Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 15. The Negro in the Public Economy - 3. Education
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
338 An American Dilemma
spent on the education of Negroes from the amount spent on the education
of whites. In the North, the principle is not questioned that schools should
have equal standards, independent of whether a school is all white, all
Negro or mixed. It is mainly the Negroes^ poverty which keeps them from
utilizing existing educational facilities as much as do whites. In fact, were it
not for this reason, the Northern Negroes would on the average be better
off than the Northern whites, since Negroes are more concentrated in the big
cities where school facilities are superior to large parts of the rural North
where only white people live. In actual practice, however, schools in needy
districts tend to be somewhat older, less well equipped and often more
over-crowded. A main cause of this is the migration of Negroes from the
South to the slum areas of Northern cities. European immigrants who
come to these slum areas also have inferior schools. School facilities have
not been adjusted to the rapidly growing need. The city authorities who
know about the much more inadequate school facilities for Negroes in the
South, and who are usually somewhat reluctant to increase the incentive
for Negro migration to their localities, have often not been so active in
widening school facilities in Negro districts as they would have been had
the districts been white. But the differentials are seldom large and would
probably disappear altogether if migration should cease.
In the South, school facilities are generally much poorer. In the year
1935-1936 the average current expenditures per pupil in daily attendance in
all public elementary and secondary schools in the country was $74. The
range between the different states was extremely wide. In three Northern
states, New York, Nevada, and California, the amount was over $115.
On the other hand, all the states in the Upper and Lower South, as well
as some of the Border states, were far below the national average. At the
bottom of the scale were Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, where the
average expenditure was less than $30 per pupil.’’^
Obviously, these conditions are related to two factors: the South has the
lowest income level and, at the same time, the highest number of children
in the whole nation.® For these two reasons the South actually sacrifices
more for education, in relation to its economic ability, than does the rest of
the country, on the average. It has been calculated, for instance, that Mis-
sissippi expends about twice as much on schools, compared with its taxable
income, as does New York State.® Undoubtedly, this goes a long way to
explain the lower level of educational facilities in the South. There are two
qualifications, however, which we should keep in mind. One is the fact that
certain states outside the South, such as Utah, Arizona, and the two Dako-
tas, where the calculated taxability per child was about as low as in some
of the most prosperous Southern states, for example, Virginia and Texas,
nevertheless showed much greater expenditures per pupil in 1935-1936.^®
Thus, although public education is burdensome for the Southern economy,
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
