Class is in session. Here are the rules: “When called on to recite…[d]on’t sit dumbly in the seat and say nothing….Valuable minutes are wasted thus. Don’t deface property. Writing on or cutting into desks or chairs…[is] evidence of poor training….Do not argue with or contradict the teacher in class….Don’t mistake the classroom for a lunchroom or a bedroom.” Charlotte Hawkins Brown might be rolling in her grave if she knew the state of classroom etiquette today. Along with African-American women educators like Mary McCleod Bethune and Nannie Helen Burroughs, Brown sought to ensure that blacks got a well-rounded educationnot just the “storing up in one’s mind of a vast accumulation of historic, mathematical, and scientific facts,” but the “cultivation of traits of honor, thoughtfulness…and proper appreciation of values.” Lydia Charles Hoffman compares lives, accomplishments, and educational philosophies in a lecture titled “Charlotte Hawkins Brown and the Three B’s of Education.” At 2 p.m at the Mary McCleod Bethune Council House National Historical Site, 1318 Vermont Ave. NW. Free. (202) 673-2402. (Ayesha Morris)
Lydia Charles Hoffman
