Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/396

 384 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

education developed along a line entirely different from that in the northern states. The planter, highly individualistic, with his other wants largely or wholly supplied within the circle of the plantation, employed a private tutor or governess for the early education of his children. For their further training the same class frequently sent its sons, and sometimes its daughters, to Europe or the higher institutions of the South or North.

The less wealthy families were forced to adopt a method less expensive. They originated a private neighborhood arrange- ment. As many pupils as could be conveniently brought within reach of a central point were provided with a school building, and a teacher frequently some wandering pedagogue, often of little power, but again sometimes a scholar was put in charge. These "old field schools" were wholly neighborhood affairs. They were also the only place, aside from the state universities, where the people came in direct contact with the educational problem and " had their hands on education," since the academies and colleges were almost wholly of a denominational character.

Outside the "field school" was still a comparatively large school population unprovided lor "the children of the poor." These were to be cared for by the state. It is evident that the theory upon which the South at this period worked was that all I>eople above the "indigent class" would school their own chil- dren. This left to the state the schooling of the "poor" and a part of the support of the university. The idea of a "poor school " for poor children prevailed in all the states of the South except North Carolina. North Carolina had a development wholly peculiar to herself and possessed something approaching a common-school system at the opening of the Civil War. 2

The " poor schools " were, as a whole, most inefficient agents. Dr. Orr says that this "so-called system had no system in it," that it was "full of defects," and that it was "lacking in a hun- dred of the elements that make up an efficient public-school system." 8

Owing to the organization of southern society, the origin-

1 A. D. MAYO, Report of Commissioner of Education, 1900, Vol. I, p. 448. ' Educational Needs of the South, p. 7.