Tuskegee was a little town in Alabama, USA, when Booker T Washington was invited to establish there a school for the coloured people of the state in the year 1881, 16 years after the Emancipation of the Negroes. The Tuskegee Institute became famous for the holistic education it provided to the coloured students. Washington did not provide mere bookish learning; he taught the students one trade or another so that they could earn their living as soon as they left the school. Mere earning of livelihood was not Washington’s objective, however. Education is “any kind of training... that gives strength and culture to the mind ,” says Washington in his autobiography, Up from Slavery (prescribed as an optional supplementary reader by CBSE for class XII). Washington’s book is a heart-touching expression of a profound philosophy which seeks to discover the good in every individual and cultivate it irrespective of race or religion. There is a passage in the book which eloque
Cerebrate and Celebrate