Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

for restoring the age structure of the population and of checking the present unwholesome and threatening imbalance.

T. V. A.

Spectacular demonstration of natural and human conservation is imbedded in the ambitious program of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Here the power resources of the South's abundant water supply are converted to social use, land is carefully classified, submarginal and forest lands are taken under the Government and converted to watershed protection and to recreation, and populations on marginal acres that cannot yield a satisfactory support are resettled. The program contemplates decentralizing industry and creating new industrial centers to increase the marginal incomes of the people and to control exploitation of both land and people.

We may take satisfaction, along with our apprehension, in the fact that during 1937, and before this war, 29 percent of the $477,000,000 that went into establishing new industrial plants was used in the South. Before, the South had only 13 percent of the capital invested in industrial plants in the United States.

There are more than 300 varieties of minerals in the South, from oil to coal, from actinolite to bogumite. They should be both used and developed by the region for its own benefit and for the world. Only through such reversal of the currents of capital can the human resources be adequately and fully conserved.

It is not enough that a few of the region's advanced thinkers and social planners should visualize improve

ments. To be really effective, the cry for something better must be a part of the consciousness of the common people.

Suffrage

One of the most valuable educational devices is the ballot. In a democratic society programs develop out of constructive discussion. There can be no intelligent use of the ballot without acquaintance with public issues and personalities and this is an enlightened form of education. In the present South there is limited political expression and thus limited educational value from such experience. Nine of the Southern States restrict the right of suffrage through the poll tax, property qualifications, or direct racial discrimination in registration. In the 1938 elections the percentages of persons voting of the population of voting age were: 20.4 in Alabama; 18.5 in Arkansas; 37.8 in Florida; 19.6 in Georgia; 16.2 in Mississippi; 14.1 in South Carolina; 26.2 in Texas; and 25.7 in Virginia. These States can be com pared with West Virginia, withou the poll tax, in which 92.1 percent of the adult population voted.

It is possible that with larger representation of the people most seriously affected by the present economy there would be a larger and more earnest support of the types of constructive social legislation from which the newly recognized citizens could expect both benefits and pro

tection.

Organization

Regions and entire nations, here and there, have abandoned the profitless struggle of separate individuals against mass power. They are strik

ing demonstrations. Cooperative production, marketing, and purchasing for consumption constitute the poor man's most effective economic weapon and can be a powerful form of educational experience. There is no sound basis for life for the small producer against the weight of increased and costly mechanization in agriculture except through this more equal basis of competition.

The Farm Security Administration has demonstrated in the South that, in many instances, simple educational measures and intelligent cooperation can double the net worth of small farms within 3 years.

The rejection of labor organiza

tion in the South has been related to the economic lag and to economic insecurity in general. So strong has been the force of habit and tradition that the workers who have most very needed the organized support of their fellow workers have been the most reluctant to organize. Unionism is a useful educational device as well as an economic aid, although, as more than once demonstrated, it can be abused. Labor organizations that exploit their own members and pit their collective power against individuals and against weaker industries, are merely perpetuating familiar evils. Gains of labor in the region have been in some measure offset by the continuance of the racial exclusion policy, which is ultimately as destructive to the ends of labor as it is to the profits of industry.

Education

Bare beginnings of folk education in the South are observable in the vigorous attempts to wipe out "illiteracy." But this effort is still only a symbol. An effective folk education

can help to bridge the fatal gap between the low level of schooling in adults on the one hand and the necessities of enlightened citizenship on the other.

One of the most dangerous myths of the past has held that limiting the education of Negroes, and paying them low wages, kept them useful. There are few jobs in any advanced society that can be done as well by ignorant as by intelligent persons. The Army is discovering that dumb obedience and unawakened response. to discipline cannot make either good soldiers or good workers in the emergencies that an army faces. The Army is selecting intelligent and schooled men and is leaving the less useful illiterates with the communities originally responsible for them. Like our modern agricultural and industrial society, the Army is a mechanized and complex organization

Readjustments

A State or region that genuinely wants to lift the educational and cultural level of its people will follow just the opposite of the present practice. Instead of limiting the school facilities of the backward elements, it will, proportionately, provide more for them than for those in better circumstances, for the simple reason that they require more to overcome their backwardness. To accomplish any degree of such readjustment, some type of equalization will have to be devised to reduce the present disparities between well-to-do and poor regions and between white and Negro populations. Louisiana is now engaged in taking stock of its human resources as measured by, and

amenable to, help from the public educational institutions. Its recently created Educational Study Commission has presented significant findings, which can become the basis for widespread economic and cultural development through the local resources of the State itself.

Consumer education is a question not only of economics but of health and general well-being. This type of adult education is just being recognized by the country as a whole. One example is the present concern about nutrition, diet, and health. For it has been revealed that even where adequate funds are at hand ignorance can take a serious toll, of both health and economic resources.

Social Legislation

The South generally seems lax with respect to programs of social legislation designed to improve the

security of the workers and the people generally. Farm tenancy has been neglected. Archaic legislation has helped to hold in a permanently backward status the vast working population in cotton production. Texas, Arkansas, and North Carolina have made some advances in the revision of these archaic laws. Child protection, whether in courts or institutions or industry, lags far behind the record in other parts of the country. The labor laws of the States still permit exploitation.

There is no escaping the truth that the greatest obstacle to the very desire for change is the fear of disturbing the present relationship of the races in the area. Yet, unless the status of the Negro is improved, there can be no great advance in the direction and spirit of the world ferment for a democratic society. This is no longer a matter of mere justice for the underdog; it is a requirement of self-interest and self-preservation.

People's Peace

If we really believe that we are fighting for a people's peace, all the rest becomes easy. Production, yes—it will be easy to get production without either strikes or sabotage; production with the whole-hearted cooperation between willing arms and keen brains.

-HENRY A. WALLACE

WHAT PRICE RURAL

EDUCATION?

By LESTER A. KIRKENDALL. What became of twenty-one promising rural high-school boys, as told by their teacher and coach who has kept in touch with them. What it might mean to America.

ANYONE can guess that the cost of the migration of rural youth is great, but we have few measures. Rather by accident than design, I have collected actual facts and figures as to what has become of some of the young men in one rural community. Undoubtedly this story for one rural community could be duplicated in many another. This was not a scientifically developed investigation, so there are uncontrolled factors and a few hazy points, but the facts raise some provocative questions.

In the spring of 1933 as I was no longer to teach in the Decatur Community High School at Oberlin, Kans., 21 young men who had been

on athletic or debate teams I had coached, organized an informal group to keep in touch with each other and with me in the years to follow. The enrollment of the school was about 300 in a town of about 1,600 people. These 21 young men were graduates of the high-school classes of 1931 to 1936. What has happened to them up to September 1942, or to the time they went into some branch of the armed services, has significance to those who are interested in rural life and rural education.

Certain salient facts about these boys should be known. In the following list those now in the armed forces are marked by a star.

The Boys

1. Albert, son of a farm-owner. An honor student, and a graduate of Kansas University Medical College. Now beginning interne work.

*2. Eldon, younger brother of Albert. An able student. Now a graduate of Kansas University. Prepared for teaching public-school music or for band directing.

*3. Arnold, son of a dairy-farm owner. An average student. Following high-school graduation went to Boise and worked in a garage for several years. Then became assistant manager of an auto-accessories store in Los Angeles.

4. Otis, a very able student. Son of a minister. A graduate of Indiana University, and band director in the Culver (Indiana) High School.

5. Charles, son of

farm-owner who moved to town about the time Charles entered high school. A very able student. Graduated as a nurse from the McLean Psychiatric Hospital at Boston. Now in charge of nursing services in the Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn, N. Y., and in the medical school of New York University.

6. James, son of a farm-owner. A good student. Had two years of architectural engineering at Kansas State College; then left and worked at three jobs in Denver. Now a tool designer in a California aircraft factory.

7. Jack, son of a tenant-farmer. A very able student. Graduate of Kansas Wesleyan. Vitally interested in social problems, he is now in an executive position in the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia.

8. Harry, younger brother of Jack, an able student. Graduate of Fresno State College, Calif. Has specialized in religious education. Now pastor of a church in Pittsburg, Calif., and a graduate student in the Pacific School of Religion at Berkeley.

*9. Herbert, son of a farm-owner. An average student, graduate of Ottawa (Kansas) University. Abandoning plan to teach, he took work in an oil-refining company. Later went to Santa Monica, Calif., to work for a construction company.

*10. Boyd, son of a photographer. A very able student. Graduate of the University of Kansas Medical School. Now stationed at San Diego in Naval Medical Corps.

II. Leo, son of a farm owner. A below-average student. Started in the chiropractic school, but left at the end of a year to run a filling station in Kansas City. Now working in Los Angeles in an aircraft factory.

*12 Carl, son of a tenant farmer. An average student. Did traveling sales work for several years. In 1940 joined the Army Air Corps.

13 Sydney, son of a tenant farmer. Good student. Graduate of Phillips University, Enid, Okla. Now a department supervisor in a branch of a large mail order house, at Muskogee, Okla.

*14. Asa, son of a farm owner. Able student. Graduate of Kansas State Teachers College, Hays, Kans. Officer in a building and loan association in Topeka, and partner in an allied real estate company. Strong community leader.

« AnteriorContinuar »