PUBLIC EDUCATION IN

THE SOUTH

BY

EDGAR W. KNIGHT, PH.D.

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
AUTHOR OF "THE INFLUENCE OF RECONSTRUCTION ON EDUCATION IN
THE SOUTH,"
," "SOME PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING," "PUBLIC-
SCHOOL EDUCATION IN NORTH CAROLINA," ETC.

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY EDGAR W. KNIGHT

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

922.3

654013

The Athenæum Press
GINN AND COMPANY. PRO-
PRIETORS BOSTON. U.S.A.

TO THE MEMORY OF

EDWARD KIDDER GRAHAM

GENTLEMAN, SCHOLAR, FRIEND, INSPIRING TEACHER OF YOUTH
BRILLIANT LEADER OF MEN, EXPONENT AND INTERPRETER
OF THE SOUTH'S BEST TRADITIONS

PREFACE

This book is the outgrowth of several years' study of public educational problems in the United States, especially in the South, through courses in the history of education given at Trinity College and the University of North Carolina for teachers and prospective teachers and administrators. In such courses the aim has been to consider the principal problems of administration, support, and supervision of present-day education in the Southern States and to seek an understanding of their meaning in the light of their historical growth. The book is therefore a study of actual educational progress in the South rather than of educational theories; and the relation between education and economic, social, political, and religious influences is given emphasis.

The book attempts to give the first general survey yet published in a single volume of the growth of public educational organization and practices in those eleven States which formed the Confederacy. The study seeks to trace the development of the democratic principles of education in the South, to explain their apparently slow application or practical acceptance, and to point out from the past certain valuable lessons for the educational problems of the present. The book has been prepared for the purpose of assisting the teacher, the educational administrator, and the public to a more intelligent understanding of the present educational situation in the Southern States and of their respective tasks in meeting it. As far as possible, therefore, the public educational problems of today are set forth in the light of their historical development. Another purpose in mind in the preparation of the volume has been to make accessible to the student and the teacher certain valuable but scattered and more or less inaccessible materials on the educational history of the

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