The School of the Colored Girl Beautiful
“Education is the process of developing all man’s powers, physical, intellectual, moral, aesthetic and religious for the proper discharge of the duties of citizenship.”
The school that the colored girl beautiful should attend will have trees, grass, flowers, shrubs and a garden (even though a small one) that the girl may keep in close touch with the first teacher—Mother Nature.
The care of the school campus as well as the windows, fences, and surroundings, will reflect the careful spirit of the school.
The colored girl beautiful will select the school which fights flies, dirt, filth around back doors; the school which aims for sanitation before putting in electric lights; in fact, a school which has health and sanitation for its hobby.
She will attend a school that buys books and takes care of them and which compels the students to read that they may grow into the reading habit, to pass it along to posterity.
The progress of the race will depend not upon the “book learning” taught in schools, but upon the right habits formed and the amount of self culture that the school inspires.
The colored girl beautiful will be taught to keep her eyes open and her mouth shut that she may never betray how little she has really learned in her preparation for the real school—the school of Life.
The colored girl beautiful will be taught her duty and relationship to the race, that she may be a living example of what right education and right training will do. She will study human needs and about the history and progress of her people that she may take her place in the affairs of her race if called upon, and then bequeath her knowledge and good qualities to succeeding generations. She will be taught lessons of self-control and modesty; to respect her womanhood and to conduct herself that she may command respect from all men and boys including those of her family.
She will be taught enough of the world to step into its arena knowing the evils to shun. She will be taught to hold out a helping hand to weaker ones who may succumb to evil.
She will aim to live in pleasant relationship in the school that she may acquire the habit of living in peace in social circles and neighborhoods in the scheme of after life.
She will be taught that politeness is a necessary virtue; that every form of impoliteness is an evidence of mental as well as moral weakness and that an ill bred colored girl is a curse to the race. She will be taught the value of silence and that of speech, and will aim to train herself along both lines for silence is often more effective than speech.
She will learn that the aim of education is the aim of religion, that is, to lift one above the animal. She will endeavor to lift herself to the highest plane of true womanhood that she may pull others higher.
Colored schools are supposed to correct the tendencies of children who have lived under careless, untidy conditions, and to give them ideals of cleanliness and order.
She will do her part of the school work cheerfully and thoroughly, that she may know how work should be done, and how to train others—her children, perhaps, if so favored.
The colored girl beautiful will be taught the value and use of money, and the relative value of character, education, and other things, which money cannot buy. She will be taught the care and cleanliness of the body, simplicity of wearing apparel and appropriate becoming inconspicuous costumes for church, school, street and home.
She will be taught that fine clothes can not cover up bad manners, nor take the place of good character; that it is foolish to buy what one can not afford; that the expenditure for clothes especially should be gauged by one’s salary and should be appropriate for her particular plane of life.
The laws of proportion in the scheme of life must be the hobby of the school for the colored girl beautiful.
She will be taught that it is unforgivable not to walk erect, to talk in good English and in a soft tone of voice.
As many girls fall into book ignorance after graduation she will be taught that the aim of education is to give good habits of reading along with book-knowledge—or else the school has failed to educate a colored girl beautiful.
The colored girl beautiful will not aim for book education alone. She will select a school which will fit her to grace her home from parlor to kitchen, a school which has thoroughness for its motto.
She will be taught how to make her dresses and hats, to prepare for the time when perhaps her allowance for clothes must be divided among several. Dressmaking is a science as well as an art and enough can be learned, by those not apt, to save many dollars—especially in the home that fate favors with children.
She will be taught a trade, or some means of earning a livelihood, that she may be prepared, if circumstances should force her into the business arena.
The school of the colored girl beautiful will so educate her that motherhood will be her highest ideal in life, the glory of colored womanhood.