Adult Education Programs for Negroes in Settlement Houses

This discussion of adult education for Negroes as provided by social settlements is not a survey nor a piece of comprehensive research, but is, rather, an. effort to show by an analysis of programs in selected settlements, their potentialities as instruments of adult education. The specific programs presented have not been chosen because they necessarily represented the high-. est levels of achievement among those studied although some unusual accomplishments are recorded. For the most part, those programs were selected which seemed, in the writer's personal opinion, to be typical or to represent a standard within the attainment of the average. The settlements whose programs are described all serve Negroes. Some, as indicated, cater specifically to Negroes. Others are open both to Negro and white membership. Some are staffed entirely by Negroes, others have mixed staffs of both professionals and volunteers. The concern of social settlements with educational needs of adults is coexistent with the settlement movement itself. Arnold Toynbee, pioneering in what became the settlement movement in England, had in mind the usefulness to the educationally underprivileged of university extension programs with which he was associated. Canon Barnett, another pioneer in the English movement, established the Tower Hamlets Branch of London University Extension Society in 1877. In addition to setting up these programs of adult education as instruments for the extension of university teaching, these men and those who followed in their footsteps, acted upon the principle of teaching by example and urged young university students to take up residence in the settlements. This was in order to stimulate, by neighborly association with university students, the intellectual and academic development of the deprived persons living in the slum areas chosen for location of the settlements. The beginnings of the settlement movement in America were primarily more social than educational but were marked to a considerable extent by the same characteristic concern with education of adults. Stanton Coit, inspired by previous brief residence in London's Toynbee Hall, undertook the first American experiment in 1886. That year, in New York City, he began a significant effort to supply moral and educational stimulus to disintegrating family life in a lower East side neighborhood. This Neighborhood Guild later, in 1892, became University Settlement and has continued to be a positive factor in the community life since that time. Another early settlement founded in New York City under the leadership of university women from several Eastern women's colleges opened its doors in October

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• Building an Institution Second to None

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