Is this our attitude toward education? It is not--neither in England nor America--in France nor Germany--with black nor white nor yellow folk. Education to the modern world is a burden which we are driven to carry. We shirk and complain. We do just as little as possible and only threat or catastrophe induces us to do more than a minimum. If the ignorant mass, panting to know, revolts, we dole them gingerly enough knowledge to pacify them temporarily. If, as in the Great War, we discover soldiers too ignorant to use our machines of murder and destruction, we train them--to use machines of murder and destruction. If mounting wealth calls for intelligent workmen, we rush tumultuously to train workers--in order to increase our wealth. But of great, broad plans to train all men for all things--to make a universe intelligent, busy, good, creative and beautiful--where in this wide world is such an educational program? To announce it is to invite gasps or Brobdingnagian laughter. It cannot be done. It will cost too much.
What has been done with man can be done with men, if the world tries long enough and hard enough. And as to the cost--all the wealth of the world, save that necessary for sheer decent existence and for the maintenance of past civilization, is, and of right ought to be, the property of the children for their education.
I mean it. In one year, 1917, we spent $96,700,000,000 for war. We blew it away to murder, maim, and destroy! Why? Because the blind, brutal crime of powerful and selfish interests made this path through hell the only visible way to heaven. We did it. We had to do it, and we are glad the putrid horror is over. But, now, are we prepared to spend less to make a world in which the resurgence of such devilish power will be impossible?
Do we really want war to cease?
Then educate the children of this generation at a cost no whit less and if necessary a hundred times as great as the cost of the Great War.
Last year, 1917, education cost us $915,000,000.
Next year it ought to cost us at least two thousand million dollars. We should spend enough money to hire the best teaching force possible--the best organizing and directing ability in the land, even if we have to strip the railroads and meat trust. We should dot city and country with the most efficient, sanitary, and beautiful school-houses the world knows and we should give every American child common school, high school, and college training and then vocational guidance in earning a living.
Is this a dream?
Can we afford less?
Consider our so-called educational "problems"; "How may we keep pupils in the high school?" Feed and clothe them. "Shall we teach Latin, Greek, and mathematics to the 'masses'?" If they are worth teaching to anybody, the masses need them most. "Who shall go to college?" Everybody. "When shall culture training give place to technical education for work?" Never.
These questions are not "problems." They are simply "excuses" for spending less time and money on the next generation. Given ten millions of dollars a year, what can we best do with the education of a million children? The real answer is--kill nine hundred and ninety thousand of them quickly and not gradually, and make thoroughly-trained men and women of the other ten thousand. But who set the limit of ten million dollars? Who says it shall not be ten thousand millions, as it ought to be? You and I say it, and in saying it we sin against the Holy Ghost.
We sin because in our befuddled brains we have linked money and education inextricably. We assume that only the wealthy have a real right to education when, in fact, being born is being given a right to college training. Our wealth today is, we all know, distributed mainly by chance inheritance and personal favor and yet we attempt to base the right to education on this foundation. The result is grotesque! We bury genius; we send it to jail; we ridicule and mock it, while we send mediocrity and idiocy to college, gilded and crowned. For three hundred years we have denied black Americans an education and now we exploit them before a gaping world: See how ignorant and degraded they are! All they are fit for is education for cotton-picking and dish-washing. When Dunbar and Taylor happen along, we are torn between something like shamefaced anger or impatient amazement.
A world guilty of this last and mightiest war has no right to enjoy or create until it has made the future safe from another Arkansas or Rheims. To this there is but one patent way, proved and inescapable, Education, and that not for me or for you but for the Immortal Child. And that child is of all races and all colors. All children are the children of all and not of individuals and families and races. The whole generation must be trained and guided and out of it as out of a huge reservoir must be lifted all genius, talent, and intelligence to serve all the world.
Almighty Death[1]
Softly, quite softly-- For I hear, above the murmur of the sea, Faint and far-fallen footsteps, as of One Who comes from out beyond the endless ends of Time, With voice that downward looms thro' singing stars; Its subtle sound I see thro' these long-darkened eyes, I hear the Light He bringeth on His hands-- Almighty Death! Softly, oh, softly, lest He pass me by, And that unquivering Light toward which my longing soul And tortured body through these years have writhed, Fade to the dun darkness of my days.
Softly, full softly, let me rise and greet The strong, low luting of that long-awaited call; Swiftly be all my good and going gone, And this vast veiled and vanquished vigor of my soul Seek somehow otherwhere its rest and goal, Where endless spaces stretch, Where endless time doth moan, Where endless light doth pour Thro' the black kingdoms of eternal death.
Then haply I may see what things I have not seen, Then I may know what things I have not known; Then may I do my dreams.
Farewell! No sound of idle mourning let there be To shudder this full silence--save the voice Of children--little children, white and black, Whispering the deeds I tried to do for them; While I at last unguided and alone Pass softly, full softly.
[Footnote 1: For Joseph Pulitzer, October 29, 1911.]
IX
OF BEAUTY AND DEATH
For long years we of the world gone wild have looked into the face of death and smiled. Through all our bitter tears we knew how beautiful it was to die for that which our souls called sufficient. Like all true beauty this thing of dying was so simple, so matter-of-fact. The boy clothed in his splendid youth stood before us and laughed in his own jolly way,--went and was gone. Suddenly the world was full of the fragrance of sacrifice. We left our digging and burden-bearing; we turned from our scraping and twisting of things and words; we paused from our hurrying hither and thither and walking up and down, and asked in half-whisper: this Death--is this Life? And is its beauty real or false? And of this heart-questioning I am writing.
* * * * *
My friend, who is pale and positive, said to me yesterday, as the tired sun was nodding:
"You are too sensitive."
I admit, I am--sensitive. I am artificial. I cringe or am bumptious or immobile. I am intellectually dishonest, art-blind, and I lack humor.
"Why don't you stop all this?" she retorts triumphantly.
You will not let us.
"There you go, again. You know that I--"
Wait! I answer. Wait!
I arise at seven. The milkman has neglected me. He pays little attention to colored districts. My white neighbor glares elaborately. I walk softly, lest I disturb him. The children jeer as I pass to work. The women in the street car withdraw their skirts or prefer to stand. The policeman is truculent. The elevator man hates to serve Negroes. My job is insecure because the white union wants it and does not want me. I try to lunch, but no place near will serve me. I go forty blocks to Marshall's, but the Committee of Fourteen closes Marshall's; they say white women frequent it.
"Do all eating places discriminate?"
No, but how shall I know which do not--except--
I hurry home through crowds. They mutter or get angry. I go to a mass-meeting. They stare. I go to a church. "We don't admit niggers!"
Or perhaps I leave the beaten track. I seek new work. "Our employees would not work with you; our customers would object."
I ask to help in social uplift.
"Why--er--we will write you."
I enter the free field of science. Every laboratory door is closed and no endowments are available.
I seek the universal mistress, Art; the studio door is locked.
I write literature. "We cannot publish stories of colored folks of that type." It's the only type I know.
This is my life. It makes me idiotic. It gives me artificial problems. I hesitate, I rush, I waver. In fine,--I am sensitive!
My pale friend looks at me with disbelief and curling tongue.
"Do you mean to sit there and tell me that this is what happens to you each day?"