original]624 Thompson concluded by suggesting that there would likely be overlap in some presentations but that the gaps would be minimal. Acknowledging the controversy such an issue might raise, Thompson suggested that this yearbook was conceived as an orderly presentation of the matter. Each author was responsible for his or her own work and no others, implying that there should not be ―guilt by association‖ by appearing in an issue with which contributions might be controversial.625 The issue was further divided into
621 Thompson, "Editorial Note: Does Negro Education Need Re-Organization and Re-Direction?," 311. 622 Ibid.: 311-12. 623 Ibid.: 312. 624 Ibid. 625 Ibid.: 313. 230 parts: (1) problem definition, (2) general discussion about reorganization and redirection,
(3) elementary and rural education, (4) higher education, (5) special phases —other considerations, and (6) four separate critical summaries of the yearbook. As with other issues, a bibliography of recent contributions to the study of Negro Education followed.
The invited contributors were representatives of many of the diverse views on
―Negro Education‖ or ―Educating the Negro.‖ Figure 1 categorizes the contributors by their employment and/or affiliation at the time of publishing.
231 Category Name Affiliation University professor D. A. Wilkerson Assistant Professor of Education, Howard University University professor Ralph Bunche Associate professor of Political Science, Howard University University professor Charles S. Johnson Fisk University University professor Alethea H. Washington Professor of Education, Howard University University professor Mabel Carney Professor of Rural Education, Teachers College, Columbia University University professor Ullin W. Leavell Professor of Education, George Peabody College for Teachers University professor Kelly Miller Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Howard University University Leadership D.O.W. Holmes Dean of the Graduate School of Howard University University professor E. Franklin Frazier Professor of Sociology, Howard University University Leadership A. Heningburg Personnel director, Tuskegee Institute University Leadership William Anthony Aery Director of Education, Hampton Institute University Leadership Buell Gordon Gallagher President, Talladega College University Leadership Rufus E. Clement Dean, Louisville Municipal College for Negroes University Leadership Robert P. Daniel President, Shaw University University Leadership Fred D. Patterson President, Tuskegee Institute University Leadership Charles H. Judd Chairman, Department of Education, University of Chicago University Leadership David A. Lane, Jr. Dean, West Virginia State College University Leadership E. George Payne Assistant Dean, School of Education, New York University Junior College R. O‘Hara Lanier Dean, Houston Junior College for Negroes Normal School Frank S. Horne Acting principal, Fort Valley Normal and Industrial Institute Secondary School W. A. Robinson Principal, Laboratory High School, Atlanta University Secondary School Maudelle B. Bousfield Principal, Stephen A. Douglas School, Chicago, Illinois Philanthropy Thomas Jesse Jones Education Director, Phelps-Stokes Fund, NY, NY Philanthropy Leo M. Favrot General Field Agent, General Education Board, Baton Rouge, La. Philanthropy Edwin M. Embree President, Julius Rosenwald Fund, Chicago, Il. State Government N. C. Newbold Director, Division of Negro Education, North Carolina Federal Government Ambrose Caliver Senior Specialist in the Education of Negroes, U. S. Office of Education
Figure 1 The Contributors to the 1936 JNE Yearbook
232 For some, like William Anthony Aery, Leo M. Favrot, Charles H. Judd, Mabel
Carney, and E. George Payne, this would be their only contribution to the JNE during the period of this study. Others, such as Charles H. Thompson (editor), D.O.W. Holmes, E.
Franklin Frazier, Ambrose Caliver, Ralph Bunche, Doxie Wilkerson, Alethea
Washington, Rufus Clement, and David Lane, contributed five or more articles to the
JNE during the period of this study.
Consider the context for a moment. The Depression was in its sixth or seventh year. As we have seen, more African-American than white schools by proportion had closed because of the lack of funds. The New Deal provided some job relief, but not as much for African Americans. African-American colleges, most privately funded, did not have robust endowments before the Depression and during it had to limit initiatives, and some even closed. Jobs or occupations, such as doormen, elevator operators, and the like, that had been the domain of African Americans were given to whites. The facts about the education of African Americans were well known, as Thompson suggested, but how did these researchers reconsider the education of African Americans in light of these facts?
This discussion of the discourse will follow the issue in its order of presentation within each theme. However, it is fitting to delve to the heart of the issue with what Frank
S. Horne, acting principal at Fort Valley Normal and Industrial Institute (now Fort Valley
State College) in Georgia called ―dog house education:‖
We had been driving for an hour over the red clay roads of Crawford County, Georgia, taking pictures of school houses. The Georgia law says there shall be separate but equal educational facilities for the children of the two races...We had just taken a photograph of a fine brick school house on a hill with tall columns and shrubbery and little white children swinging and see-sawing in a play-yard. We dropped down a 233 tortuous road from the brow of the hill and skidded around a few curves as we approached the bare and rain-eroded gulley. A dingy cracker-box of a building stood in the clearing. We could see through the irregular openings that served for door and windows rows of colored children of all sizes jammed together on long backless benches without desks of any kind. The only teacher was literally barking at the children and every now and then they seemed to yelp in return. My Friend turned to me and smiled cynically, ―a veritable dog house!‖…Dog house education!...626
Definition of the Problem
D. O. W. Holmes of Howard University was assigned the task by the editors to identify the primary issues associated with the topic of reorganization and redirection.627
Holmes considered his task in light of the present societal condition:
Since society itself is a rapidly changing organism, it follows that the schools cannot be static whether we conceive of their function as reflecting society as it is or as directing us to a social order as we think it should be.628
With this opening salvo, Holmes challenged the other authors to decide whether the aims of education are to preserve the social order or to create a new social order.
What logically followed from this exhortation is whether there should be a separate school for African Americans and whether a philosophy of Negro Education could be possible. Crucial to this argument is whether the curriculum should be like the one that the white students have or different.
While polarizing, this exhortation of values was possible in the African-American schools discourse precisely because the conditions of separate schools required its consideration first. The white schools needed no such consideration. What was best for
626 Frank S. Horne, ""Dog House" Education," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 359. 627 D. O. W. Holmes, "Does Negro Education Need Reorganization and Redirection?--a Statement of the Problem," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 314. 628 Ibid. 234 student and the dominant society was all that mattered. Thus, the individual considering the education of African Americans was hobbled at the outset by having to engage in a polarizing discourse for which there was scant middle ground. This polemic, rather than uniting the theorists of African-American education, forced them into opposition, making consensus in this ever-so-small community difficult if not impossible and adding even more evidence to Eddie S. Glaude‘s theory of nation language.
D. O. W. Holmes suggested that the American state-controlled educational system evolved differently from Europe‘s strong federal control.629 Federal control of education likely would have produced a different product and outcome during this period.630 Under
Federal control, the misallocation of funds at the state level in the South likely would have been minimized. However, there was uneven treatment and availability of many of the federal New Deal programs, especially when they required local administration, which led to the same distribution issues as with school funding.
Holmes defined ―Negro Education‖ by explaining its cardinal difference:
[Referring to separate schools] This practice gives rise to the problems in education peculiar to such a situation, problems which do not appear in those areas where the separation of the two races in schools is neither a legal requirement nor a social policy. As a result, Negro schools are not only confronted with the same problems as schools in general, but, in addition, must meet and solve those arising from the policy that demands that they be conducted as units separate from those patronized by the white people of the same community.631
629 Ibid. 630 See Alethea Washington in this chapter for a discussion on the efforts of the federal government in Mexico‘s program to integrate and improve the schools. 631 Holmes, "Does Negro Education Need Reorganization and Redirection?--a Statement of the Problem," 316. 235 The continuum of conditions ran from multi-racial schools in the North to legally mandated separate schools in the South. Given these conditions of difference in application, how could anyone envision a separate African-American education for the whole country? The debate, when considered rationally, becomes a non-starter. If the decision is made to change the social order of the African American and his or her education, then there is a valid opportunity to consider changing the entire curriculum— but to what? If, in this social order change argument, the African American and whites have similar educative needs, where should there be differences, if any?
In 1932, Mary R. Crowley of the Cincinnati School District quantitatively compared the mixed-race schools to the segregated schools in Cincinnati and found no difference in academic attainment. The conditions in the Cincinnati schools were such that, regardless of whether mixed or segregated, there was similarity in funding, curricula, and administration (teacher qualification was not addressed).632 Crowley suggested that if there were any merit to segregated schools for students, it was in other than academic performance.633 Interestingly, other than Crowley‘s study, a much later review of the GI literacy project review by Herbert Aptheker, and the 1934 yearbook on testing, there were few empirical studies in the JNE that compared African-American educative results with white results when both were exposed to similar educational conditions.634
632 Crowley, "Cincinnati's Experiment in Negro Education: A Comparative Study of the Segregated and Mixed School," 29 & 32. 633 Ibid.: 32. 634 Aptheker, "Literacy, the Negro and World War I I." 236 The problem was that African Americans were exposed to different social orders and experiences in different places within the social order in North and South and in rural and in urban environments. This made the concept of a philosophy of Negro Education even more nebulous. This also made the discourse to define and consequently challenge the social order in the American democracy even more fractious. JNE Editor Charles H.
Thompson gave some recognition to this dilemma by including a separate section for rural and elementary education. Thompson left room for the industrial education proponents, the African-American colleges, and other thoughts of researchers in the education of African Americans to speak to their branding of the needs of African
Americans.
D. O. W. Holmes addressed the problem of defining aims with:
Education has always faced a difficult task in defining its aims and objectives, partly because they are so numerous and so nebulous and partly because they overlap to such an extent as to obscure the lines of demarcation. It is obvious, too, that broadly inclusive definitions, designed to escape these difficulties, are extremely unsatisfying either for purposes of discussion or as guides to action. Such expressions as ―developing the whole man,‖ ―preparing for citizenship,‖ teaching people how to think as statements of educational objectives have little meaning to a person developing a curriculum or devising method of procedure.635
One must consider Holmes‘s problem with aims and objectives in light of the theories of the time. Both John Dewey and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead considered life as education. Dewey said, ―There is only one subject matter for education
635 Holmes, "Does Negro Education Need Reorganization and Redirection?--a Statement of the Problem," 319. 237 and that is life in all its manifestations.‖636 Whitehead said, ―Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.‖637 On the other hand, Franklin
Bobbitt‘s Scientific Curriculum Making [in connection with civic, moral, and vocational, forms of education, and others] said, ―…only as we agree upon what ought to be in each of these difficult fields can we know at what the training should aim.‖638 Bobbitt parsed each of these curricular fields into their component tasks and developed hundreds of objectives for each. Thus, there was not yet a clear distinction between the concept of aims and objectives, at least in Holmes‘s conceptualization. Holmes did, however, attempt to describe the outcomes or what education should do for the student: ―…It should enable him to do better whatever he attempts to do…It should enlarge his horizon and enrich his life…It should increase his capacity to make a living.‖639 Surely Holmes was consulting John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead when he said ―enrich his life,‖ and Franklin Bobbitt when he said ―…increase his capacity to make a living.‖ Within this mixing of means and ends, D. O. W. Holmes sets us on the deliberative journey with an iteration of the same as or different from whites debate:
In considering Negro education in view of these aims and objectives, two main lines of reasoning are possible. One school of thought takes the position that the education of Negroes should differ in no respect whatever from the definition of white
636 Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education & Other Essays (New York: The Macmillan company, 1929), 6. 637 John Dewey, "My Pedagogical Creed," in The Curriculum Studies Reader, ed. David J. Flinders (NY and London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004, 1929), 19. 638 Bobbitt, The Curriculum, 32. 639 Holmes, "Does Negro Education Need Reorganization and Redirection?--a Statement of the Problem," 319. 238 people, since any change of a social, mechanical, or cultural nature that affects the American people as a whole likewise affects the Negro.640
Holmes suggested that many of the proponents of the first view are ―…zealots for social justice.‖641 Holmes suggested that those who held the other view might not only define the need for certain jobs and professions and develop content accordingly, but also recognize:
…that the Negro is doomed to the servant status in his relations with white people, that he has no chance to become a bank director or a railroad president unless a Negro bank or a Negro railroad offers the opportunity, and that since such opportunities are extremely limited, it is folly to encourage the unlimited preparation of Negro youth to function in situations that do not exist.642
Thus, there were the practical limitations. From the practical, Holmes acknowledged that defining the aims and objectives in Negro Education provided educators with other problems about which he did not elaborate:
Merely to mention these two views is to indicate that the problem of aims and objectives, when applied to Negro education, is not only an extension of the general problem but probably an entirely different kind of problem as well.643
Doxie Wilkerson of Howard University was also asked to frame the issues posed by the yearbook. Wilkerson refined Holmes‘s question to: ―Do the adjustment problems of Negroes in American society demand special adaptation in their education?‖
[emphasis in original]644 First, the question on its face assumes that the African American has problems fitting into American society and not that American society had problems
640 Ibid.: 320. 641 Ibid. 642 Ibid. 643 Ibid. 644 Wilkerson, "A Determination of the Peculiar Problems of Negroes in Contemporary American Society," 324. 239 accommodating African Americans. Segregation is the separation and distinction of different races. Nor had the dominant white race kept its promise of ―separate but equal.‖
Had Wilkerson committed hegemonic complicity with the whites when he said that the
African American required adjustment? While the framing of the question is troubling,
Doxie Wilkerson reviewed the work of others and divided them into the polar extremes: special adaptations needed and special adaptations not needed. In the ―adaptations needed‖ column Doxie Wilkerson found Horace Mann Bond (then of Dillard University),
Ambrose Caliver (of the U. S. Department of Education), Charles S. Johnson (of Fisk
University), J. W. Johnson (The New York Age Publishing), and R. R. Moton (President of Tuskegee University, who succeeded Booker T. Washington).645 Yet Doxie Wilkerson found that Horace Mann Bond and R. R. Moton also considered that African Americans needed no adaptation (Moton in the same work), and with them was Walter G. Daniel (of
Howard University). Doxie Wilkerson concluded from his reading of the literature that:
…both groups of quotations seem to accept the principle that if the needs of Negro children really are any different from other children, then, special adaptations should be made in their school experiences. [emphasis in original]646
Of course this conundrum has implications for aims. If these ―peculiar‖ needs existed, then they should be factored into the curriculum. By extension then, there was a need for some form of separate school or instructional structure that provided for the
645 R. R. Moton took over the presidency of Tuskegee after Booker T. Washington died. 646 Wilkerson, "A Determination of the Peculiar Problems of Negroes in Contemporary American Society," 325. 240 separate training for these needs that the whites did not correspondingly require.
Wilkerson then considered the problem from a new angle:
American educational theory accepts with approximate universality the principle that pupils‘ school experiences (which in themselves constitute the curriculum) should be so directed as to achieve adequate understandings of and wholesome attitudes towards the problems of social life.647
Wilkerson consulted the literature and found similar thinking in the 1932 Report of the Committee on Curriculum-making of the National Society for the Study of
Education and the curriculum theorizing of Franklin Bobbitt.648 Thus if the principal aim of American education was ―…to develop an understanding and wholesome attitude towards the problems of social life…,‖ it should logically follow that if there are adjustments African Americans must make, whites should also understand these adjustments, and a curriculum to inform both would be required. This, in theory, begins to burn a hole in the separate school argument and provides impetus towards developing a common curriculum for all. Wilkerson did not proceed down this path, but he did approach this consideration when made as one of his study assumptions:
…it is recognized that the problems of race conflict resulting from America‘s ―bi- racial‖ situation call for adaptations in the educational program for both races. Whether such adaptation are made in the schools for the white children, however, is held to be insignificant as a determiner of whether they should be made in schools for Negro children.649
Perhaps the reason Wilkerson missed considering the argument against separate schools from his consideration of the uber-aim of ―…understanding problems of social
647 Ibid. 648 Ibid. 649 Ibid.: 327. 241 living…‖ was related to perspective and position. Wilkerson acknowledged that his call for change in both white and black schools was tempered by the reality of the times. Even if such a coequal curriculum were possible, it is likely that getting the white educators, legislators, and people to agree would have been difficult. Yet there was the opportunity to use the mainstream uber-aim against the prevailing position of the nation.
Ronald K. Goodenow, in a 1975 article about the Depression-era progressive educators, acknowledged that, along with Reid Jackson, Doxie Wilkerson ―…supported many progressive premises but called for progressives to bridge important gaps between rhetoric and the realities of day to day schooling and racism.‖650
What Wilkerson did do was massage the question of adaptation and difference and ask the substantial literature on the subject to inform him. Wilkerson rejected outright
―…alleged inherent differences in the mental ability or special aptitudes of Negro and white children.‖651 Wilkerson embraced the seven Cardinal Principles (see Chapter 6 of this study) as representing the more specific aims of education after the uber-aim of understanding the problems of social living.652
Wilkerson summarized his argument:
Implicit throughout this discussion has been the writer‘s assumption that Negro school children are not now being provided curriculum experiences which prepare them to cope adequately with the special problems they must face as members of a submerged
650 Ronald K. Goodenow, "The Progressive Educator, Race and Ethnicity in the Depression Years: An Overview," History of Education Quarterly 15, no. 4 (1975): 380. 651 Wilkerson, "A Determination of the Peculiar Problems of Negroes in Contemporary American Society," 327. 652 Ibid. 242 minority racial group. For him to present a definite program of curriculum reorganization is without the scope of this chapter.653
Wilkerson suggested that the ―peculiar‖ needs were not that African Americans were different per se, but that within the social order, they were confronted with a different social reality than whites. This is inherently different from the phrasing of his original question, which suggested that African Americans have problems adapting to the society, that it is their fault.
Wilkerson and his contemporaries struggle with ―dual consciousness.‖ First considered by W. E. B. Dubois in his Souls of Black Folk, later critical researchers considered the implications of ―dual consciousness‖ for living within a society that values people differently. Critical race researcher Robert D. Barnes said in 1990:
This powerful depiction of dual consciousness delineates the conscious perception of people of color as they are perpetually reminded that their lives, their existence, and their concerns are valued differently, when at all, by the white majority. Their statements and actions are judged by different standards of right and wrong, of morality and immorality.654
Thus it is logical from his conclusion that Wilkerson would recommend the development of ―A Philosophy of ‘Negro Education’‖ and ―Special Objectives of ‘Negro
Education’,‖ along with the development of special ―Activities, Materials, Organization and Direction of Instruction.‖ [emphasis in original]655 Wilkerson‘s more detailed recommendations dealt with developing theory and practical content to understand the
653 Ibid.: 346. 654 Barnes, "Race Consciousnness: The Thematic Content of Racial Distinctiveness in Critical Race Scholarship," 1866. 655 Wilkerson, "A Determination of the Peculiar Problems of Negroes in Contemporary American Society," 346, 47, 50. 243 history of the present social order and the conditions of that social order. Wilkerson asked repeatedly in this exercise, ―What should they be able to do about them?‖656
Wilkerson has introduced us to the complexity of the problem these educators faced while attempting to outline a curriculum for African Americans. They first had to consider the hegemonic narrative of difference, which they had difficulty disproving.
Even if they could put the burden on society, they were still faced with a continuing subaltern existence and offered only vague ideas about how to educate students on ways out of this American social order.
General Reorganization and Redirection
Ralph Bunche, a political scientist at Howard, did not miss the opportunity to position Doxie Wilkerson‘s uber-aim of ―understanding the problems of social life‖ squarely onto society, both black and white. Bunche said:
The basic question for all schools is not one of copying the ―white man‘s education,‖ but one of developing a system of education which will afford both white and black students a sound basis for understanding the society in which they live and for attacking problems confronting them.657
Bunche was critical of colleges and universities for not telling the truth and for its hegemonic practices of indoctrination:
Nor can it fearlessly teach the student the truth. It is compelled to pursue a policy of indoctrination—with all of the attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes, and prejudices which have been cultivated in the capitalist culture and which are vital to it…To assume that the
656 Ibid.: 347. 657 Bunche, "Education in Black and White," 355. 244 Negro school offering ―Negro Education‖ is free from these influences is wishful thinking.658
With rhetorical aplomb, Bunche castigated the ―Negro institution‖ in all of its complicity with the existing social order. Yet in the end, Bunche took a pragmatic approach to the issues of funding and teachers, suggesting that education must live within its means. Bunche then offered that if the social order will not change, then the Negro school will not be permitted to change its existence in the social order.659 . Bunche attributed this to the controlling boards of the Negro schools. Bunche, like Wilkerson, admitted that there would be differences in African-American schools. While both whites and blacks wanted the best for their students, Bunche considered the African-American existence pragmatically, opting instead to squeeze the given system for more value for the students rather than recommend a radical reorganization of the schools or curriculum.
R. O‘Hara Lanier, dean of the Houston Junior College for Negroes, developed his own theory of Negro Education that he called ―articulation and integration.‖660 Lanier assumed up front that there was no foreseeable end to segregation for ―…generations to come.‖661 Lanier also recognized the racial nature of philanthropy but did not elaborate as to its effects on professed philanthropic aims of education. Lanier‘s concept of integration meant that the schools that taught African Americans should have ―…on the basis of a sound philosophy of education and a social policy that there is a oneness in
658 Ibid.: 356. 659 Ibid.: 358. 660 Lanier, "The Reorganization and the Redirection of Negro Education in Terms of Articulation and Integration," 369. 661 Ibid.: 370. 245 purpose on common peculiar problems extending from the elementary school through the college.‖662 Articulation simply asked the schools at all levels to do a better job of integration as Lanier had defined it.663 Like Bunche, Lanier recognized the structural limitations of the American social order but prophetically suggested that the African
American be adaptable and versatile when it came to emerging occupational opportunities.664 This would have been opportune advice to the colleges to consider because as the decade waned and war loomed, there was a significant migration of
African Americans to the cities. With the need for full employment to build the American war machine, skills in other than the traditional African-American manual labor and professional (doctor, teacher, preacher) categories were in great demand. Like Bunche and others of the time, Lanier acceded to the hegemony its due and its narrative with his comment:
There must be pioneers to do a good job in teaching the fundamentals which lead to American citizenship and at the same time teaching those minority techniques and a philosophy of education which industry, commerce, and varying racial attitudes demand for survival.665
What Lanier recommended was something like a ―Cultural Manual of Survival:‖ a curriculum that considers the aims of education strictly within the white permissive condition. Certainly this curriculum approach was observant and ready for any hints of
662 IbidIbid.: 369. 663 Ibid.: 370. 664Ibid Ibid.: 374. 665 Ibid. 246 changes in the American social order, but in substance it was a patient and thoughtful
―how to understand the etiquette of being a stranger in a strange land.‖
Lanier asked us to consider what critical theorists call ―cultural capital‖ and what
Tara Yosso called ―community cultural wealth.‖ ―…[C]ommunity cultural wealth is an array of knowledge, skills, abilities and contrasts possessed by Communities of Color to survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression.‖666
Yosso described the six forms of capital that have developed in communities of color:
Aspirational capital refers to the ability to maintain hopes and dreams for the future even in the face of real and perceived barriers. Linguistic capital includes the intellectual and social skills attained through communication experiences in more than one language or style. Familial capital refers to those cultural knowledges nurtured among familia (kin) that carry a sense of community history, memory and cultural intuition. Social capital can be understood as networks of people and community resources. Navigational capital refers to the skills of maneuvering through social institutions. Historically this infers the ability to maneuver through institutions not created with Communities of Color in mind. Resistant capital refers to those knowledges and skills fostered through oppositional behavior that challenges inequality.667 Throughout this study, there is ample evidence of each of these different forms of capital being assayed, expressed, and debated.
Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University wholeheartedly endorsed a philosophy of
Negro Education—that is, in the context of the African American‘s relationship to
666 Tara Yosso, "Whose Culture Has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth," Race, Ethnicity & Education 8, no. 1 (2005): 77. 667 Ibid.: 77-81. 247 society. Of course, Johnson insisted, the African American was a subaltern in the
American social order, and the educational program must understand this and teach the students how it should survive in this ―peculiar‖ way of living. Johnson said:
The educative process has failed when it has not succeeded in adjusting the individual constructively to his social life. Insofar as this process is a conscious and artificial one it can be selective, and it becomes important in the education of a maladjusted group that its procedures should be adjusted to its cultural needs. Only in such a manner can any material social development be expected.668
Thus Johnson understood education to be that of acculturation and that it only makes common sense to provide the African American with an education that, like
Lanier‘s, becomes the curriculum for a ―Cultural Manual of Survival.‖ Like Lanier,
Johnson asked the student to be flexible and patient, but stressed that ―Intelligent strategy demands that the Negro youth should assure themselves of that superior competence which in many cases outweighs purely racial advantage.‖669 The implication here: ―Get as much education as you can, for if things change you should be ready for it.‖ But then
Johnson said something very Gramscian:670
In their very minority status, which so often proves discouraging or limiting, there are the seeds of great power, if only common sense and enough energy are applied to them.671
668 Johnson, "On the Need of Realism in Negro Education," 375. 669 Ibid.: 382. 670 Kate Crehan, through Antonio Gramsci, said:―For those who are interested in radical social change, common sense, apart from its nucleus of good sense, is something to be opposed. It is what any emerging counterhegemonic narrative has to struggle to overcome. At the same time, however, common sense does also contain elements of ‗good sense‘, and these constitute an important part of the raw material out of which counterhegemonic narratives develop.‖ Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology, 114. 671 Johnson, "On the Need of Realism in Negro Education," 382. 248 Earlier in his article, Johnson encouraged the development of racial pride and optimism as a way forward.672 Johnson also suggested that the way to overcome stereotypes and the stigma of racial inferiority was through ―…the actual driving force, the urge of superior accomplishment.‖673 On one hand, Johnson saw the opportunity to strengthen the African American through a curriculum that considered racial pride, cultural acuity, and book learning as highly motivational. Johnson came close to translating this aim of positive and constructive consciousness-building as a center of power but stopped short. Thus, Johnson‘s solution was a version of Negro Education that was superior only in relationship to its status of being inferior in the first place.
Consider the nature of such a curriculum. While it would strive to instill pride and would probably provide stronger African-American history and literature study, it still would have faced the murky veil of what the students could not know, feel, or experience. Johnson‘s curriculum would have struggled with questions such as, ―Why can‘t we—and they can?‖ The curricular aims would also have had to deal with the limitations placed on the race by the democratic institutions of the Supreme Court and federal and state governments. If at any point it had considered the power of the racially disadvantaged to take from the racially advantaged, how long would the school, its instructors, or its leaders have been allowed to continue teaching? In the end, it would have had to consider the bi-polarity of its cognitive outcomes: the continuum of heightened racial pride juxtaposed against racially imposed disadvantages.
672Ibid Ibid.: 381. 673 IbidIbid.: 382. 249 Who was Charles S. Johnson? Was he a ―gradualist‖ as Jane R. Beilke suggested in 1997 or, as W.E.B. Dubois hinted at, ―….a pawn to the philanthropists‖?674 Was
Johnson beholden, or did he seek to inform? Johnson‘s writing suggested that he sought to inform those who had money and the inclination to invest in African-American education where they might put their resources into advancing the race. Yet this required a more ―gradualist‖ touch with even the more liberal financiers because it likely would have been difficult to publicly suggest a more radical approach. Through Paulo Freire, it is possible to contemplate the significance of this mediation:
…the fact that certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation, thus moving from one pole of the contradiction to another…It happens, however, that as they cease to be exploiters or indifferent spectators or simply the heirs of exploitation and move to the side of the exploited, they almost always bring with them the marks of their origin: their prejudices and their deformations, which include a lack of confidence in the people‘s ability to think, to want, and to know.675
For Charles S. Johnson and the more liberal philanthropists like Edwin Embree of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, it would have been difficult to find an acceptable path through the social order and conditioning of society that would also advance the cause of
African Americans. Critical race theorists might call Johnson‘s approach liberalism.
Gloria Ladson Billings suggested that liberalism is not enough:
674 Beilke, "The Changing Emphasis of the Rosenwald Fellowship Program, 1928-1948," 7. Marybeth Gasman, "W.E.B. Du Bois and Charles S. Johnson: Differing Views on the Role of Philanthropy in Higher Education," History of Education Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2002): 505. 675 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 60. 250 CRT argues that racism requires sweeping changes, but liberalism has no mechanism for such change. Rather, liberal legal practices support the painstakingly slow process of arguing legal precedence to gain citizen rights for people of color.676
There was not the groundswell of support for sweeping change by radical means.
While sweeping change was called for, few contributors to the JNE during the period of this study suggested that it be inculcated by any means approaching revolution or even the Martin Luther King style of peaceful resistance. These educators did not seem to have the tools or the imagination for such a fight.
A. Heningburg from the Tuskegee Institute provided a provocative title to introduce his topic: ―What Shall We Challenge in the Existing Social Order?‖
Heningburg asked for equal funding and better vocational guidance and then wondered whether education should challenge the social order or simply acculturate to the existing social order.677 Rather than suggesting either the pragmatic status quo or urge the schools to build curricula that would provide tools to change the social order, Heningburg sought a decidedly liberalist approach:
While the writer would not advocate a revolution designed to give every black man the ballot, it does seem essential that the process of education should gradually prepare for this highly desirable condition.678
Heinengburg sought his own redemption from having to say this because, ―In the present state of affairs, your professor of political science steers clear of this and other
‗dangerous questions…‘‖ He did so, said Heningburg, because he feared for his job or of
676 Gloria J. Ladson-Billings, "Preparing Teachers for Diverse Student Populations: A Critical Race Theory Perspective," Review of Research in Education 24 (1999): 213. 677 Heningburg, "What Shall We Challenge in the Existing Order?," 383-85. 678 IbidIbid.: 386. 251 alienating the philanthropies.679 Nor did Heiningburg defend this present state of affairs, but acknowledged the restlessness of some students and wondered how to engage their talents: ―My plea would be for a great effort towards understanding this headstrong student who seems bent upon destroying all of our cherished traditions.‖680 Yet in his discussion of how the schools might work with the questioner of the current social order,
Heningburg suggested that the college should turn the student‘s attention to his possibilities.681 Yet for Heningburg, these possibilities were not for the student to continue to question the status quo but to become ready for his or her possibilities and challenges in the existing social order. Perhaps there was another reason for this channeling of talent. No African-American college of this period would likely have tolerated the radical student, just as it would not have tolerated the radical professor.
Rather than attempt a suicidal move, Heningburg suggested an alternative to dismissal of the talented but obdurate student rather than relegating him or her to an otherwise unfulfilling life or even a life of crime or violence. Just this kind of dismissal from an institution charted the difficult course and events in the life of Ralph Ellison‘s ―Invisible
Man.‖
If we also consider Heningburg in context of his institution, we understand that
Tuskegee was founded in the industrial tradition. African Americans at Tuskegee were trained to become good workers in Reconstruction and beyond. Philanthropy had both shaped the curriculum and ensured its existence. The institution from Booker T.
679 Ibid. 680 IbidIbid.: 388. 681 Ibid. 252 Washington and beyond had considered its mission to civilize and acculturate the rough- hewn of the race. As Washington said, ―One thing I felt more strongly convinced than ever, after spending this month in seeing the actual life of the colored people, and that was that, in order to lift them up, something must be done more than merely to imitate
New England education as it then existed.‖682
By 1936, Tuskegee had abandoned its strict industrial education, but Heningburg fashioned many of the curricular enhancements he offered in his article to the service professions.683 With many of the others in this yearbook, Heningburg argued for curricular aims that would encourage productive existence within the status quo of the
American social order.
W. A. Robinson, Principal, Laboratory High School, Atlanta University, mused over comments he heard from a South African educator visiting the American South for enlightenment. The educator, it seemed, could not understand why the African-American schools were not teaching the students as if they were Africans, reintroducing the argument of innate difference. Robinson promptly disassociated himself with this concept of difference but did consider, as others had done in this yearbook, the fact that in the
American curriculum there was ―…no rational technique for varying educational offerings to meet special group needs.‖684 In his article, Robinson reflected on the current circumstances and considered the ―peculiar‖ problems of African Americans and the
682 Washington, Up from Slavery, 82. 683 Heningburg, "What Shall We Challenge in the Existing Order?," 391. 684 Robinson, "What Peculiar Organization and Direction Should Characterize the Education of Negroes?," 393. 253 practical and pragmatic limitations of change in the American social order. Then
Robinson said something extraordinary:
We in the Negro schools must be courageous enough to arouse social unrest and a lively dissatisfaction with things as they are; we must be intelligent enough to help our students become socially wise. Our problem in the segregated schools is harder than the problem of other American teachers and, though we may need to seek our own devices, we must use the techniques of the best American educational practices.685
Robinson finally asked for both: (1) understand how to live in our present situation and (2) develop the dialog and even incite social unrest to change the social order. Robinson did so, not by asking for a separate curriculum or different aims, but by using the best theory and practice that was available to any educator in 1936. Robinson saw through a progressive educator‘s eyes. Robinson was an active contributor to JNE,
Phylon, and The School Review. Robinson was an advocate of progressive education and participated in the 1941 Secondary Schools Study Association of Colleges and Secondary
Schools for Negroes that developed summer seminars for African-American teachers that enabled the teachers to improve and create progressive curricula.686 While the attention to the student in relationship to his or her personal circumstance and local need were of critical importance to progressive educators, the encouragement to arouse social unrest was not a part of the central framework of progressivism.687
William Anthony Aery, Director of Education at the Hampton Institute, suggested that the topic that should be considered was not ―Negro Education,‖ but ―the education of
685Ibid Ibid.: 400. 686 W. A. Robinson, "A Secondary School Study," Phylon 5, no. 2 (1944). 687 Kridel, Stories of the Eight-Year Study: Reexamining Secondary Education in America, 124. 254 the Negro.‖ Aery noted the progress in education, including increasing professional standards for schools and teachers. Aery recognized the need to more adequately distribute the funds for education and believed that doing this would also serve to increase teacher qualifications and improve school infrastructure and equipment. Aery asked for enlightenment on ―How can American social education be re-organized to include the Negro group as a vital and integral part of American society?‖ He asked for a scientific approach for American education.688 What did this inclusion of the Negro group in society mean for W. A. Aery? Aery said, in effect, ―There are African
Americans (few in some) in every major occupation in 1936—why not include us in all elements of social planning?‖ He commented that ignorance of whites about nascent black leadership was just as much an issue as white antipathy or racial fear.689 Aery provided a subtle change in the discourse by acknowledging and encouraging the change that had occurred, especially in funding and accreditation. He did challenge the social order, however—not through revolution or social unrest, but by pointing out that the
African American had achieved a meager but equal share of the American dream in the number of occupations to which he or she could aspire. If that was the case, then there would be no further reason, other than ignorance of their gains, that whites could consider the previous social order‘s existence any longer. Not only was this a cogent argument, but also it refuted directly many of the majority arguments asserting that the great grandchildren of former tribesmen would need many generations to achieve the genteel
688 Aery, "New Emphases in the Education of Negroes," 401. 689 Ibid.: 402. 255 culture of the whites. Aery dismantled any argument of intellectual inferiority, puncturing the myth and the perceived reality of African-American place within the occupational hierarchy. In one sense, his argument said, ―Thanks for these things and keep them coming,‖ and in another, his argument provided empirical evidence that dismantled the hegemonic mythology. For schools, this meant not creating a second set of aims or curricula for African Americans but instead the continued scientific study of all American education. Aery‘s implication was that African Americans were already capitalizing on such a curriculum course through their penetration of the occupational barrier. Consider, too, that like Tuskegee, Aery‘s Hampton was chartered in the mold of industrial education and had been philanthropically funded. Aery crafted his premise not to anger whites, white philanthropists, or white boards of directors. He spoke empirically and asked these white leaders to mitigate their ignorance.
Thomas Jesse Jones was education director of the Phelps-Stokes Fund. Since
1915, the Phelps-Stokes Fund had pursued, along with The Education Board and others, the broader implementation of their concept of industrial education, which had first been modeled at Hampton and Tuskegee. As a former faculty member of Hampton, Jones understood the industrial education program he and those at other philanthropies wanted to introduce in Southern African-American schools.690 After a final failed attempt by the
690 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 256-57. 256 Julius Rosenwald Fund to build an industrial secondary school in New Orleans in 1930, the movement lost steam.691
Jones was one of the early advocates of ―social studies‖ in the school. In 2000,
Donald Johnson explained Jones‘s early thinking about the social order:
Jones was convinced that a hierarchical social organization with Anglo-Saxons at the top of the pyramid and all others standing on the lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder was genuinely "scientific." When those who were on the lower stages of evolution had completed their social studies curriculum, Jones believed they would understand that their present station in life (manual labor) was not the result of some racial prejudice on the part of Anglo-Saxons, but rather was rooted in the scientific realities of an inexorable evolution. If Negroes and Native Americans could understand this simple fact, they would be more likely to accept the present social stratification while at the same time justifiably hoping for future upward mobility once their race had "matured to the next state of social development." Jones rejected both the "radical southerner [who] maintains that the Negro is eternally inferior," as just as unscientific as the "radical Negro [who] maintains that his race is the equal to any race."692
Where was Jones in this debate in 1936? Jones acknowledged the ―…convenient and possibly justifiable term Negro Education…,‖ but suggested its segregative undertones had also discouraged those who believed in equality of aims and curricula for all.693 Jones recapped his studies of education in places around the world (Africa, Europe,
America) and concluded that ―…they are floundering in their propaganda preaching of patent medicines and social panaceas for a changing social order.‖694 Instead, Jones offered the following cure:
691 IbidIbid., 213. 692 Johnson, "W.E.B. Dubois, Thomas Jesse Jones and the Struggle for Social Education, 1900-1930," 80. 693 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 407. 694 Ibid. 257 The imperative need of all education at the present time is the sincere application of the principle of adapting all educational processes to wisely selected educational objectives based upon the needs of the individual and of society. [Emphasis in original]695
Jones then built his aims concept as including ―…hygiene and health..,‖
―…mastery of the resources and opportunities, in particular the agricultural and climactic ones from which a community must obtain its livelihood…,‖ ―…appreciation of neighbors of all races…,‖ ―…knowledge and mastery of a decent and comfortable domestic life without degradation or exploitation of women and children…,‖
―…knowledge and mastery of the art of recreation…,‖ ―…knowledge and appreciation of the great religious forces that have inspired…‖696
From The Cardinal Principles Report of 1918, Jones choose ―health,‖ ―good home membership,‖ and ―worthy use of leisure time.‖697 From the religious roots of the
Phelps-Stokes Fund, Jones drew ―religious forces.‖ Interestingly, Jones sought for all students the understanding of agriculture and other natural forces as they relate to the specific community in which they lived. Thus, the concept of understanding and relating education to the local community‘s structure, environment, and economic structure had a special meaning. For those philanthropists like Jones, the student was to be prepared for life in the community where he or she lived. Jones cited the Jeanes visiting teacher plan and the county training schools that were designed to provide training towards local conditions. These were in mostly rural areas and the centerpiece of the Phelps-Stokes
695 Ibid. 696 IbidIbid.: 407-08. 697 Kinglsley, "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education," 10-11. 258 philanthropy at the time.698 Jones said that, ―The underlying principle of these schools is the adaptation of education, whether industrial or literary, to the needs of the pupil and community.‖699
Jones had called his aims of education universal. Yet how could an agriculturally oriented aim be relevant to those who lived in the cities? The majority of African
Americans, especially in the South, were still assumed to be rural and agricultural. Thus,
Jones‘s universal aims were likely tilted towards his conception of the universality of educational aims for African Americans. This is not inconsistent with his earlier conception of race while at Hampton, as discussed by James D. Anderson:
…black students‘ view of race development were unnatural because blacks tended to interpret the social limitations imposed on them to be arbitrary and unjust. The Hampton faculty taught black students that the position of their race in the South was not the result of oppression but of the natural process of cultural evolution. In other words, blacks had evolved to a cultural stage that was two thousand years behind that of whites and, therefore, they were naturally the subordinate race.700
In 1936 Jones suggested that while teachers teach ―…the elementary phases of human society…,‖ they should not also avoid ―…becoming propagandist agents for views and programs on which there are legitimate differences of opinion.‖701 Yet at the same time, Jones said, ―That every school subject and every school act shall so far as possible be made to carry some appreciation of social essentials.‖702 Jones seemed to favor the status quo theory of living in a segregated world—leave the building of a new
698 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 410. 699 Ibid. 700 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 51. 701 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408. 702 Ibid. 259 social order to others (if there will be such a change) and concentrate on teaching what the students need to know in their existing social order. Nor was this concept different from his earlier remark: ―…they are floundering in their propaganda preaching of patent medicines and social panaceas for a changing social order.‖703 Jones explained how students might relate social essentials to math and the like, but he did not suggest that the schools answer the tough questions the African-American student might have regarding his or her place in society, the relative benefits of being white, and the moral and ethical dilemmas of segregation. Jones closed by pining for the early days of Negro education, of which he was a part, ―…which served the Negro people better than current opinion can possibly understand.‖704 This remarkable statement suggests the colonial nature of the philanthropists. The philanthropists knew the answers, and, by rejection of its aims and curricular premises, the African American was showing no debt of gratitude. Yet the philanthropists (along with the states) were the sources of money, especially in the South, that likely meant the difference between some education and no education.
Maudelle B. Bousfield had been principal at Stephen A. Douglas School,
Chicago, since 1929. Bousfield was the first black graduate of the University of Illinois and was married to Dr. Midian O. Bousfield, who later was appointed to the Chicago school board.705 Bousfield acknowledged that there was still an unanswered question of
703 Ibid. 704 Ibid. 705 Dionne Danns. "Something Better for Our Children: Black Organizing in Chicago Public Schools 1963- 1971." (Place Published: Routledge, 2003), http://books.google.com/books?id=8JybHqgpKAkC&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=maudelle+bousfield&sou rce=bl&ots=sOLpQa2lBe&sig=8zs_ypwOn8xJgW7aLffYdL0OGS8&hl=en&ei=hbcWS5HoL8uTlAeQpJ 260 whether the ―peculiar‖ problems of the Negro warranted a separate set of educational aims. Bousfield suggested that regardless of whether the school is in the South or the
North, the African American had not been well served in education.706 Bousfield recounted the empirical evidence of the economic plight of the African American in the
Depression and the invasion of whites into traditionally African-American jobs and occupations.707 Bousfield considered aims in context of the existing social order. Thus,
Bousfield would develop practical curriculum that not only dealt with the changing social order, but also contemplated the ―peculiar‖ problems of African Americans.708 Even so,
Bousfield called for more money and better teachers. The burning question for such a society was that, even with a substantial influx of money, more qualified teachers, and targeted practical curriculum, would this have been enough to improve conditions of society in such a way that the problems of the existing American social order could be altered to allow for more African-American participation in the American democracy?
Without a corresponding movement towards providing opportunity, no amount of education would condition the student for anything other than disappointment upon graduation. Even well-educated whites during the Depression found it difficult to find employment. The call for more money and better qualified teachers could also be considered an excuse for the performance of the primary and secondary schools. We have
DJBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CA4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=maudelle%2 0bousfield&f=false. 706 Maudelle B. Bousfield, "Redirection of the Education of Negroes in Terms of Social Needs," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 412. 707 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408, Bousfield, "Redirection of the Education of Negroes in Terms of Social Needs," 413. 708 Bousfield, "Redirection of the Education of Negroes in Terms of Social Needs," 413. 261 heard this common song nearly continuously: that if schools are given more money and better teachers, they will perform better and produce an ideal education for students.
There was a significant difference in funding schools in the South, but it has been acknowledged that there was similar funding in the North for both white and African-
American schools. Even so, Bousfield acknowledged failures in the Northern schools.
Again, more money has not proved to be the panacea or a cure for the ―peculiarities‖ of educative failures.
Elementary and Rural Education
The plight of the rural African American was exacerbated by both poverty and maldistribution. Critical race theory considers the problem of ―maldistribution‖ within its
―doctrine of spatial equality.‖ John O. Calmore explained, ―Efforts to improve life for poor blacks must now be redirected to create spatial equality in the sense that, even under conditions of segregation, the settings where blacks live should be improved so that blacks are not disadvantaged because of where they live.‖709
Towards this effort the educators in the JNE then turned.
Alethea Washington, professor of education at Howard University, began this section with a discussion of rural teachers and a critical analysis of the Mexican curriculum experiment. Washington was a frequent contributor to the JNE. Washington specialized in rural education and provided regular updates to the journal in a report called ―Rural Education.‖ For the 1936 yearbook, Washington had three objectives: (1) to
709 John O. Calmore, "Exploring the Significance of Race and Class in Representing the Black Poor," Or. L. Rev., no. 61 (1982): 237. 262 discuss the problem of reorganization and redirection, (2) to explain Mexico‘s plan for integrating and improving its schools, and (3) to outline what Washington thought were the steps to this reorganization.710 The problem Washington noted was the sheer size of the rural population that covered 36 percent of the entire nation.711 Washington, like the other authors in this yearbook who studied the rural population, explained that rural schools for African Americans were especially disadvantaged not only because teachers were not well paid and the classrooms and instruction were poor, but also their school day was shorter and their school year was shorter than urban schools.712
The JNE often contained articles on the education of persons of color in many parts of the globe. Washington brought to the 1936 yearbook a recent Mexican experiment. Early in the twentieth century, after liberation, Mexico had taken on the problem of illiteracy and its seemingly intractable poverty. Early efforts to eradicate illiteracy proved futile.713 Preferring not to endure the continuing segregation of the country‘s native population from those with European ancestry, it decided, in
Washington‘s words:
She [Mexico] realizes that integration means the incorporation and assimilation of the large Indian population rather than its segregation and sacrifice; that integration means a cultural incorporation of a neglected, backward, indigenous people,—an
710 Washington, "The American Problem of Rural Education," 420. 711 Ibid. 712 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408, Washington, "The American Problem of Rural Education," 422. 713 Washington, "The American Problem of Rural Education," 424. 263 incorporation that uses its foundation-stone the Indian‘s traditional culture, that preserves his self-respect and that makes use of his hereditary and acquired talents.714
Rather than use a U.S. state-style patchwork system of educational governance,
Mexico took a national review of the problem. Mexico used the school both in an educative manner and as a community acculturation center.715 This concept was not far from the Jeanes teachers and their community centers. The difference was control and financing. The Mexican federal government financed the schools, which, if handled properly, would be more or less egalitarian.716 Alethea Washington suggested that while there were many problems that the Mexicans had not solved, this approach was ―…an example of a method of attack characterized by a straight thinking, willing to be scientific, and courage not only to face the real issue, but to face it forthrightly.‖717
Rather than suffer through the inequities and iniquities of segregation, Mexico used its federal government to consider integration. However, it had not fought a war for and against slavery. Yet, the executive branch of the U.S. government had done little to address the integration issue because this would have proved quite difficult with both the legislative and judicial branches‘ being hostile towards the subject. Even so, Alethea
Washington called for such an intervention, but on behalf of the rural resident (white or black).718 Alethea Washington suggested that more research was necessary. Like other writers in this yearbook and in the JNE, Washington called for recognition of the ―…life
714 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408, Washington, "The American Problem of Rural Education," 425-26. 715 Washington, "The American Problem of Rural Education," 426. 716 Ibid. 717 Ibid.: 427. 718 Ibid.: 428. 264 needs of individual communities…‖ including health, home, leisure, and cultural needs.719 Alethea Washington considered that this research into life needs would lead to
―…restatements of the aims of rural education in terms of better and richer living for the group and the individual.‖720 Alethea Washington‘s discourse is only slightly different from that of others in this study who considered rural education. Alethea Washington put all rural people into a single category and did not single out the African American for separate treatment. Alethea Washington also called for research and even ethnography to more scientifically identify the needs and aims associated with discrete rural cultures.721
Finally, Alethea Washington considered the Mexican concept of using the school as a community center of learning.
From the secondary school, we turn to the philanthropist Leo M. Favrot, general field agent of the General Education Board (GEB) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The GEB was funded in part by grants from Rockefeller. The GEB was a quasi-governmental agency that provided field agents to work with African-American schools to improve their curricula and other practices under legal authority from the states. The General
Education Board received little instruction from the states on how to conduct its mission and, with the Phelps-Stokes Fund and others, was a long-time proponent of industrial education.722
719 Ibid. 720 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408, Washington, "The American Problem of Rural Education," 429. 721 Washington, "The American Problem of Rural Education," 428. 722 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 132-33. 265 Like Thomas Jesse Jones, Favrot called for ―…adjustment to the curriculum and of pupil activities to the educational needs of the individual and the region served.‖723 To bolster his point on regionalization, Favrot noted that at the time of this publication, half of the African-American children in the rural schools came from farms and attended one-, two-, or three-teacher schools.724 Even with the significant migration of African
Americans to the Southern cities before the Depression, Favrot could not envision a future in 1944 in which 50 percent of African Americans lived in cities.725
Yet in the end, Favrot called for the rural teacher to work with the Jeanes funds and other rural outreach organizations ―…for the small rural school to play its part in making rural community life more attractive and satisfying.‖726 Nor was this approach much different from the earlier and now-discredited industrial education approach.727
One of the problems of industrial education was its prescriptiveness. When the
Rosenwald Fund tried to establish an industrial arts trade school in Little Rock, Arkansas,
Superintendent R. C. Hall suggested that there were no industrial jobs available in the city for African Americans and that previous attempts at introducing such courses had been unsuccessful.728 However, Favrot, by suggesting that most of the rural African-
723 Favrot, "How the Small Rural School Can More Adequately Serve Its Community," 433. 724 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408, Favrot, "How the Small Rural School Can More Adequately Serve Its Community," 431. 725 Frazier, "The Role of Negro Schools in the Post-War World," 469. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 202. 726 Favrot, "How the Small Rural School Can More Adequately Serve Its Community," 438. 727 Even in 1917, Leo M. Favrot observed that there was such rural black teacher opposition to industrial training it was difficult to bring this course of study to Arkansas. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 142. 728 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408, Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 207. 266 American students came from farms, asked others to assume that there was a direct connection to the occupation of farming as the eventual occupation of most students.
This, of course, assumed that African Americans were somehow tied to place as they were in slavery.
Favrot and the GEB had funded a program to rate all public schools through the auspices of the SACSS (Southern Association for Colleges and Secondary Schools). The result in 1933 was, as Adam Fairclough suggested:
To the disgust of black teachers, however, the two ratings, A and B, turned out to be virtually synonymous with white and black. White institutions received A ratings; nearly all black schools were ―berated.‖729
While Favrot preached the use of the community and its environment in the instructional process, he still considered the end—the job that the students must consider in light of their place in the social order and community of birth or residence. Thus,
Favrot‘s aims were consistent with the outcomes: train for place and station in life and within that specific community, and don‘t look beyond. This likely produced with the philanthropists‘ partners—the Southern State Education Boards—a form of détente in which the philanthropists would not invade the South‘s conception of place, separation, and strict locationality for African Americans, but would provide for their basic educative needs to make them more productive sharecroppers and laborers.
Favrot experienced backlash after he spoke to NAACP in 1919 and in 1920 after lectures at Southern University to address ―the Negro question.‖ As Fairclough said, ―His
729 Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South, 331. 267 actions set off a storm of criticism and [Georgia] State Superintendent told him in no uncertain terms, ‗The time is not right for [radical or even progressive] public utterances of this kind.‘‖730
Edwin Embree was president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which built many of the school buildings in the South before the Depression. Embree maintained the fund‘s later skepticism towards the old ―manual training‖ concepts.731 Yet as late as 1930,
Embree and the Rosenwald Fund tried to develop industrial trade schools in both Little
Rock and New Orleans that, even after offers of significant funding, were rejected by local communities as being inappropriate for their needs.732
In his 1936 contribution to the yearbook, Embree suggested that there was an equality of curriculum, scope, and aims between white and black schools despite the inequalities in funding. Yet, because of lower funding levels, African-American schools had lower standards and substandard conditions.733 Because of this equality of aims,
Embree suggested: ―Probably it is a good thing that no attempt was made to build up a different kind of education for the ‗new race‘.‖734 Yet how could this be: with identical aims, curricula, and scope, they were both the same but with lower standards for African
Americans? Previous authors had recounted numerous differences, including poorly trained teachers, larger classrooms, and a shorter school year. How, even if the aims for
730 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408, Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South, 328. 731 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 214. 732 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408, Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 221. 733 Embree, "Education for Rural Life," 439. 734 Ibid. 268 both white and African-American students were the same, could they be fully realized by students subjected to lower standards and substandard conditions? What was Embree‘s response to this dilemma? Embree‘s solutions were no different than Thomas Jesse
Jones‘s and Leo Favrot‘s argument: give the rural student what he or she needed to live rurally. Create a curriculum to help students ―…plan for making a living and for a satisfying life on the farm and in rural areas generally.‖735 Embree urged the agricultural schools to turn their attention to agriculture and not just teachers. He wanted the agricultural schools to turn out teachers who could teach the rural student the skills of agricultural and rural existence.736 The specific aims of such a rural education would include reading, writing, farming, manual dexterity, and health.737 Yet farming would not be a manual or vocational subject, but ―The education here should be just as general as that in reading or arithmetic or other present school subjects.‖738 Embree clarified this point by suggesting that the business of farming should be discussed in connection with math and economics and that biology courses would consider the local animal husbandry and crop biology. Yes, and for the girls, ―Cooking, dressmaking, and housekeeping are natural partners to carpentry and planting [for the boys].‖739 All this was nothing but more of the same that Favrot and Jones had outlined in their contributions to the yearbook. Curriculum was tied to place; future occupations were assumed; and, in fact, what Embree proposed was little different from an industrial education curriculum for the
735 Ibid. 736 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408, Embree, "Education for Rural Life," 441. 737 Embree, "Education for Rural Life," 442-43. 738 Ibid.: 443. 739 Ibid.: 444. 269 industry called agriculture. While it was more of the same, it better explained how the skills and business of farming could become core subjects of the curriculum and how all the other subjects would use rural and agricultural examples in their presentation. The philanthropists hung on to their conception of race, place, and the nonacademic nature of their specially branded curriculum. While they altered their presentation over time to counter their frequent critics, their objectives appeared to be the same, and they seemed not to be cognizant of the significant changes that were occurring in the African-
American community from such activities as migration.
As Professor of Rural Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, Mabel
Carney was in a position to consider the concept of rural education not only for African
Americans but also for whites. Carney noted that in 1930, 44 percent of the population was classified as rural, with 20 percent of the white and 39 percent of the African-
American populations classified as farmers.740 Like the philanthropists, Carney wanted to create an educational system for rural youth that was experiential and would prepare them for rural life, most likely as farmers. To expand on Embree‘s, Jones‘s, and Favrot‘s concept of rural and agricultural education, Carney brought in the experience of the child in:
…the intimate contact and exposure to the phenomena of the natural environment as plants, animals, birds, stars, streams, weather, and…those resulting from the educative
740 Mabel Carney, "Desirable Rural Adaptations in the Education of Negroes," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 448. 270 values of practical farm living and manual work as chores, gardening, household duties, and the care of livestock.741
Carney suggested that her concept of rural education would not make the rural youth different from other children. However, because the curriculum was geared towards their experience, it would be more relevant. Yet Carney cautioned that any change in the curriculum to reflect rural needs must be scientifically based or it might go too far.742 For African-American students, Carney suggested special adaptations of the curriculum to offset deficiencies such as inferiority complexes, and:
Against which instruction in racial history and achievement should be provided. Chief of the assets mentioned are the social solidarity and understanding of a wronged people, and the rich motivation and achievement these make possible in the fields of literature art, and music.743
These adaptations would not condone, ―…segregation as a principle, but would merely recognize existing forces and attempt to overcome their evil influences while in operation, working consistently for their eradication.‖744
In his review of the career of Mabel Carney, Richard Glotzer elaborated in 1996:
While rejecting segregation conceptually, Carney was pragmatic and did not risk alienating those with more conventional views by stridently advocating its abolition. Instead, like many of her colleagues at Teachers College, she viewed racial progress in
741 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408, Carney, "Desirable Rural Adaptations in the Education of Negroes," 450. 742 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408, Carney, "Desirable Rural Adaptations in the Education of Negroes," 451. 743 Carney, "Desirable Rural Adaptations in the Education of Negroes," 452. 744 Ibid. 271 the context of an evolving cultural pluralism permitting points of contact between the races, especially between better educated individuals.745
To summarize, Mabel Carney agreed with the philanthropists that there needed to be a separate rural curriculum, but, for her, this should be for black and white students and this should be scientifically based rather than coming from conjecture. At the same time, it was possible to use the environment to exemplify the curriculum that was also in concert with the philanthropists. Yet Carney differed by suggesting that the African-
American curriculum could be used to reduce the inherent inferiority complex of the subaltern. Carney‘s rationale that a suppressed people were better served to produce quality art as a result of their oppression seems a bit contrived. While it suggested that consulting the artists of the present and past might engage the students in the dialogue of oppression, racism, and the morals and ethics of segregation, it also does so in a way that suggested a stereotypical representation of the accomplishments of African Americans, ignoring their scientific, medical, political, sociological, and educational accomplishments.
While Carney went farther than the philanthropists in consideration of the scientific aspects of curriculum making, she too did not anticipate the significant upheavals of the later 1930s and 1940s, which eviscerated the rural agricultural populations in both North and South. As a result of migration, many of her target students would need to become urban students or workers for whom different relevancies and
745 Richard Glotzer, "The Career of Mabel Carney: The Study of Race and Rural Development in the United States and South Africa," The International Journal of African Historical Studies 29, no. 2 (1996): 311. 272 understanding of the environment would be required. Carney represented those in the status quo when she suggested that while segregation must be eradicated, it must be lived with and that a brand of educational aim that considers life within the present environment must be part of the equation. Again, there seemed to be reluctance on
Carney‘s part to develop curricula that would engage the student in becoming an active agent to change the American social order.
Ullin W. Leavell, professor of education at George Peabody College for Teachers, studied what we might call today ―the achievement gap.‖ Leavell looked at the data and found that African Americans scored relatively low as compared to whites in achievement tests, but that he agreed with Charles H. Thompson‘s 1928 quotation that:
The mental and scholastic achievements of Negro children, as with white children, are, in the main a direct function of their environment and school opportunities rather than a function of some inherent differences in mental ability.746
Nor did Ullin W. Leavell completely accept the data, suggesting that more needed to be done to test the validity of these tests against children with different backgrounds and experiences.747 Leavell‘s was one of the few studies that looked at the issues of difference in experience and achievement scientifically. Through his studies, Leavell found ―…sharp contrasts between the responses of the Negro and the white children.‖748
Leavell noted difference in the preferences of students for certain subjects and a rejection of subjects tangentially associated with industrial curriculum such as tobacco,
746 Leavell, "Needed Redirection of Elementary Education for Negroes," 455. 747 Ibid. 748 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 408, Leavell, "Needed Redirection of Elementary Education for Negroes," 456. 273 mining, and dairy.749 Leavell considered the problems associated with the predominance of memoriter instruction in the schools. Leavell gave examples of readers in Southern schools that contained stereotypical characters from Southern farming and noted that otherwise, the texts generally deprecated the African American. Leavell concluded with the statement, ―An analysis of these graphs reveals that the disparity between white and
Negro children is almost constant or universal in regard to the factors studied.‖750 These factors included states, community size, and other considerations. Leavell asked the educational community not just to consider the macro issues of funding and teacher quality when considering the reorganization and redirection of Negro Education but also to dig deeper into the quality and types of instruction and to consider the way in which texts are written and how they depict various people. Leavell asked the educators to evaluate educative materials for their relevance to individuals living in different types of communities. Beyond this, Leavell confirmed that the disparity between white and
African-American schools was likely due to definitive pedagogical causes that should be investigated further. Leavell provided no prescriptive but asked the other educators to develop tools to scientifically analyze the causes for difference and, after those causes had been identified, to develop the appropriate solutions.
749 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 457. 750 Ibid.: 408, Leavell, "Needed Redirection of Elementary Education for Negroes," 463. 274 Higher Education
Buell Gordon Gallagher, a protégé of William Heard Kilpatrick,751 was President of Talladega College, which had a long history and religious roots as an African-
American institution. Gallagher suggested that:
Segregation in education is our handicap and our opportunity. Designed as a tool of discrimination, the segregated school can be used as an agency of justice. Paradoxically, to the extent that it succeeds in improving the opportunity segregation gives to it, the racial school will tend to make itself unnecessary. For the only justification of segregation in education is that such separation makes possible the achievement of educational objectives not otherwise attainable, chief among which is advancement of the subordinate group to the point where the segregated school becomes interracial.752
Yet Buell Gordon Gallagher noted that the very fact that the improvement of the
African American school presented a dilemma, ―The dilemma confronting us is that it is difficult to know when one is strengthening segregation by fighting it, and one is fighting segregation by strengthening it.‖ [emphasis in original]753 Thus, Gallagher argued, if black schools were made equal to white schools, would doing so constitute surrender to the companion to segregation, ―separate but equal‖ at the expense of justice?754 Yet
Gallagher gave the advantage to the separate school, for the moment, in that it (likely not also the white schools) could work towards changing society both within the African-
American community and the American social order itself.755 The question was whether this was a ―best of both worlds‖ scenario for the aims of the African-American school. If
751 Ronald K. Goodenow, "The Southern Progressive Educator on Race and Pluralism: The Case of William Heard Kilpatrick," History of Education Quarterly 21, no. 2 (1981): 155. 752 Buell Gordon, "Reorganize the College to Discharge Its Social Function," 464. 753 Ibid. 754 Ibid. 755 Ibid.: 465. 275 so, how broadly would it be accepted in both communities? There were very few colleges not established by philanthropies. Of these, some were founded by Northern industrial philanthropies, quite often with industrial education in mind. The earlier schools, founded right after the Civil War, were chartered by religious groups and institutions. These groups tended to favor a traditional academic approach to education. James D. Anderson noted:
The black teachers, school officials, and secular and religious leaders who formed the vanguard of the postwar [Civil War] common school movement insisted that the ex- slaves must educate themselves, gather experience, and acquire a responsible awareness of the duties incumbent upon them as citizens and as male voters in the new social order.756
From many of these common schools were charted African-American institutes, colleges, and universities in the same mold. Yet, many of these institutions later disappeared as funding and interest by religious institutions waned.757 Those that remained continued in their religious but more academic tradition than the Hamptons or
Tuskegees that favored industrial curricula. Given their background and relationship to the Southern white leadership, the schools founded by Northern philanthropies were more tied to the status quo than those founded by religious institutions.
Given this context, it is possible that Buell Gordon Gallagher believed he could suggest that the schools:
In terms of the colleges for Negroes, this means that the organizing objective of a college in our segregated society will need to include an explicit and direct effort to
756 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, 28. 757 Ibid., 30. 276 cultivate a strategy for minority group action—even more, for the action of a minority within that minority group.758
Gallagher considered that if the mission of the school was tied to the end of segregation then it could have had a calculable influence over the social order itself and not just the separate school. This was a bold strategy for a Southern African-American college leader of the time. Yet, Gallagher said, that to do this, first the schools themselves would have to throw off their often autocratic leadership and become more democratic.
Gallagher reasoned that without democracy, the students would not have the desire or ability to attack the social order.759 To bolster this assertion, Gallagher said, ―The College which aims to discharge its social function must remake itself after the pattern of the society that is to be.‖760 While calling for such action, Gallagher provided no suggestion as to where to go beyond making the school democratic.
Rufus E. Clement was dean of the Louisville Municipal College for Negroes.
Clement set the stage for his article by defining the present etiquette for who could attend or teach at either the white or the African American school. From there, Clement considered the history of African-American colleges, from the Freedmen‘s Bureau forward.761 Clement lamented that while the society in 1936 was decidedly different than
1865, the schools were producing the same product—teachers and a few leaders. This paucity of diversity Clement attributed to the lack of experimentation in the schools.762
758 Buell Gordon, "Reorganize the College to Discharge Its Social Function," 467. 759 Ibid.: 472. 760 Ibid. 761 Clement, "Redirection and Reorganization of the College for Negroes," 474-75. 762 Ibid.: 476. 277 Clement‘s point considered the African-American college community of the time as one with a consistent philosophy, curriculum, and aims. Fashioned in and from segregation, the African-American school was likely run by a white board of directors. In the South, the meaning of segregation was not just of separation but of place. Within that place— which was narrow and confining—how could there be anything other than a cookie-cutter approach to education? The colleges, as Clement suggested, ―…have simply never had sufficient funds for this sort of thing. Conformist, therefore, they had to be.‖763 Rufus
Clement called for a change in the basic mission of the school, ―They forget that the major function of education is to prepare people for life,—life as it is as well as life we should like it to be.‖764 Notice that Rufus Clement did not go as far as Buell Gordon
Gallagher to ask the college to become the instrument of change.
Rufus Clement, later the first African American elected to the Atlanta school board, was considered a token765 by whites. In1991 Anton Hornsby commented on
Clement‘s seeming pragmatism:
While he represented only the city's Third Ward, he became known as the board member of all of Atlanta's blacks. No matter what part of black Atlanta he appeared in, he was invariably introduced, particularly by whites, as "your board member." Yet he did very little in the segregation years to challenge the status quo. He did oppose the original
763 Ibid. 764 Ibid.: 478. 765 ―Tokenism masks racism and sexism by admitting a small number of previously excluded individuals to institutions. At the same time, a system of tokenism masks barriers of entry to others. Tokenism is therefore a symbolic equality‖ Linda S. Greene, "Tokens, Role Models, and Pedagogical Politics: Lamentations of an African American Female Law Professor," Berkeley Women's L.J. 6 (1990-1991): 82.. 278 "freedom of choice" desegregation plan, but voted for it in the interest of moving the process along. He won much respect among whites for his demeanor.766
Robert P. Daniel, president of Shaw University, asked the African-American colleges to become more efficient in their use of their facilities and their extracurricular activities in light of providing character development for students.767 Like Rufus
Clement, Robert P. Daniel decried the lack of differentiation in the curriculum between schools.768 Daniel suggested that the accreditation ratings that colleges received were only a partial assessment of their performance. Daniel asked the schools to consider their efficiency by reviewing the success or failure of their graduates as community leaders.769
This concept of assessment of graduate performance as leaders added a new dimension to the discourse. Nor was this a subject that was well considered in later issues of the JNE during the period of this study.
Robert P. Daniel suggested that while many courses were free from racial overtone (and as such the same as what would be prepared for whites), that there was a need to,
…offer courses which will acquaint them with the best thought and research relating to racial psychology, race relations, Negro history and literature, labor problems, vocational occupations, and other courses which relate to aspects of problems of racial differentiations into which he is inevitably thrown.770
Daniel then said:
766 Alton Hornsby, Jr., "Black Public Education in Atlanta, Georgia, 1954-1973: From Segregation to Segregation," The Journal of Negro History 76, no. 1/4 (1991): 42. 767 Robert P. Daniel, "One Consideration of Redirection of Emphasis of the Negro College," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 479-82. 768 Ibid.: 481. 769 Ibid.: 482. 770 Ibid.: 483. 279 After all, the success of the Negro college graduate is judged in regard to three types of measures: intra-racial achievement, bi-racial adaptation, and inter-racial advancement.771
In this contrived social order, the white graduate only had to prove intra-racial achievement. The gauntlet of additional assessments required of African Americans included the ability to adapt to the American social order and somehow find the means, as a final hurdle, to show success as it related to whites.
Paulo Freire explained this problem as one of duality and violence:
A particular problem is the duality of the oppressed: they are contradictory, divided beings, shaped by and existing in a concrete situation of oppression and violence. Any situation which ―A‖ objectively exploits ―B‖ or hinders his and her pursuit of self- affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence, even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes with the individual‘s ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human. With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? How could they be the sponsors of something whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation.772
The violence in the discourse in this study comes not only from the circumstances of the oppression that Freire describes, but from the notion that it consumes valuable conversation and intellectual energy from a productive discourse about the science of education beyond segregation.
Kelly Miller, then Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Howard University, also explored the university but in, ―…the light of changing conditions.‖ Miller pointed out
771 Ibid. 772 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 55. 280 that most of the African American higher institutions were founded by clergy and headed, in many cases, by Doctors of Divinity—not Ph.Ds.773 Miller suggested that any reorganization must take care not to lose, ―…the underlying moral value which the missionaries implanted…‖774 This reorganization Kelly Miller envisioned was the conversion from institutions run and taught and controlled by whites, to African
American institutions run by African Americans.775 In fact, Miller wanted to eliminate a third of the colleges and focus them on curricula that would train for the occupations that
African Americans could aspire to. But Kelly Miller would also leave to the white schools any graduate education programs.776 Miller urged the black aspirant to college to go to the white institutions for the best instruction that could be offered, but do so after two years in an African American institution in order to, ―…by contact with racial life for developing in him a fixed attitude of racial devotion and service.‖777 Miller‘s reorganized college seems to have the elements of a junior college, a trade school, and a finishing school. While preparing the student for select occupations, it also prepared the student to exist in the social order prescribed for him/her. The African American college was but the first step. Should he/she choose to go on, he/she should attend the better white institutions where the quality instruction would begin.
773 Miller, "The Reorganization of the Higher Education of the Negro in Light of Changing Conditions," 485. 774 Ibid.: 491. 775 Ibid.: 490. 776 Ibid.: 492. 777 Ibid. 281 Through August Meier, W. D. Wright said that Kelly Miller, ―…was a leader whose instincts favored moderation, reasonableness, and harmony, and whose preferred terrain was the common ground between extreme positions.‖778 A fan of Booker T.
Washington, Kelly Miller shared with Washington the idea that improvements should be made in rural society rather than encourage the African American to move to the cities where there were not yet jobs for them.779 Yet, Miller suggested that African Americans attend the white schools, where they would be exposed to the temptations of the cities and the lure to the educational tracks that could prepare them for city occupations. Yet,
W. D. Wright would probably suggest that this was not inconsistent with Kelly Miller‘s philosophy because Miller wanted these same students to return and become entrepreneurs in their rural communities.780 This, of course, would create stronger
African American communities in areas where they were most populous in the early third of the twentieth century.
Special Phases
Fred D. Patterson, president of the Tuskegee Institute,781 considered the redirection of vocational education. Patterson noted that in 1932, 28 percent of employable African Americans were employed as personal or domestic servants.782 So,
778 W. D. Wright, "The Thought and Leadership of Kelly Miller," Phylon (1960-) 39, no. 2 (1978): 180. 779 Ibid.: 183. 780 Ibid. 781 Later Patterson would be one of the Founders of the United Negro College Fund. John T. McQuiston, "Frederick D. Patterson, Founder of Negro College Fund, Dies at 86," New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/27/obituaries/frederick-d-patterson-founder-of-negro-college-fund-dies- at-86.html?pagewanted=1. 782 Fred D. Patterson, "Avenues of Redirection in Vocational Education," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 496. 282 naturally to improve the lot of the 28 percent there should be, ―…a program of practical economics for service employees but one of a number of the lines of effort looking to the conservation of wealth.‖783 Yet, Patterson did not suggest a separate curriculum for domestic service, ―…not at least as the initial step…,‖ because, frankly it had been offered with few takers.784 However, the extension schools should consider short courses on these and other subjects. At the same time, it would be important to teach the budding entrepreneur in the shoe repairing business how to block hats, which, of course would,
―…encourage to add to their businesses such adjuncts as shoe shining parlors to round out the development.‖785 Patterson suggested that he would have liked to see more done for those in traditional domestic and service jobs. From teaching them how to live within their means, to how to diversify their shoe repair business, Patterson wanted the colleges to consider other than the academic side of their mission. However, Patterson noted that students in these schools had long rejected education in the service arts. They wanted academic education.
There are a number of possible reasons for the continuing push for industrial education by educators and the resistance from students. First, though there were more than 100 African American colleges, as has been previously noted by the authors in the yearbook, there was limited diversity in curricula. There simply was not the kind of specialization available in the white institutions and the African-American junior college network was still small. Second, while a smaller percentage of African Americans
783 Ibid. 784 Ibid. 785 Ibid.: 497. 283 matriculated into college, these were likely the most motivated academically and had aspiration beyond domestic and service jobs. Third, the schools themselves wanted to serve the African-American community and looked for ways of improving the lot of all who entered the workplace. Yet, they had neither the fiscal nor teaching resources to do all they envisioned was necessary. Finally, the push for industrial education had not yet dimmed in white eyes and many of the boards of directors at institutions were white.
Some of these directors were associated with the Northern philanthropies that espoused the concept, or were white Southerners who believed in the social order as it existed.
N.C. Newbold was Director, Division of Negro Education in North Carolina.
Newbold asked for more money, especially for rural schools.786 This included understanding the economics of consolidated schools and school transportation so that more children could attend.787 Finally, Newbold wanted to convince the taxpayer, ―…that the education and training of Negro children, like the education and training of other children, is a wise, safe investment of public funds.‖788 Taxpayer funds were subject to distribution in the South by white school boards and superintendents. The distribution of funds for African American schools and teachers was significantly less than whites.
While the Jeanes and Rosenwald fund contributed to and built many schools across the
South it was not enough. Often local African Americans contributed land, money, building material, and labor to build and maintain local schools. N. C. Newbold asked the
786 N. C. Newbold, "More Money for and More Emphasis Upon Negro Education;--Not Reorganization and Redirection," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 507. 787 Ibid.: 506. 788 Ibid.: 507. 284 taxpayer for more of the fair share for the rural African American to reduce this ―double taxation.‖789
Ambrose Caliver, Senior Specialist in the Education of Negroes, U. S. Office of
Education, directed his attention at the teacher.790 Caliver assumed first that the aims of education for all students are the same in the American democracy. Even so, there could be a difference in curriculum for African Americans to consider their ―economic needs.‖
He also assumed that regardless of whether the student is in a segregated state or not, the state of the school is about the same and needs reorganization. His final assumption was that, should the society abolish segregation or the African Americans become truly independent, the schools need reorganization.791 Caliver called for money, better school facilities, more teachers, and for ideas on how to reduce the dropout rate for African
Americans: by the fifth grade 75 percent of all eligible African American students had dropped out.792
789 Newbold was also involved with an experiment being considered in professional education in North Carolina. According to William B. Thomas: Another factor contributing to the demise of the experiment s planned was the apparent lack of enthusiastic support by a strategic person to the proposal. Commission member N. C. Newbold, Supervisor of Negro Education in North Carolina, contested the idea in the formative stages, positing that the experiment would require "large sums of money" and that black leaders had been mistaken in their "impression that North Carolina is operating a full-fledged medical college at Chapel Hill. Signaling his reservations to Odum, Newbold, also under the thumb of the state legislature, wrote, "We shall want to give careful consideration to this whole question, which will involve many angles." To research a problem had become a code word for deferring action, as did happen when Newbold wrote to Odum, "the proposed program of Graduate Studies for Negroes will require some study - perhaps some research." William B. Thomas, "Conservative Currents in Howard Washington Odum's Agenda for Social Reform in Southern Race Relations, 1930-1936," Phylon (1960-) 45, no. 2 (1984): 128.
790 Caliver‘s specialty was adult literacy. Laverne 791 Caliver, "The Role of the Teacher in the Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education," 509. 792 Ibid.: 510. 285 To improve teaching, Caliver encouraged teacher participation in any curriculum reorganization project. Caliver asked teachers to, ―…cultivate a better professional spirit.‖793 Within this, the teacher should consider the physician who first diagnoses and then treats and at the same time the teacher should approach the students both
―…sympathetically and scientifically.‖794 Next, the teacher needed a ―…philosophic attitude…‖ to ―…synthesize and humanize existing knowledge.‖795 They also need courage and should, ―Dare to Be Different!‖ [emphasis in original]796 Finally Caliver suggested:
We need an emancipator today to free us from the bondage of unorganized, disorganized, and misdirected education; and from blind imitation of others. This time, however, if there be an emancipator, it will not be a Lincoln, nor a New England missionary, but it will be Negro teachers themselves.797
While Caliver did acknowledge the need for better funding, he suggested that the teachers themselves had the power to change education. In the chapter, ―How Schools
Change Reforms‖ in Tinkering Toward Utopia, David Tyack and Larry Cuban suggested that when faced with reforms, ―…educators often responded by turning reforms into something they had already learned how to do,‖ and that teachers have a ―…wisdom of practice…‖ that allows them to adapt to reforms to, ―…seek to create coherence where it counts the most—in classroom instruction.‖798 Yet Ambrose Caliver did not ask the teachers to wait for such reforms but to energize their base and become the engine of
793 Ibid.: 512. 794 Ibid.: 512-13. 795 Ibid.: 514. 796 Ibid.: 515. 797 Ibid.: 516. 798 Tyack, Tinkering toward Utopia, 64. 286 change. However, Caliver was vague on how they should do this outside of becoming better teachers in their own classroom.
Ambrose Caliver was the last of the contributors to the main body of work in the
1936 yearbook. What follows are the four critiques of these submissions by Charles H.
Judd, David A. Lane, Jr., E. George Payne, and E. Franklin Frazier.
Critical Summary of the Yearbook
Charles H. Judd, Chairman, Department of Education, University of Chicago lamented that the contributions to the yearbook were, ―…abstractness, an absence of tangible planning, a lack of direction in which reform is to move if it is to be effective which leave the reader with the conviction that there is a sharp difference between the ability to recognize problems and the genius to solve them…‖799
Judd suggested that solutions must come from within the system—with existing equipment and people. Judd asked, ―Why is it difficult to see that Negroes will have to improve what Negroes are now doing if the high ambitions which are eloquently set forth in the Yearbook are to be attained?‖800 To get practical, Judd suggested, build, ―…23 first class lessons prepared by eminent authors ready and suitable for use in schools.‖801 But it is reading for which Judd was most concerned, ―…make the next generation better readers.‖802 Judd suggested that the acquisition of a vocation was a much simpler task
799 Charles H. Judd, "The Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education: A Critical Comment," The Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 3 (1936): 517. 800 Ibid. 801 Ibid.: 518. 802 Ibid.: 519. 287 than becoming a good reader.803 Charles H. Judd had very specific beliefs about the scientific nature of curriculum according to an editorial comment in a 1983 The School
Review article that reflected on work completed by him in 1910:
Judd's belief in education's susceptibility to "scientific‖ scrutiny colored both the hiring practices at Chicago and the editorial content of the School Review. In this article, rather than offering a theoretical defense of educational science's relevance, Judd offers five empirical examples of its applicability to secondary education. He demonstrates how to relate "natural" or "grammatical" language instruction to student attainments, how variations in grading practices between teachers and between schools affected student performance, how "the type of training gained in recitation is related to that gained in silent study," how to determine whether education in one subject provides a general training (or to use a contemporary term, to determine whether "formal discipline" exists), and finally how a curriculum (he specifically cited science) might be improved by measuring the effects of proposed modifications.804 419
Charles H Judd made a point in 1936. The yearbook contained a lot of rhetoric about change and reinvigorating the curriculum—but lacked substance on what to do and contained few references to actual success stories. Perhaps these were the wrong educators to ask for such items. This might also have been a systemic issue. Complaints about complacency, lack of experimentation and cookie cutter curriculum at the college level indicated a lack of scientific investigation into how to make a stronger curriculum.
Yet the contributors to this yearbook did dig deeply into the nature of curriculum and its aims associated with the social order or to change the social order. Thus a theoretical discussion of aims was robust, but from this yearbook there was not a lot of contribution to the curricula itself other than at a very high level. The specter of
803 Ibid.: 520. 804 Charles H. Judd, "" On the Scientific Study of High School Problems," Charles H. Judd [1910]," American Journal of Education 91, no. 4 (1983): 419. 288 segregation, money, oppression, and the two democracies—white and black—seemed to shadow all discussion in the Journal. In this sense, the discourse was less robust than what could have been. Paulo Freire can inform us in this matter:
The central problem is this: How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? Only as they discover themselves to be ―hosts‖ of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy. As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible. The pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization.805 The works of the yearbook run the gamut from ―making the best of it‖ within the social order to others who recognized its duality and who rejected the social order. While decrying memoriter education (Freire‘s Banking),806 they did not propose studied, scientifically based alternatives.
David A. Lane, Jr., dean of the West Virginia State College, commended the contributors for the ―…general evenness, clarity, and cogency of their discussions.‖807
Lane acknowledged that the broad message of the writers was firmly situated in the segregated school system at all levels.808 Lane found three implications from the yearbook. First that the African-American school needed to, ―…adopt and accomplish special social objectives because of the Negro‘s distinctive problems.‖809 Yet, Lane suggested that the schools had not yet recognized these needs and, because of this,
805 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 48. 806 Ibid., 72. 807 Lane, "Some Major Implications of the Fifth Yearbook of the Journal of Negro Education," 521. 808 Ibid.: 522. 809 Ibid. 289 redirection was in order.810 Second was the lack of money. Third, Lane gleaned from the articles the need for the absorption of the African-American school into the mainstream.811 This last implication was somewhat at odds with the need for the adoption of additional education because of ―peculiar‖ needs. However, if these ―peculiar‖ needs were derived directly from the segregative state of the social order, then the elimination of these conditions would abrogate the need for such separate curricula. To do this would involve the changing of the social order and the white vision of its institution. Once again
Paulo Freire can provide guidance:
It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. The latter, as an oppressive class, can free neither others nor themselves…If the goal of the oppressed is to become fully human, they will not achieve their goal by merely reversing the terms of the contradiction, by simply changing poles.812 Not even David A. Lane, Jr. had a recipe for freeing the oppressors.
From these three implications, Lane developed ten objectives to reorganize and redirect Negro education that represent the broad objectives that the authors presented in their yearbook submissions.
E. George Payne was Assistant Dean, School of Education, New York
University.813 Payne said that he was in complete agreement that, ―…American education needs redirection and reconstruction…‖814 For this Payne meant the entire educational
810 Ibid. 811 Ibid.: 522-24. 812 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 56. 813 Interestingly, Payne was an early advocate of safety education and safety in the school itself. Dan W. Dodson, "E. George Payne, Pioneer in Safety Education," Journal of Educational Sociology 20, no. 2 (1946): 65. 814 Payne, "The Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education: A Critical Analysis," 530. 290 system, for both whites and African Americans. But to get there, Payne observed that segregation must end. Payne said:
Our problem as I see it is to fight through the courts and through all other means at our disposal for equality of opportunity, which means equal school buildings, facilities and equipment, trained teachers, salaries and all the rest that the term applies, as guaranteed by the constitution. This, I believe, most white educators, North and South, are ready to fight for, and without which our American democracy is a delusion.815 For Payne this could come quickly enough—but until it did, he had no alternative.
E. Franklin Frazier was Professor of Sociology, Howard University. Frazier found that he could not, ―…discover any common basis on which to evaluate the various contributions.‖816 The lack of common basis, as Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. discovered in his theory of ―nation language,‖ was common in the approach to problem solving by African
Americans a century before.817 Frazier, a sociologist, discovered its twin in education in the 1930s. Frazier divided the articles into two groups—abstract educational principles and realistic concepts. Yet for both Frazier suggested, ―…are equally guilty of wishful thinking in that they ignore or fail to consider the actuality of the every day world.‖818
Frazier then explained that the ―realistic programs of education‖ were not so realistic:
…when the very persons who talk about inculcating racial self-respect help to throw a brilliant student out of school because he leads the student in a protest against participating in an entertainment at a Jim Crow theater? Realism in education turns out to be very unrealistic when seen against the background of the actual system of control in Negro education.819
815 Ibid. 816 Frazier, "A Critical Summary of Articles Contributed to Symposium on Negro Education," 531. 817 Glaude, Exodus: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America, 2. 818 Frazier, "A Critical Summary of Articles Contributed to Symposium on Negro Education," 531. 819 Ibid.: 533. 291 For each author, E. Franklin Frazier had a scathing remark except for Leo M.
Favrot, General Field Agent, General Education Board, Baton Rouge, La. To him, Frazier said:
On the other hand, if one is not going to deal realistically with the larger and more fundamental social and economic forces which control the education of the Negro, it seems wisest to do as Mr. Favrot who has confined his discussion to the small rural school and shown how within the limitations of the resources at one‘s disposal some improvements may be introduced.820
Frazier repolarized the discourse with this statement. Frazier suggested that educators had not provided any means or process to evolve the social order to remove the ills of segregation. By bringing in Leo M. Favrot, he is, on the one hand, excoriating the
African-American educators for not being as practical as the white philanthropist. On the other hand was Frazier suggesting that perhaps that the curricular advances had come only from the whites? Whether one believes that the form of industrial education and its thinly veiled cousins were appropriate or not, the Northern philanthropists had proposed concrete curricular change. As Frazier said, the African American educators were building, ―…chimerical schemes for advancement which are bound to result in disillusionment.‖821
In 1962 Arthur P. Davis considered Frazier‘s career-length drive for change:
Frazier spent a great part of his life fighting three things: American racial injustice; the Negro‘s reluctance to measure up to national standards; and the shallowness, pretentions, and false ideals of the black middle class. During his long
820 Ibid. 821 Ibid. 292 academic career he had one overall aim—to tell the truth about racial matters in America.822
Conclusion
Thus was the yearbook for 1936. The yearbook gave the pulpit to many to opine on the question, ―Does Negro education need reorganization and redirection at the present time?‖823
Most agreed with the basic premise. However, the solutions varied. As Eddie S.
Glaude, Jr. noted, ―We may all agree that slavery is wrong or that lynching is evil. But that fact does not lead to the conclusion that we have identical interests or that we agree on a course of action.‖824 Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.‘s theory of ―nation language‖ informs the discourse in this 1936 yearbook.825 Not only were opinions diverse and solutions disparate, there was the specter of conditioned segregation that passed through their rhetoric. There was a muted call for change—a hint at what it might be like in a different social order—but this hint was so often confronted by its reality, that segregation was so firmly entrenched many writers could not envision its end.
Each yearbook author had a different recipe for reorganization, whether it was in a rural area, college, or other subset of African-American Education, African-American education as a whole, both white and African-American education, or to change society first or concurrently in order to effect educative change. E. Franklin Frazier could find no
822 Davis, "E. Franklin Frazier (1894-1962): A Profile," 429-30. 823 Holmes, "Does Negro Education Need Reorganization and Redirection?--a Statement of the Problem," 314. 824 Glaude, Exodus: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America, 11. 825 Ibid. 293 centering or basis on which to critique this body of work that was asked to consider a single question well framed by D. O. W. Holmes, Doxie Wilkerson, and Charles S.
Johnson. With such diversity of opinion on a monolithic topic of Negro Education, one must question how these educators could come together to undermine the social order, let alone come together on educational aims. If each was going his/her own way, from where would the necessary solidarity come to overcome the supreme obstacles they would face while trying not only to reform the schools in the midst of the segregated state, but to inform and reform the social order into something less divisive? Paulo Freire outlined the problem that these educators faced first for themselves and second in their relationship to the white population:
Authentic revolution attempts to transform the reality which begets this dehumanizing state of affairs…This truth, however, must become radically consequential; that is, the leaders must incarnate it, through communion with the people. In this communion both groups grow together, and the leaders, instead of being simply self-appointed, are installed or authenticated in their praxis with the praxis of the people.826 Conversion to the people requires a profound rebirth. Those who undergo it must take on a new form of existence; they can no longer remain as they were. Only through comradeship with the oppressed can the converts understand their characteristic ways of living and behaving, which in diverse moments reflect the structure of domination. One of these characteristics is the previously mentioned existential duality of the oppressed, who are at the same time themselves and the oppressor whose image they have internalized. Accordingly, until they concretely ―discover‖ their oppressor and in turn their own consciousness, they nearly always express fatalistic attitudes towards their situation.827
This discourse suggests that there was not an organized approach against oppression.
826 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 130. 827 Ibid., 61. 294 In Charles H. Thompson‘s original question he asked, among other things, what aims might be changed or reorganized?828 To expand Charles H. Thompson‘s question,
D.O. W. Holmes asked of the schools, ―…whether we conceive of their function as reflecting society as it is or as directing us to a social order as we think it should be.829
Holmes also considered the problems of defining aims in the absence of curriculum. His concern was whether an effective curriculum could be fashioned for the aim, ―preparing for citizenship‖ for example. 830 Doxie Wilkerson also fleshed out Charles H.
Thompson‘s question by asking, ―…that if the needs of Negro children really are any different from other children, then, special adaptations should be made in their school experiences.‖ [emphasis in original]831 This raises the question of if there were ―peculiar‖ needs, how could aims be fashioned to address those differences? Yet as E. Franklin
Frazier later observed, few took up the cause of providing definition and direction at the aims level. 832 Most contributors considered Thompson‘s reorganization and redirection question from a structural and philosophical level and curriculum as it related to society, not the individual student. Only Thomas Jesse Jones drilled down to the level of aims he sets up with, ―…adapting all educational processes to wisely selected educational objectives based upon the needs of the individual and of society.‖ [Emphasis in
828 Thompson, "Editorial Note: Does Negro Education Need Re-Organization and Re-Direction?," 312. 829 Holmes, "Does Negro Education Need Reorganization and Redirection?--a Statement of the Problem," 314. 830 Ibid.: 319. 831 Wilkerson, "A Determination of the Peculiar Problems of Negroes in Contemporary American Society," 325. 832 Frazier, "A Critical Summary of Articles Contributed to Symposium on Negro Education," 531. 295 Original]833 His aims from this overarching need included: ―…hygiene and health..,‖
―…mastery of the resources and opportunities, in particular the agricultural and climactic ones from which a community must obtain its livelihood…,‖ ―…appreciation of neighbors of all races…,‖ ―…knowledge and mastery of a decent and comfortable domestic life without degradation or exploitation of women and children…,‖
―…knowledge and mastery of the art of recreation…,‖ ―…knowledge and appreciation of the great religious forces that have inspired…‖834 These aims evolved from his original statement, but present the curricular development concerns that D. O. W. Holmes asked in relationship to such esoteric aims. Ambrose Caliver came closest to suggesting how one might realize such aims with, ―Next, the teacher needed a ―…philosophic attitude…‖ to ―…synthesize and humanize existing knowledge.‖835
Was the question that Charles H. Thompson asked too broad to engage a more robust discussion about fundamental processes? The question was likely both too broad and premature to consider aims talk because fundamental questions of the African
American‘s place in the social order had not been fully answered. Robert P. Daniel summed up the problem of the African American college student and the requirements of society for him/her to succeed in society, ―… intra-racial achievement, bi-racial adaptation, and inter-racial advancement.‖836 Thus the African-American student faced a daunting task to adapt himself/herself to multiple societies. The white student needed
833 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 407. 834 Ibid.: 407-08. 835 Caliver, "The Role of the Teacher in the Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education," 514. 836 Daniel, "One Consideration of Redirection of Emphasis of the Negro College," 483. 296 only to excel in the majority. The mainstream aims and curricular discourse would have been difficult to adopt if there was still a question of ―peculiar‖ needs for the African
American. In 1936 there was still not an answer to this question.
This adds another dimension to the aims quandary. From this yearbook we see that aims-talk was stymied because there was not a clear definition of society, culture, and the American social order for African Americans. Well-defined requirements, it seems, must be present before a robust and productive aims discussion can occur. Thus, if society has trouble defining itself, the school will have difficulty positioning itself within society and will struggle with what to teach the child.
This brings us back to the consideration of both the extrinsic and intrinsic nature of aims, not from an opportunities perspective, as was discussed in the last chapter, but from society‘s definition of itself. Thus even the extrinsic-intrinsic aim of ―problem solving‖ would be difficult to consider in an environment where society cannot present clear paths towards problem resolution. If aims are outcomes accomplished through extrinsic curriculum and intrinsic motivations and praxis, the outcomes must be achievable. If there is tacit knowledge that the outcomes cannot be fully realized by a segment of society and if there is an intrinsic nature to aims, the question follows whether these aims can ever be internalized in such an environment.
This is an important question to consider in contemporary aims-talk. While we can manufacture great sounding aims and curricula, if the student cannot see how he/she can realize these aims in the present circumstances of the social order, for what purpose can they serve the child? A similar question asked throughout this study was whether we 297 change society or prepare the child to change society. This study and this yearbook present evidence that society must find an equitable social order first and real opportunity before its educational aims can produce intrinsic motivation for those now living in oppressive circumstances either through poverty, race, class or some combination thereof.
298 Chapter 11—Summary and Conclusions
―Ah,‖ I can hear you say, ―So it was all a build-up to bore us with his buggy jiving. He only wanted us to listen to him rave!‖ But only partially true: Being invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do? What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eyes were looking through? And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?837 With this the ―invisible man‖ concluded his story. Ellison‘s counternarrative questions both whites and blacks on their ability to see and understand themselves and others. The conditions of the ―invisible man‖ and the African American in the discourse of this study are similar. The veil of segregation for both colored the discourse and clouded understanding, making progress difficult on all fronts. Like the ―invisible man,‖ who used thousands of lights in his apartment to assuage the darkness and resulting formlessness, the researchers in the JNE used their rhetoric not necessarily as a tool to illuminate their invisibility in segregation, but to prevent the race from disappearing into formlessness in a social order that kept the African American separate, distant, and invisible in the mainstream educational discourse.
This has been a journey in time and through the minds of some of the most highly respected researchers of the education of African Americans in the mid-twentieth century through their writings in the Journal of Negro Education. This chapter summarizes the study‘s findings, the importance of the contributions of the informants of this study to the literature, and recommendations for further research.
837 Ellison, Invisible Man, 439. 299 This study set out to provide answers to the following research questions:
1. What were the different educational aims discourses (aims-talk) in The Journal of Negro Education during the time period between 1932 and 1953?
2. How did these educational aims discourses change over the time period of this study?
3. What influences did the great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War up to, but not including, Brown v. Board of Education, have on these educational aims discourses?
Different Aims Discourses
This study explored segregation and its effects on the aims discourse and the use of discrete words in the discourse, including, ―Peculiar,‖ ―social order,‖ and ―Negro.‖
The study examined the significance of the 1918 Cardinal Principles in the aims-talk of the contributors and found significant examination of these principles as it related to the education of African Americans. The issue of industrial versus academic education was explored as a separate discourse and within the discourse of philanthropy. Democracy was considered in relationship to the social order and then was juxtaposed with the issues surrounding ―peculiarities‖ or separate needs for African Americans. Finally, the 1936 yearbook on reorganization and redirection of Negro education was reviewed because of its importance to the continuing dialog and the fact that it was a panoply of voices and points of view. The review of the 1936 yearbook added evidence to Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.‘s theory of ―nation language‖ as it showed how diverse opinions were even at a single point in time. 300 Aims Discourse Change over Time
Other than the emboldening of contributors to vociferously challenge the social order during World War II, there was not much evidence of a profound evolution of the discourses. The exception was the discourse of industrial education. The original industrial education model had lost favor even in the South. Displacing the philanthropists, the states built schools and certified teachers. Even the colleges were gradually becoming less dependent on curricular direction from the philanthropists. The industrial education discourse had to change, and while it was still industrially oriented, it was less prescriptive and eventually convinced educators to agree that both industrial and academic education were needed in the schools. Exactly what this industrial-academic curriculum might look like was never really discussed.
The other discourses were so diverse and varied related to aims that its cacophony masked any perception of evolution. The segregative conditions that began the study were still present at the end. Other than improvements in the economic condition of the nation and some movement towards expanding opportunities for African Americans, the contributors to the JNE could not point to a lot of progress in 1953 from the original problems and concerns expressed in the 1930s, the period of the most robust aims talk.
Depression—War—Post War
The condition of segregation dominated the discourse throughout the epochs of
Depression, war, and post-war. The arguments, the discourses, and the aims-talk were similar during all three periods. However, during war there was a convergence of interest as whites yielded ―white-owned‖ jobs to African Americans to feed the communal war 301 effort. At the same time, the horrors of Nazi atrocities and Japanese butchery were being equated with the conditions or segregation and the American social order. During the war, contributors to the JNE were more willing to challenge the social order and the rhetoric towards the evisceration of segregation became more vociferous. After the war, the aims-discourse slowed to a trickle. Could improved economic conditions, the migration of African Americans to the cities and industrial jobs have made the discourse less relevant? This deserves discussion and comparison to the aims discourse that occurred after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
Nation Language
This study provides empirical evidence of Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.‘s theory of ―nation language‖ and carries the theory‘s influence from the 19th century into the mid-twentieth century. The contributors to the JNE had multiple solutions to single questions. This was most evident in the 1936 yearbook. From the single question, ―…What, if any reorganization or redirection may be necessary and how they may be most expeditiously effected?‖ came the following range of answers.838
Provide a sound basis of education regardless of color:
Ralph Bunche (Howard University): ―…afford both white and black
students a sound basis for understanding the society in which they live and
for attacking problems confronting them.‖839
838 Thompson, "Editorial Note: Does Negro Education Need Re-Organization and Re-Direction?," 311-12. 839 Bunche, "Education in Black and White," 355. 302 Ambrose Caliver (U.S. Department of Education) suggested that
regardless of whether the student is in a segregated state or not, the state of
the school is about the same and needs reorganization. 840
Provide a sound basis of education, but consider African-American
―peculiarities‖:
R. O‘Hara Lanier (Houston Junior College for Negroes) ―…on the basis of
a sound philosophy of education and a social policy that there is a oneness
in purpose on common peculiar problems extending from the elementary
school through the college.‖841
Charles S. Johnson (Fisk University): ―The educative process has failed
when it has not succeeded in adjusting the individual constructively to his
social life. Insofar as this process is a conscious and artificial one it can be
selective, and it becomes important in the education of a maladjusted
group that its procedures should be adjusted to its cultural needs.‖842
Maudelle Bousfield (Stephen A. Douglas School, Chicago, Illinois) asked
that educators develop practical curriculum that not only dealt with the
changing social order, but also contemplated the ―peculiar‖ problems of
African Americans.843
840 Caliver, "The Role of the Teacher in the Reorganization and Redirection of Negro Education," 509. 841 Lanier, "The Reorganization and the Redirection of Negro Education in Terms of Articulation and Integration," 369. 842 Johnson, "On the Need of Realism in Negro Education," 375. 843 Bousfield, "Redirection of the Education of Negroes in Terms of Social Needs," 413. 303 Alethea Washington (Howard University) called for research and even
ethnography to more scientifically identify the needs and aims associated
with discrete rural cultures.844
Don‘t effect social change, but prepare the child for any eventual change:
A. Heningburg (Tuskegee Institute): ―While the writer would not advocate
a revolution designed to give every black man the ballot, it does seem
essential that the process of education should gradually prepare for this
highly desirable condition.‖845
Thomas Jesse Jones (Phelps-Stokes Fund): ―…they are floundering in
their propaganda preaching of patent medicines and social panaceas for a
changing social order.‖846
Rufus Clement (Louisville Municipal College for Negroes): ―They forget
that the major function of education is to prepare people for life,—life as it
is as well as life we should like it to be.‖847
The dilemma of whether fighting segregation strengthens it or not:
Buell Gordon Gallagher (Talladega College): ―The dilemma confronting
us is that it is difficult to know when one is strengthening segregation by
844 Washington, "The American Problem of Rural Education," 428. 845 Heningburg, "What Shall We Challenge in the Existing Order?," 386. 846 Jones, "Universality of Educational Objectives," 407. 847 Clement, "Redirection and Reorganization of the College for Negroes," 478. 304 fighting it, and one is fighting segregation by strengthening it.‖ [emphasis
in original]848
Consider the social order today:
Leo M. Favrot (General Education Board): ―…for the small rural school to
play its part in making rural community life more attractive and
satisfying.‖849
Edwin Embree (Julius Rosenwald Fund) on rural education: ―The
education here should be just as general as that in reading or arithmetic or
other present school subjects.‖850
Mabel Carney (Teachers College, Columbia University): ―Against which
instruction in racial history and achievement should be provided. Chief of
the assets mentioned are the social solidarity and understanding of a
wronged people, and the rich motivation and achievement these make
possible in the fields of literature art, and music.‖851
Robert P. Daniel (Shaw University): ―…offer courses which will acquaint
them with the best thought and research relating to racial psychology, race
relations, Negro history and literature, labor problems, vocational
848 Buell Gordon, "Reorganize the College to Discharge Its Social Function," 464. 849 Favrot, "How the Small Rural School Can More Adequately Serve Its Community," 438. 850 Embree, "Education for Rural Life," 443. 851 Carney, "Desirable Rural Adaptations in the Education of Negroes," 452. 305 occupations, and other courses which relate to aspects of problems of
racial differentiations into which he is inevitably thrown.‖852
Kelly Miller (Howard University): take care not to lose ―…the underlying
moral value which the missionaries implanted…‖853
Effect social change and even unrest:
W. A. Robinson (Laboratory High School, Atlanta University): We in the
Negro schools must be courageous enough to arouse social unrest and a
lively dissatisfaction with things as they are; we must be intelligent
enough to help our students become socially wise.854
William Anthony Aery (Hampton Institute): (summarized with) How can
American social education be re-organized to include the Negro group as a
vital and integral part of American society? 855
N. C. Newbold (Division of Negro Education, North Carolina) to convince
the white taxpayer: ―…that the education and training of Negro children,
like the education and training of other children, is a wise, safe investment
of public funds.‖856
Reorganize and redirect but towards a more vocational-industrial approach:
852 Daniel, "One Consideration of Redirection of Emphasis of the Negro College," 483. 853 Miller, "The Reorganization of the Higher Education of the Negro in Light of Changing Conditions," 491. 854 Robinson, "What Peculiar Organization and Direction Should Characterize the Education of Negroes?," 400. 855 Aery, "New Emphases in the Education of Negroes," 401. 856 Newbold, "More Money for and More Emphasis Upon Negro Education;--Not Reorganization and Redirection," 507. 306 Fred D. Patterson (Tuskegee University): regarding expanding industrial
education for entrepreneurs, ―…encourage to add to their businesses such
adjuncts as shoe shining parlors to round out the development.‖857
Each of these major categories would have required reorganization and redirection but in different directions. Yet many of the categories differed by degree and there was often overlapping consensus on the need for quality teachers, equal distribution of funds, and considering both the needs of the students and society. This one yearbook alone amply exemplifies Eddie G. Glaude, Jr.‘s theory of nation language as plurality but with overlapping consensuses:
The goal of defining the interests of African Americans seems to me impossible…The aim is to allow for a plurality of action and to build forms of overlapping consensus with an eye toward problem-solving and not with the view that there is one conception of the good to be recognized by all black people because they are black.858
Relevance of this Study to Today’s Research Questions
The whole issue of outside influences in this study, philanthropy, and its consequences to education received consideration by James D. Anderson, Adam
Fairclough, and Herbert M. Kliebard,859 How can these studies be related to the current situation where the Federal government mandates prescriptive requirements with the threat of funding withdrawal? How different in effectiveness and in acceptance is the
857 Patterson, "Avenues of Redirection in Vocational Education," 497. 858 Glaude, Exodus: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America, 12. 859 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935, Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South, Kliebard, Schooled to Work, Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958. 307 current prescriptive when compared to the philanthropist‘s prescriptive during the period of this study?
De jure segregation has passed. Yet racism, poverty, lack of opportunity, issues of culture, ―peculiarities‖, and the quality of education are all contemporary issues. One need only to look forward to the yearbook and special issue titles of the JNE in the
1980‘s, 1990‘s and 2000‘s for guidance as to the questions from the period of this study that are also being asked today…
Fair assessments continue to be an issue:
Critical Issues in Testing and Achievement of Black Americans, Summer,
1980
Myths and Realities: African Americans and the Measurement of Human
Abilities, Summer, 1995
Assessment in the Context of Culture and Pedagogy, Summer, 1998.
Concomitant with assessment differences are ―peculiar‖ cultural issues:
The Black Child's Home Environment and Student Achievement, Winter,
1987
Socialization Forces Affecting the Education of African American Youth
in the 1990s, Summer, 1991
Pedagogical and Contextual Issues Affecting African American Males in
School and Society, Autumn, 1994.
308 Legal issues of education affecting black Americans have not gone away:
Persistent and Emergent Legal Issues in Education: 1983 Yearbook,
Summer, 1983
Juvenile Justice: Children of Color in the United States, Summer, 2002.
The ―reorganization and redirection of Negro education question‖ has only been rephrased:
Transforming Schools for African Americans: How Well Are We Doing?,
Winter, 1994
The School Reform Movement and the Education of African American
Youth: A Retrospective Update, Autumn, 2000.
The changing social order remains a contemporary theme:
The Higher Education of Blacks in a Changing, Pluralistic Society,
Summer, 1981
Shaping the Urban Future: People and Places, Problems and Potentials,
Summer, 1989
The Full Circle: TRIO Programs, Higher Education, and the American
Future, Autumn, 1998.
Teacher quality and education are important contemporary questions
Teacher Testing and Assessment, Summer, 1986
Recruiting, Preparing, and Retaining Qualified Teachers to Educate All of
America's Children in the 21st Century, Summer, 1999.
309 Finally and most recently, the impact of research has been explored: Research and
Its Impact on Educational Policy and Practice, Summer, 2006.
Within these themes are the same issues of culture, identity and inequitable nature of contemporary schools both structural and curricular that were vigorously debated in the JNE during the period of this study. Consider how the cultural and structural questions offered by following researchers featured in this study compare to the same issues today:
W.E.B. Dubois (Atlanta University): ―Our educational institutions must graduate to the world men fitted to take their place in real life by their knowledge, spirit, and ability to do what the world wants done.‖860
Ambrose Caliver (U.S. Department of Education): ―Theoretically, our moral and social life has improved greatly, yet social maladjustments abound and we are morally corrupt.‖861
Howard K. Beale (Bowdoin College): ―Shall education bulwark the status quo or take the lead in creating a new and better social order?‖862
Charles S Johnson (Fisk University): ―This struggle for status, and these conflicts, may be expected to continue after the war. Much of it will be below the level of acute attention, and there will also be a large element of the Negro population more interested in emotional security than in racial advance at a rate more rapid than can be tolerated.‖ 863
860 DuBois, "Education and Work," 70. 861 Caliver, "The Negro Teacher and a Philosophy of Negro Education," 434. 862 Beale, "The Needs of Negro Education in the United States," 8. 863 Johnson, "The Negro in Post-War Reconstruction: His Hopes, Fears and Possibilities," 470. 310 Walter G. Daniel (Howard University): ―…the difference in location of a child may, for example make a difference as to what he needs locally, or in that which he has a maximum of lifelikeness for him.‖864
Kelly Miller (Howard University): ―In view of the economic and industrial readjustment which the race is rapidly approaching, where technocracy will dominate and the mere handworker will be at a discount, the bulk of the Negro race will be thrown back on the farm by the expulsive power of race prejudice.‖865
Ullin W. Leavell (George Peabody College for Teachers): ―Too much emphasis upon memoriter and repetitional processes has limited the interests of the Negro elementary school children to an unwholesome extent. A different approach to educative processes is necessary.‖866
Ralph Bunche (Howard University): ―The real task confronting Negro schools, therefore, is not that of deciding whether to give the Negro a reorganized ‗Negro‘ education instead of ‗white‘ education, but to assure the student that he will receive a thorough training in the fundamentals. The emphasis should be on the fundamentals of education rather than on its frills.‖ 867
Irwin V. Shannon (Vanderbilt University): ―In other words, there is no apparent tendency here on the part of these educators to identify the needs, interests, or future of the Negro as fundamentally different from what may be the common lot of all groups
864 Daniel, "The Curriculum," 290. 865 Miller, "The Past, Present and Future of the Negro College," 421. 866 Leavell, "Needed Redirection of Elementary Education for Negroes," 457. 867 Bunche, "Education in Black and White," 357. 311 participating in American life. The only exception is that they seem to favor the development of race consciousness.‖868
Many of the questions have not changed. An important element of historical analysis of such a robust discourse on the aims and purposes of education is that it provides the researcher with multiple tools. First, historical analysis can cumulate and sort the various conversations, their themes, questions, problems, and proposed solutions, which can then be compared against contemporary discourse on similar problems or issues. Some questions that are not being asked today may need to be asked again. Such studies can provide evidence that some suggestions from the past clearly did not work.
Yet, flawed practices may be advanced for contemporary problems. A question that must be asked of a flawed practice is, ―What circumstances have changed to make these solutions more effective today?‖ This study‘s works represents an important but overlooked brainstorming session that lasted more than two decades. The dead ends are seen in context of the times and can be compared against current contexts. The reasons how successful changes worked can be exposed for possible exploitation by contemporary researchers.
Finally, this is only one important piece of the educational aims dialog that has rumbled along during the past 120 years. Within its peaks and valleys, philosophical, existential, and practical arms are rich opportunities to better theorize aims. The robust discourse on aims during the period of this study should be compared to prior discourses
868 Shannon, "The Teaching of Negro Life and History in Relation to Some Views of Educators on Race Adjustment," 64. 312 both in the African-American and mainstream educational communities. This discourse should also be compared to the aims discourses that were central to the Eight-Year Study.
Analysis of the discourse in the JNE after Brown v. Board of Education will also lend insight as to how other ruptures, disruptions, and changes affect aims-talk and influence the resulting curricula. This study showed that during World War II, when there was interest convergence there was significant progress for African Americans both in society and in aims theorizing. What other opportunistic periods followed the period of this study and how can contemporary researchers envision or prepare for such opportunities?
At the same time, the question that was asked over and over again during this study and since then continues to be, ―Is the school a change agent of society or is it a subset of society to prepare people to engage in the contemporary society and once within the society consider its advancement?‖ Can it be either; can it be both? Both Horace
Mann Bond from this study and David Tyack and Larry Cuban in more contemporary work suggest that the school historically has served to maintain the social order and not change it. 869 The issue of where the school stands in relationship to society and the social order as we have seen is a critical issue for the aims discourse. If the society does not have a clear and valid vision of itself, the creation of valid aims in such an environment carries with it significant futility.
869 Bond, "The Curriculum and the Negro Child," 168. Tyack, Tinkering toward Utopia, 64. 313 Segregation’s Effects on the Discourse
The JNE represented a narrow platform where researchers of the education of
African Americans had both voice and agency. The African American researcher was not represented in the major discourses of the period such as The Eight-Year Study.870 Nor, as has been shown, have these scientists‘ contributions to aims and curricular research been well represented in the literature. This study represents an attempt to fill such a gap in the aims discourse.
Segregation was a period where the raw power of oppression was keenly felt by the educators and other scholars who wrote for the JNE. Segregation so affected the discourse that the scholars found difficulty developing adequate objectives and aims as they struggled with ―peculiarities‖ and special curricula for African Americans.
Before even beginning the debate about the aims of education, the researchers during the period of this study had to try to define the African American in a way that was equitable to the race and to the race situated in the social order. This consumed prodigious amount of space in the discourse. While the later discourse of this study imperiled the issues of ―social order‖ and ―peculiarities‖ they could never be fully resolved during a period of de jure segregation. This study suggests that the ―social order‖ and ―peculiarities‖ discourse became a zero sum game, a conundrum without possible equitable conclusion. ―Social order‖ and ―peculiarities‖ became an impediment structurally, intellectually, and temporally for the researchers to get around and into the
870 Aikin, The Story of the Eight-Year Study, with Conclusions and Recommendations, W. Aikin, "Thirty Schools Tell Their Story," Adventure in American education 5 (1942). 314 critical changes that needed to be made with curriculum and teacher training in the separate schools.
This study asks the question of whether the hegemonic process and dialog associated with ―social order‖ and ―peculiarities‖ must be overcome before any structural progress can be made in the schools. If these Gramscian mythologies continue to exist today, how much time in the literature is being spent to eliminate these conditions and falsehoods of an egalitarian society? One need only to look at the titles of the JNE yearbooks and special issues from 1980-1996 to see that ―social order‖ and
―peculiarities‖ persist as major time and space consuming topics.
This suggests that as long as we exist in a hierarchical society whether economic, social, legal, or any combination thereof that the conditions of the American social order that existed during the period of this study are likely present in some form today. This poses a supreme problem for educators. If their first task is to define the aims or ends, how is it possible to define the objectives when the societal premise is illogical? This also suggests, as does the evidence from this study, that throwing money and rhetoric at the problems of ―achievement gaps‖ will not be enough. The first order of business must be to change the condition of society from its oppressive state to a more egalitarian democracy that undervalues no one. Reconsider Horace Mann Bond‘s 1935 observation:
It should be realized that the method of ―activity analysis‖ in the construction of a curriculum presupposes and elastic, democratic social order in which there are no artificial barriers set against the social mobility of the individual. In such a society classes are assumed to be highly fluid, and there can be no such thing as caste. Beginning with such a theory—and the ―activity‖ curriculum can have not other justifiable basis—any activities peculiar to Negro children and no susceptible to inclusion
315 in a ―Negro‖ curriculum are a defect in the social order. The construction of a ―Negro‖ curriculum concedes the falsity of the initial premise.871
Bond‘s conundrum certainly deserves consideration in the present social order.
Whiteness as Property—Education as Property
This study also provides ample evidence to bolster the argument of critical race theory that whiteness is property. This study also provides evidence to suggest that its derivative, ―education as property‖ in relationship to majoritarian ownership was evident during the period of this study. From the inequitable distribution of money and double taxation, to the general condition of the separate but unequal African-American school system, that the substance, curriculum, teaching resources, and infrastructure of education were owned by whites and distributed in a way that kept the African American in the social order that had been ascribed by whites is not in dispute.
But whiteness as property also stole from the educator of the African American for it required him/her to spend inordinate amounts of time theorizing about living within or fighting against segregation‘s iniquity at the expense of scientific research on the aims of education and its resulting curriculum.
The property right of ―reputation and status‖ associated with property rights was coveted by the researchers even if they did not have the other property rights of disposition, right to exclude and right to use and enjoy. The coveting of ―reputation and status‖ was most prevalent in the philanthropy discourse where the educators fought against the needs of the philanthropists who had staked their reputation on industrial
871 Bond, "The Curriculum and the Negro Child," 167. 316 education and the African American needs of the status associated with a more academically oriented education.
Segregation‘s more temporal progeny also steals valuable time from educators and researchers as they try to work through societal problems at the same time they try to acculturate children. The contemporary question, ―Toward what aims or ends?‖ involves many of the same issues concerning social order that existed in the early 20th century.
The Cardinal Principles
The Cardinal Principles were developed and published in 1918. The world was at war. Decades of change, including massive immigration to the Nation and from rural areas to cities moved the country‘s center point from agricultural to urban. This urbanization coincided with industrialization. Hourly work provided leisure time that could be profitably used or abused. Urbanization also brought crime, epidemics, and all the other ills of close-living. In the rural areas, African Americans were poor and were likely employed as sharecroppers, often in conditions of subsistence. Thus the aims of health, worthy home membership and productive use of leisure time became important to the contributors of the JNE.
Nel Noddings proposition that The Cardinal Principles are still important to consider appears accurate. They are important to consider both in context, as this study has done, and for their relevancy over time. Can aims developed in a different time, before the technology revolution have value today? If so, what value? Broken families, abuse, the malnutrition associated with poverty and the chronic health conditions associated with a lack of healthcare in the poor communities of color can be compared to 317 the conditions experienced during this study. The question is should researchers begin to revisit health, worthy home membership, and productive use of leisure time as integral parts of the aims of public education?
“Peculiarities”
That the African American was no different from the white man either in biology or intelligence the JNE had determined through many research studies. While the authors considered in this study understood this, their discourses about, ―peculiarities,‖
―philosophy of Negro Education,‖ and, ―separate curricula‖ suggest they felt there was
―something‖ different. This study serves to bolster Antonio Gramsci‘s theory of hegemony and myth building. That the African Americans saw differences in the social order that made ―whites only‖ special, built upon the myth of difference they could not shake. This was bolstered by the effort of white philanthropies who continued to suggest the separate and non-white industrial education for the African American. This hegemonic response also indicates that these researchers were not the ―organic intellectuals‖ that Antonio Gramsci had envisioned who would help the subaltern society to breakdown the social order mythology.
Aims-talk can be used to critique society and suggest changes to the social order.
What are the roles of researchers of aims and objectives and curricular change? Can educators change social order to accommodate aims? If not, who shall be charged with the task?
318 Intrinsic-Extrinsic Aims; Aims as a Critique of Society
The aims discourse contains both the theoretical and the practical. This study has shown both elements of the discourse.
First, this study provides theoretical questions for researchers to consider as to the fundamental ontology of aims—are they intrinsic; are they extrinsic; are they a combination of both? This study considered the aim of ―problem solving‖ and discovered that in a practical sense it could be an externally imposed aim, but when given the right educative opportunities and societal structure, ―problem solving‖ could be internalized and used by the individual to develop his/her own experiences. This extends John
Dewey‘s and R. S. Peter‘s argument that aims must contain an intrinsic element. This study then asks the question whether an intrinsic aim can be valid if extrinsically proposed and enabled in the educational process. This question asks aims-talk to consider moving beyond the concepts of desirable characteristics as expressed in the Cardinal
Principles and Nel Noddings‘, ―happiness‖ into more actionable concepts for which appropriate curriculum and instruction can be designed.
Secondly, this study considers the capacity of aims to enable a critique of society.
In this study about aims, the researchers themselves used aims to critique society and each other‘s conception of society. This study also showed that even if aims can be conceptualized for a democratic social order, if the social order is at odds with these aims, then the actual fulfillment of professed aims is likely impossible. A revived aims- talk must serve not only to critique society but it must consider its outcomes in context with society. Thus aims discourse must consider its activist role—societal change. 319 But what about today‘s needs? The discourse in the JNE gravitated towards the pragmatic—deal with the here and now. The disconnect between the social order and school performance and effectiveness continued throughout the course of this study. Are there similar issues that face educators today? One only needs to look at the contemporary special issues‘ topics in the JNE to see that they are. Aims as a critique of society is an important theory and represents an important branch of the discourse. Yet, as Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire have shown, there is an activist role in the change of society. Who will be the organic intellectuals who can imperil the hegemonic grasp of society with its social order and ―peculiarities?‖ As both Paulo Freire and Antonio
Gramsci have cautioned, movement from both the oppressor and the oppressed must occur. The concept of education as property, as capital that can be owned, distributed, and coveted adds further dimension to aims as a critique of society. If aims can be theorized but not realized by persons subjected to artificial barriers of scarcity, this becomes a powerful critique of the social order. Therefore, revived aims-talk should be reconceptualized in an activist format. This means that aims-talk should be redirected towards society first, then to the schools.
Voice
The CRT concept of voice, however, likely needs better theorizing. While the
JNE contributors came from all cultures and walks of life, the majority were African
American educators, sociologists, and administrators at the college or secondary school level. Some came from the less-segregated North and some from the segregated South.
320 While CRT does not consider ―voice‖ to be a universal explanation of experiences, it does suggest that African American experiences can be translated into a distinct voice. Yet the African American academics and others who contributed to the
JNE did not appear to contribute to the theory of a separate ―voice.‖ Certainly, the experience of being non-white was pervasive, but something that could be classified as
―voice‖ was missing from the discourse. Perhaps this takes us back to the concept of whiteness as property. If a person of color cannot be white, and that whiteness has distinct value for which the person of color cannot possess, then is the ―voice‖ of color the differential between the value of whiteness and the diminution attributed to color? Is this differential—gap—the voice that should be heard—the voice that cries out for parity? Perhaps consulting the ―invisible man‖ for solutions is not so farfetched after all.
321
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337 Vita
Christopher Haviland Ketcham earned his B.S. degree in psychology from Union
College in Schenectady, New York. Ketcham earned an M.B.A. in risk management from
St. Johns University in New York City. Ketcham is currently a Senior Director of
Knowledge Resources at the American Institute for CPCU and Insurance Institute of
America in Malvern, Pennsylvania.
Permanent address: 881 Frank Road, West Chester, Pennsylvania 19380.
This manuscript was typed by the author.
338