A Look to the Past

To see what education was meant to be--self-improvement and social betterment--we need to look back 6 scores and 8 years. During these years, education was valued and a trade was respected. Men like Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver of Tuskegee Institute promoted education as a how-to blueprint for economic success.

Tuskegee Institute:

The Alabama State legislature established Tuskegee in 1880. President Booker T. Washington officially opened the Normal School for Colored Teachers on July 4, 1881.

Review of Up From Slavery:

Booker T. Washington, though often criticized as an "Uncle Tom,"tells the story of his educational philosophy and the development of Tuskegee. Washington pushed for strong personal habits, religious training, and industrial education. In this Christian mix, academics were not ignored.

Building Tuskegee with his own hands, Washington defined success as not how far one goes but what obstacles one overcomes. Washington imparted the love of work for its own sake to Tuskegee students.

The former slave came to his views and character from early desire for education. He wrote in his autobiography: "...I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise."

Similarly, he stated: "From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read. I determined, when quite a small child, that, if I accomplished nothing else in life, I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common books and newspapers."

Up From Slavery is a story of hope and gives lessons for educational improvement.

Unshakable Faith

John Perry's 1999 biography of Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver fills in many details of the Tuskegee experience, including the curriculum. Though conflict existed between the two men, their "unshakable faith" in what Tuskegee stood for and provided kept them on track and fostered cooperation.

The school's success can be seen in a single incident of sweet potato production. Washington encouraged students to learn something better than anybody else. One graduate, bolstered by his study of chemistry and improved agricultural methods, produced 266 bushels of sweet potatoes from 1 acre. The community standard had been only 49 bushels @ acre. Local farmers honored and respected the student for his success.

Carver's Discoveries

George Washington Carver produced paints and stains from soybeans. He received 3 patents for these discoveries. Carver also found over 300 by-products of the simple peanut. Some of these included: 10 different beverages; 19 cosmetics, including shampoo, soap, face powder/ cream; dyes for cloth, leather & wood stains; such foods as pickle, chili sauce, coca, dry coffeee, mayonnaise, peanut sausage & cheese pimento; such medicines as goiter treatment, laxatives, & quinine; and industrial uses of the peanut as diesel fuel, glue, linoleum, printer's ink, rubber and laundry soap.

Quotes from 2 famous fiction writers characterize how important the past can be to education and society in general. John Dos Passos states, "a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a life-line across the scary present."

And William Faulkner, though speaking of a 'gone- with- the -wind- south', still has a social foundation in the efficacy of the past. Faulker writes, "The Past is never dead. It's not even past."