Читать книгу Constructing the Self. Essays on Southern Life-Writing онлайн

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It is precisely this social gospel—of learning to do a common thing in an uncommon manner in order to integrate oneself into the community—that is the foundation of thinking behind Washington’s educational system at Tuskegee, what was known as “industrial education.” “Industrial” as Washington used it did not have the same associations that it has now (large factories, heavy manufacturing, assembly lines); for Washington it meant being industrious, and specifically being industrious in the training for specific tradecraft, such as masonry, carpentry, farming, and husbandry. When talking about industrial education and social change, with students evolving into skilled workers who vitalize themselves and their communities, Washington often, as he does in the following passage from Working with the Hands, used the metaphor of construction, of laying down firm foundations upon which soaring edifices could be built:

One farm bought, one house built, one home neatly kept, one man the largest tax-payer and depositor in the local bank, one school or church maintained, one factory running successfully, one truck-garden profitably cultivated, one patient cured by a Negro doctor, one sermon well preached, one office well filled, one life cleanly lived—these will tell more in our favour than all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned up to plead our cause. Our pathway must be up through the soil, up through swamps, up through forests, up through the streams and rocks; up through commerce, education and religion!