Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 199
Soil analysis. The students are required to work out in the laboratory the
problems of the field and the shop
Page 275
It is fatally easy for the teachers in both academic and industrial classes to slip
away from the correlative method, for which the institution stands, back to the
traditional routine. The correlative method requires constant thought. As Mr.
Washington well knew, the average person only thinks under constant prodding.
Hence, the committees to do the prodding! It is so much easier to take one's
problems from the text-books than to dig them up in the shops or on the farm as
to be practically irresistible unless one is being watched. Then, in the shops it
requires a constant effort to work the theory in with the practice. If the
instructors in the trades tended to become mere unthinking mechanics a vigilant
committee was at hand to keep them true to their better lights. And if the
committees themselves ever became slack, the all-seeing eye of the principal
soon detected it and they in turn were "jacked up." Mr. Washington himself had
a way of leisurely strolling about day or night into shop, classroom, or
laboratory with a stenographer at his elbow. If he thus came upon a recitation in
24.03.2006