Page:Boys Life of Booker T. Washington.djvu/114

98 just what kind of education Washington believed in and tried to give his students at Tuskegee. It was quite different from most of the training that had been given the negro after the war. In those early days of freedom, many of the negroes seemed to have the idea that the bigger the book and the harder the words in it, the better the education was that they secured. Some of them thought, too, that they were not educated unless they studied Latin and Greek and higher mathematics, and other similar subjects. Booker Washington did not mean that history, literature, and foreign languages should not be studied and had no value. What he was emphasizing was the fact that boys and girls should first get a clear idea of things about them. Then they would be able better to understand and appreciate such subjects as history and literature.

One other feature of the kind of education that Tuskegee stands for ought to be mentioned, and that is the extension work. This work has become a very large part of the Institute. The extension work is not so much a matter of teaching, of education in the usual sense, as it is an effort to give direct and practical help to people outside the college walls. Most of this extension work has been done in Macon and adjoining counties. From the first month of his school, Washington began to go into the country round about and mingle with his people. He went to their homes,