Early Education Efforts
Prior to the American Civil War, educating the youth in Mississippi was in the hands of academies and private schools. There was no set curriculum enforced throughout the state, and children mostly stayed at home to work to support the family.
Funding for the few schools was left to private donations and student tuition. In Columbus, Franklin Academy for Boys was opened in 1821 and was the first of many public schools to sprout up in throughout Mississippi. By 1830, only 13 percent of white children were enrolled in public schools and there was limited access to government funded schools at the beginning of the Reconstruction.
Read more about this topic: Education In Mississippi
Famous quotes containing the words early, education and/or efforts:
“I could be, I discovered, by turns stern, loving, wise, silly, youthful, aged, racial, universal, indulgent, strict, with a remarkably easy and often cunning detachment ... various ways that an adult, spurred by guilt, by annoyance, by condescension, by loneliness, deals with the prerogatives of power and love.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“The Supreme Court would have pleased me more if they had concerned themselves about enforcing the compulsory education provisions for Negroes in the South as is done for white children. The next ten years would be better spent in appointing truant officers and looking after conditions in the homes from which the children come. Use to the limit what we already have.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels out of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; its efforts tend, on the contrary, to limit the numbers in all domains; it tries to count on its fingers.”
—Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)