Within forty years the system of instruction in the American schools
has undergone some radical changes for the better; and if the system
in vogue at the beginning of this period, with the study of the
classics as the pivotal point, did not fit the practical needs of the
average Anglo-Saxon youth, with his heritage of centuries of culture,
it is not strange if some blunders were made in attempting to shape
this same classical education into a working basis for a people
emerging from a state of bondage in which to impart even the elements
of education, was considered a crime, generally speaking.

Industrial, manual, or technical training had not, forty years ago,
taken firm hold upon the educational system, and school courses for
Negroes were planned after classical models, perhaps better suited in
many instances for students of a more advanced mentality and
civilization; for humanity at large can scarcely hope to escape the
slow and inevitable stages and processes of evolution. Individual
genius, however, bound by no law, may leap and bound from stage to
stage; and we point with pride to Negroes whose classic education in
the early decades of freedom served not only to prove their own
individual ability, but the capacity of the race for, and
susceptibility to, a high degree of culture at a time when such
demonstration was a prime necessity.

We do not consider that any mistake was made in at once providing for
the classical or higher education of those who were mentally able to
receive it, and as brilliant achievements of the nineteenth century
from an educational standpoint, we refer with a keen sense of
gratification to the two thousand five hundred and twenty-five or more
college graduates who are helping to raise the standard of the race