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A General Educational Awakening
The South is pulsing today with the throb and
thrill of a genuine educational renaissance. This
section of our union is just beginning to realize her
strength, her resources, her possibilities---and let
it be said—her needs. Our people are awakening as
never before to the need of trained heads, trained
hand and trained hearts, both for educational
leaders and the rank and file of the people who are
to follow' this leadership.
Each Southern state faces its own school prob
lems, and is working out these problems with a will.
3Eg*,.
DR GEORGE FOSTER PEABODY.
Each state, inspired and encouraged by the pro
ress of another state, is voting money right and
left for schools and colleges, and is taking peculiar
pride in the achievements of “educational gover
nors”, and “educational legislatures.” It is at
once a significant and a magnificent sign of progress
when law-makers rejoice to announce themselves
on the educational “hand wagon”; but it must be
said in simple justice to many of our governors
and legislatures that they are making this band
wagon themselves. They are proving themselves
real “heroes in the strife.”
Outside Inspiration.
While we rejoice in the truth that Henry Grady
told in his famous New England Dinner speech,
true then and truer now, when he declared that the
best progress of the New South has heen born on
Southern soil, and while we rejoice to know now
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THE OLD IN HENRY. THE NEW.
that the Marseillaise against ignorance is being
beaten by Southern hands and sung in liquid Hre
that leaps from Southern hearts and Southern lips,
yet we are honest enough and grateful enough to
bear glad testimony to the fact that a great force
in this educational awakening has been the work of
the General Educational Board. Great-hearted men
of the North —patriots to the core —have loved hu
manity better than they have loved their fortunes,
and instead of giving themselves over to the blight
ing tide of commercialism as so many of their
neighbors have done, these men have been seers
and prophets as well, and have stood like kings
and princes on the thrones of their own making,
and have given their money with wise and lavish
The Golden Age for April 4, 1907.
By WILLIAM D. UPSHAW
hand to help their brothers in the South in the
problems with which they are wrestling—problems
more delicate and difficult of solution, perhaps,
than any people of any section have ever faced
in the history of our civilization. These great and
good men have shown their wisdom by building
slowly at first, but measuring with careful investi
gation every step they have taken. At last they
are ready with “rapid fire” for the grand charge,
and some who have been a little impatient are see
ing now the wisdom of their course. The practical
help which the General Education Board has given,
and the larger help which it now proposes to give,
is having the effect of a marvelous tonic —both men
tal and philanthropic. The devoted friends of dis
tinctly Christian institutions felt a little disap
pointed for a time because the energies and gifts
of the Board seemed directed chiefly to state in
stitutions. But all the time, -with very limited
means first at their command, they were carrying
on a sane campaign of widespread investigation
of denominational schools, recognizing the fact that
these institutions, both preparatory and collegiate,
touch humanity in away so deep and far-reaching
that the wise philanthropist—the real builder of
the state —must include the Christian school as a
rich and fruitful soil for investment. And now with
the greatly increased income of the Board through
the startling and inspiring gifts of Mr. John D.
Rockefeller, the denominational schools are also
receiving large gifts to stimulate their own endeav
ors and greatly increase their usefulness. The evi
dent purpose of the General Education Board is to
invest money anywhere and everywhere, if investi
gation and common sense indicate that the people
are thus to be uplifted and made worth more to
the world. For the organizing work of Robert C.
Ogden, the painstaking wisdom of Dr. Wallace
Butterick and the beautiful living, giving and lead
ership of George Foster Peabody, and all of then
associates and helpers, the people of the South
owe a debt of gratitude which they never can re
pay.
Dr. George Foster Peabody.
It is only natural that we of Georgia should feel
peculiar and grateful pride in the great work
which Dr. George Foster Peabody has done and is
doing. Whether blessing with his brothers, the
home of his boyhood at Columbus, with Y. M. C. A.
buildings for white and colored, giving a library
or a big farm to the State University, a science hall
and scholarships to our practical pet and pride,
the State Normal—reaching out a father’s hand
to the Georgia Industrial Home and its large band
of worse than orphans, or giving a hand-clasp
wrapped in a gift and a “God bless you,” to some
struggling school up among the mountains or down
among the pines —he has made the people of his
native Georgia believe in him, toast him, love him
and crown him as they have done no other man.
perhaps, in this generation.
The Campaign Among Rural Schools.
The State Educational Campaign Committee of
Georgia is composed of Chancellor D. C. Barrow,
Bishop Warren A. Candler, Governor-elect Hoke
Smith, ex-Governor William J. Northern, Prof. T.
J. Wooster, of the State University; Prof. N. L.
Duggan, the enterprising “pioneer” Commissioner
of Hancock, and Georgia’s indefati’ible State
School Commissioner, W. B. Merritt. This commit
tee, with Professor Merritt as its natural leader,
has done a great work in planning and carrying out
schemes for the betterment of rural schools, re
sulting in new and better houses, longer terms, bet
ter trained teachers, and a general healthy and
healthful community interest in education. The
little financial help -which the committee has been
able to extend to struggling communities here and
there, has proven a great stimulus to the people to
endeavor to help themselves. While a high state
of civilization has prevailed more generally, per
haps, in middle Georgia than any other section of
the state, the rural schools, even in this section,
have not for years claimed the proper interest nor
enlisted the necessary financial support of the peo
ple. But under the influence of this Campaign
Committee, wide-awake county superintendents
have risen to the needs of the hour, and communi
ties long neglected have been “made over” in their
educational life.
Churches are feeling the impulse of this progress
in that efficiency that comes from increasing intel
ligence.
One of the first county superintendents to catch
and create this spirit of progress was Professor
Mell Duggan, of Hancock county. He began to
teach his neighbors the necessity for better school
houses, industrial features, manual training, con
solidating weak schools and everything else that
could be thought of to build up the schools.
Henry County’s Transformation.
The campaign waged by Hon. Laurence Duffey,
the School Commissioner of Henry county, has re
sulted in astonishing improvement in the schools of
his county. A single illustration of this improve
ment is shown in the accompanying cuts of Pleas
ant Grove school house —the old and the new—
“before and after” the passion for betterment
“broke out” upon that rural community.
“The Mountains —The Mountains!’’
The very mention of the mountains of North
Georgia “touches a spring” that unfolds a vision,
and an inspiring panorama of what is being done
in more than a score of mountain counties, rises
to cheer the heart and encourage the liberality of
those who love to invest in such REAL “real es
tate” as mountain boys and girls. It is difficult
to choose between these counties in telling the story
of progress, but a battle fought, single-handed and
alone, always inspires us with its complexion of
the heroic; and the battle that has been and is now
(Concluded on page 12.)
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