Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, August 13, 1867

Freedmen's School.

THE report of the Superintendent of schools for the Freedmen's Bureau for six months, ending with the 31st of December, shows the whole number of schools officially reported, 1,207, with 1,406 teachers, and 75,456 pupils; the number of industrial schools and schools not officially reported, is 192, with 228 teachers, and 12,514 pupils, making an aggregate of 87,871 pupils, of whom only 2,302 were free before the war. The freedmen own 286 school buildings, and sustain wholly or in part 623 schools, of the pupils, 15,248 pay tuition, which amounts to $11,377 per month. Of the teachers 400 are colored persons. The number of Sabbath schools is reported 782, with 70,610 pupils. The Superintendent says these figures are very satisfactory. In addition to those in schools, thousands of scholars who have made some progress, are now teaching parents, brothers and sisters at home, so that nearly every freedman's house in the land has become a school house, and families in every section have become pupils. To say that half a million of persons liberated by the war are now studying the spelling book, would be a very low estimate.