Page:Boys Life of Booker T. Washington.djvu/106

90 work that Washington early determined to devote his life.

Just after the war there was much confusion and doubt about the best plan to follow in educating the negro. The Freedmen's Bureau brought a large number of teachers from the North to assist in the task, and much valuable work was done in the negro schools by these teachers. The different Southern states also began to make provision for the negro's education, by organizing schools, building schoolhouses, and making provision for training teachers.

There was much difference of opinion as to just what should be taught the negro. As a rule, the plan followed was to teach him just what had been taught in the white schools. This meant that he would study reading, writing, arithmetic and grammar, and later, Latin, Greek, mathematics and literature.

So much of this kind of teaching was done, and it was so poorly done, and it was so poorly adapted to the needs of the negro at the time, that a great many people began to doubt the wisdom of trying to educate the negro at all. But Washington insisted that the mistake was made in the kind of education they were trying to give him. In answer to the question, "Does it pay to educate the negro?" Washington often told the story of what had taken place in Macon County, Alabama, the county in which Tuskegee is located. In that