Dr. L. R, Wile
son,
Rill,
IT. r’ .
The news in this publica
tion is released for the press on
receipt.
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS LETTER
Published weekly by the
University of North Carolina
for its Bureau of Extension.
JANUARY 9, 1918
CHAPEL HILL, N. G.
VOL. IV, NO. 7
KdKorial Board . B. C. Branson. .T. G. deR. Hamilton, L. E. Wilson, R. H. Thornton, G. M. McKie.
Entered as second-class matter November 14.1914, .rt the Postofttce at Chapel Hill, N, C., under the act of August 24,1912.
DOUBLE SCHOOL SUPPORT
Wtien this war is over there will be a
very small jilace in the sun, or no place
at all, for any unschooled, unskilled com
munity, state, or country anywhere on
.earth.
No nation has learned this lesson any
"better than Ihigland. And so her par
liament is this year voting to public edu
cation many millions more than ever be
fore in all her history—this, in spite of
almost unbelievable war burdens. It is
worth thinking about in America and in
North Carolina.
The man that sweats liis back mainly
must inevitably pay tribute to the man
that sweats his brain. So of neigliiior-
hoods and states, communities and
countries! Illiteracy and ignorance hand
icap men and nations alike. The in-
teliigent way of doing things will always
rule over brute force.
Instead of balking wc now need to be
voting heavier school taxes, building
more and better schoolhouses, installing
better school equipments, keeping our
schools open longer every year, paying
good teachers money enough to hold
them against all competition, and devis
ing forms of education that really edu
cate. This is no time for any community
or state to be drawing in its horns and
paring down its school fund.
Too poor to educate! We are too poor
not to educate! With an eighth of all
our native born whites, and nearly a
fiftli of all our country dwellers black
and white, cursed by illiteracy, lie tliat
dallies witli school support is a dastard
and he that doubts is damned—to bor
row empliasis from Sliakespeare.
Rich Enough to Do It
As a matter of fact, our farmers have
more money today tlian ever before in all
their lives. The same tiling is true of
our iiankers and manufacturers. We
must double our support of schools—
schools of every sort, grade, and rank—
our common schools, our church schools,
/ our teciinical schools, and our University.
We must make them all better than
' tie liest in any state of the Union. E'ther
this or we must be stolidly content to
trail the rear in the forward march of
American commonwealths.
This IS no time for two-bit thinking
about the big-scale concerns of civiliza
tion . boloinon was thinking in big ways
■when he said: There is that scattereth
and yet increaseth; and there is that
withholdeth more than is meet, but it
tendeth to {loverty.
We have not caught up with Solomon
in our thinking about education—not in
this fltitte—not yet!
V^4^at other states and countries are
investing in education is wwtli thinking
about. And we must do better. We
mutt double our support of schools, just
as (harence Poe says
Sllff
'•a*
EDUCATION AND PROGRESS
Tbt‘ etiicieacy of an illiterate people in
cOii4ietition with an educated nation is
.as the crooked stick against the sulky
: the sickle against tjte reaper; the
Hiutlock cart against the express train,
ocean greyhound, and the airplane;
-t1»o pony messenger against the telegraph,
ite1»pIione, and wireless; the individual
■harangue against the printing press, the
Jtewi^iapcr, the library; the spinning
WlaeoT against die factory; the pine fagot
agmiiist die electric light; the peddling of
.skins and iierbs from the ox-cart against
the. bank, die check book, the depart-
-Bient. store; die log-hut against the steel
scraper; die unaided eye against the
microscope and telescope; incantations
Mid magic against the chemist, the hos-
jiital, the modern physician and surgeon
Take away from one entire generation
ail education, and society must reveit to
the stick plow, the ox-cart, and such
primilive means, because steel imple
mente. locomotives, steamships, electrici
ty, telephones, telegraphs, waterworks,
steel buildings, mining and chemical iii-
dustrios, factories, modern sanitation
hygiene and medicine, books, new's-
papors, courts of justice, and the laws
that protect property and defend the
rights of the w^eak arc all impossible
without education and are efficient only
ill proportion as educated intelligence is
applied to them.—Dr. Caswell Ellis,
University of Texas
WHY THE JAPS BEAT
The relation of her school system to the
remarkable development of Japan and
her proved ability in the highly technical
and complicated art of modern warfare is
universally admitted. The defeated Ku-
ropatkin states that the cortly failures of
Russia were due to the ignorance of her
brave but untutored army and to the
education of the Japanese. Writing of
the causes of defeat, he said;
“The non-commissioned officers in the
Japanese army ■nere much superior to
ours, on account of the better education
and greater intellectual development of
the Japanese common people. The de
fects of our soldiers—both regulars and
reservists—were the defects of the popu
lation as a whole. The peasants were im
perfectly developed intellectually, and
they made soldiers who had the same
failing. The intellectual backwardness
of our soldiers was a great disadvantage
to us, because war now requires far more
intelligence and initiative on the part of
the soldier than ever before.
“Our men fought heroically in compact
masses, or'^ii fairly close formation, but
if deprived of their officers they were
more likely to fall back than to advance.
In the mass we had immense strength,
but few of our soldiers were capable of
fighting intelligently as individuals. In
this respect the Japanese were superior to
us. Among many of the common soldiers
whom we took as prisoners we found
diaries which showed not only good edu
cation but knowleilge of what was hap
peniiig and intelligent comprehension of
the military problems to tie solved.” —
The Money Value of Educ ation, Federal
Education Bureau Bulletin, No. 22
11910.
MULTIPLYING POWER
The savage can fasten only a dozen
pounds oil his back and swim the river
When he is edui-ated enough to make an
axe, fell a tree, and build a raft, he can
carry iiiauy times a dozen pounds. As
soon as he learns to rip logs into board-
and build a boat, he multiplies Jiis power
a hundredfold; and when to this he adds
mathematics, chemistry, physics, ana
other modern sciences he can produce the
monster steel leviathans that defy wind,
storm, and distance, and bear to the ut
termost parts of the earth burdens a mil
lionfold greater than the uneducated sav
age could carry across the narrow river.
—Horace Mann.
EDUCATION PAYS FARMERS
Some years ago Warren and Livermore
of the Cornell University faculty made a
study of 1303 farmers in Tompkins
county, New York state.
The average annual labor income of
these farmers was found to be as follows:
1007 with common-school education 1^318
280 with high-school education 6'.'2
16 with college education 847
High-school training, you see, nearly
doubled, and college culture nearly treb
led, the earning power of ordinary fann
ers on New York farms.
High-school and college culture would
do even more than this in any Southern
state.
For instance, in Texas in 1903 seventy-
six ten-year graduates of the University
were earning an average of $2,943 a year.
—The Money V'alue of Education, Fed
eral Bureau Bulletin, No. 22 (1917).
BOOK-LEARNING WINS
A deep seated distrust of book-larnin’
lingers on in our country regions. Col
lege and university culture registers
around zero in the minds of too many
firmers everywhere. A fairly large
number of farmers iu every community
are people of reading and thinking habits,
but there are enough of the other sort to
retard the development of agriculture
and rural civilization iu this and every
other state.
Book farming is foolishness. Farmers
don’t need to go to college. Kid-glove
professors can’t teach anybody anything
about farming: so it is that many of our
THE FATE OF IGNORANCE
Horace Mann
The ignorant pearl diver does not
wear the pearl he wins; the diamond
digger is not ornamented by the jewel
he finds; the ignorant toiler m the
most luxuriant soil is not filled with
the harvest he gathers.
The choicest productions of the
world, wliether mineral or vegetable,
wherever found or wherever gathered,
will inevitably by some secret and re
sistless attraction make their way into
the hands of the most intelligent.
].et whoever will sow the seed or
gather the fruit, intelligence consumes
the banquet.
farmers snort their disgust at book-learn
ing. Move about in the country somewhat
and you hear these opinions at every
turn.
But this war is stirring the intelligence
of people on every level of life and in
every country on the globe, just as the
Crusades did 800 years ago. And the ef
fects will be a hundred fold greater. That
is a primary fact worth thinking through.
Just now the common sailor is getting
his lesson; and the sailor like the farmer
has long had a contempt for bookish edu
cation. It’s like learning to swim on dry
land, has long been the sailor’s idea about
education. Hang your clothes on a hick
ory limb and don’t go near the water, is
about all the advice the schools can give
us old salts, he said.
The Sailors Go to School
But now the sailors are going to school
by tens of thousands—sailors Jrom 21 to
55 years of age with two years of sea ex
perience in any capacity whatsoever.
That, by the way, is how the farmers and
their wives go to school in Denmark.
The common sailors are swarmmg into 31
naval schools strung along our seabord
from Maine to California. In six weeks
tliey are prepared to be navigators and
engineers for the merchant murine that
the United States is creating like magic
over-night in our shipyards. As fast as
our new boats skid into the sea the crews
o; officers are ready. They are getting
ready at the rate of twelve thousand
graduates a week—6000 navigators and
oOOO engineers of every grade and rank
And they are picked men—no doubt
about that.
Our new merchant marine will soon
rank next to that of England. It will be
competently manned, and the book
learning of our naval schools has solved
the problem. Without the technical en
gineering courses of American colleges and
universities, it would have been absolute
ly impossible to create iu three years the
greatest ship-building industry in the
world, and a merchant marine that is
fairly on its way to primacy. This is the
lesson the sailors have learned, and our
farmers need to learn that only by scien
tific farming can a great agriculture be
developed. Book-learning will win in
corn and cotton rows as well as in aea
lanes.
Seamanship and BooKs
“In this work of making modern
American seamen the extremes meet; the
universities and the graduates of tlie salt
sea are working hand in hand,” says
William Allen White, in Colliers. “In
the old days the seaman wffio had ambi
tion to become a deck-officer usually
sought a retired sea captain, paid him
$liX) and spent six months acquiring his
art. Now the professors in a dozen col
leges are laying the ground-work in six
weeks. The old-time captain sniffi; at the
idea that a college professor, who has
hardly more than a summer vacation’s
knowledge of the eea, can teach the art
of navigation. Still more improbable
does it seem that a university can trans
form a landlubber stationary-engineer
into a man who can handle the intricate
mechanism of a modem liner. But the
war has demonstrated how practical is
the great university plant that has de
veloped in this country since the Civil
War.”
COUNTY-WIDE SYSTEMS
Supt. Washington Catlett of New Han
over and Dr. N. AV. AValker of the Uni-
vor.sity faculty spoke before tlie North
Carolina Club at its last regular meeting.
Mr. Catlett, speaking on County-Wide
Scliool Systems—in Hanover County, in
Nortli Carolina and in other States, said:
STAY IN SCHOOL
FYom all parks of tlie county come re
ports of a greatly decreased school attend
ance in all grades above the grammar.
The older boys liave left the schools and
gone to work.
No doubt the temptation is strong.
Jobs have never been so easy to get or
wages so high, even for unskilled labor.
Voluntary enlistments and the draft have
drained the country of great numbers of
young men who were at work, and tlie
necessity of manufacturing immense
quantities of supplies in the shortest pos
sible time has used up the surplus of un
employed older men. No wonder the
boys say “Now is my chance! Let me
make hay while the sun shines!”
Choose Wisely
But tempting as the opportunities seem,
they are more or less deceptive, for they
wear the cloak of an inflated prosperity.
While the boy of grammar school or high
school age is at work, other young men,
but little older, are getting in the army
and the navy a training that teaches
them the value of discipline, that gives
play to all the energy and ambition that
they have, and that offers splendid re
wards for resources and initiative. Many
of them are already liighly trained i»
chemistry, mechanics, engineering,
transportation, manufacturing or some
other branch of industry, and others are
getting the training under the hardest
but greatest of masters.
Heavy Weights on Top
Tiien, by and by, will come the end of
the war; and when the fields of peaeeful
idustry begin once more to turn, the cry
will go up for highly trained men—edu
cated men and those who have technical
knoivledge.
The shaking down process that will fel
low will set the law of gravitation at
naught, for it is the light weights that
will go to the bottom and the leary
weights will go to the top—and stay there.
How will it seem to the boy who leaves
now, and who in five years has cooled
and solidfied in some industrial cranny,
to find himself forced out by a younger
man who knows more because he has had
a better education? What are the poor
immediate dollars worth beside the lar
ger although later success?
The best advice that anyone can give
a boy today is. Stay in school and work
as you would work if you were in the
trenches!—Youth’s Companion'
There are three distinct school units
found in the United States—the district,
the township, and the county. Strange
to say, the district has been most large
ly used in the past and is now the sub
ject of general criticisrn an 1 objection. The
district system, originating in Massacliu-
setts with the establishment of the first
public schools, is a complete basis for the
rural elementary school management in
17 states and is a large factor in 11 others.
In 1914, nine states were operating un
der tlie county unit system The county-
wide school system wherever tried has
proved most efficient and economical,
an'i it is the consensus of opinion that no
scliool system should be smaller than the
County where the county is the unit of
civil government.
New Hanover’s Way
The management and distribution of
ihe school fund is the distinguishing fea-
ure ot the New Hanover system. The
school tax is collected with the general
(axes and turned over to the auditor who
acts as treasurer. The city of Wilming
ton has nothing to do with collecting or
disbursing a cent of the school tax, which
supports every tchool throughout the
coumty. When the tax listing is over a
budget, prepared by the county and city
iuperintendents, stating the amount nec
essary to support their respective schools
for eight months, is presented to the
Oonnty School Board. This is carefully
examined by the Board, and changed or
confirmed as may seem fit. Each school
committee is informed of the amount up
on which its school must be conducted.
In this way, the strong districts cannot
receive more money than they need, and
the weak districts are provided with am
ple funds. This is in perfect harmony
with the great fundamental principle of
a democratic public school system,—the
strong and the well-to-do help to edu
cate the children of the weak and poor.
Every cent of the school tax paid in
New Hanover county goes into the gen
eral fund to educate every child in the
county—the rich and the poor alike, in
the poorest country neighborhood as well
as in the richest city ward.
have 80 city high schools with 10,000 pu
pils and 157 local high schools with 3,000
pupils. Then there are 26 private and 66
church schools of secondary grade en
rolling together about 5,000 pupils. Not
quite 50 per cent of these 575 schools of
fer 4-year courses, and not quite 10 per
cent of the 30,000 high school pupils are
pursuing fourth-year studies.
What We Need
We need to develop in all the counties
strong 4-year liigh schools, sufficiently
well equipped and financed to provide
for tho youth in each county whatever
secondary training is possible. The local
high school cannot meet the need for
high sch-iol training in a modern de
mocracy. It does not have and it cannot
secure locally sufficient money, equip
ment, teacheis, or pupils.
The county high school with strong;er
financial backing, larger teaching force,
better equipment, with dormitories and
ample boarding facilities, with the trans
portation of pnpils wherever necessary,
must take the place of the small local
high school, if the needs of democracy
are to be met through better educational
opportunities for the youth of the land.
HIGH SCHOOL YARD-STICKS
Dr. N. W. Walker, speaking on “The
County High School,” said: The high
school occupies a strategic position in our
educational system and is the criterion by
which the efficiency of the schools of a
county or a state is judged. Given a sys
tem of strong, -well-equipped, efficient
public high schools in a state, and above
them you are sure to find a superior class
of colleges. The opposite is likewise true.
Indeed we can measure our educational
progress almost exactly in terms of tlie
efficiency of our public high schools.
North Carolina has made rapid strides
in high scliool development since the
passage of the public scliool law in 1907.
At present we have 246 State high
schools with an eiiroll.nent of about 11,
000 pupils. In addition to these we
ILLITERATE RUSSIA
Illiterate, unorganized, still sore with
the shackles of serfdom, priest-led and
tax-bled, ridden with pagan supersti
tions: simple as children and as generous
and as cruel: incapable of realizing the
significance of any government except
the local commune: a national loom filled
with parti-woven patches: with fine
primal virtues and undrilled passions,
exploited by prelates as letterless and in
genuous as themselves: ruled by the
contempuoua German stewards of a con
temptible nobility: counted as cattle and
valued by their masters only as they
might yield revenue to support Boyar
profligacy; a mob of peasants speaking a*
many dialects as Babel’s tongue, sud
denly delivered to freedom—is it any
wonder that bewildered Russia is spend
ing her heritage of Liberty with ominous
folly?
Can we expect a horde of barbarian-
ized tribes to metamorphose over night
into orderly, comprehending effectives?
They must find themselves. Dreadful
griefs alone can fuse elements so strange
and alien into common denominators.
Russia must rise, fall, totter and regai*
balance, not once, but many times before
the merciless rod of reason beats judg
ment into her people.
But Muscovy will never be a crows
jewel of Prussia. Five soldiers can still
replace each one that falls, though all
her present armies be ■wiped out. The
Teutons can never advance as far as thgy
can retreat. Meanwhile many a Keren
sky will arise from the need of him.
Time, the steppes, illimitable resources
and exhaustless vitality will tell—and in
the end tell terribly against the Central
Powers. — Herbert Kaufaaan, Sunday
American.