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Laura Wakefield's 2004 thesis is a more fully developed paper on education in Florida before and after the Civil War. [1] I have not yet found the remark attributed to the Northerner Mr. Kinne, but whether he said it or not (about there being more schools for black children than white at the end of the Civil War), it was inaccurate, and including it here is POV and UNDUE WEIGHT for the wrong conclusion. There were few public schools established in the state before the Civil War, about 97 overall, said Wakefield, and these were almost exclusively for white children. If Kinne was talking about missionary or contraband schools for black children, that should be noted. Regular public free schools for black children were not founded until legislation was passed during Reconstruction, as Wakefield attests in her paper and as other historians have noted.Parkwells (talk) 20:03, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The minimal white education system that exited before the Civil War was nearly extinct by the end of the war. In fact, white interest in education waned so much that by the fall of 1866, as A.E. Kinne traveled through East Florida, he found few fewer white schools than freedmen schools. In the view of this northerner, lack of interest in education meant that a school system would be one of the last things reconstructed for Florida whites. On the other hand, largely illiterate and unprepared for citizenship, emancipated slaves were extremely eager to learn. Schooling symbolized freedom and guarded against a return to bondage. Freedmen demonstrated an almost reverent approach to education.
Text in the article: Florida's educational system was in shambles at the end of the Civil War; a Northerner named A. E. Kinne noted there were fewer schools for white children than black children. A difference in attitudes about education between the races was also apparent as freed blacks saw education as the key to continuing their freedom, or at least escaping conditions they endured during servitude.
The original text makes it clear that the original Florida school system was only for whites, and that by the fall of 1866, new schools had been founded for freedmen and their children, so many as to outnumber the remaining white schools. This is less clear in your paraphrase. The time between the end of the war in 1865, and late 1866 when Kinne traveled and made his observation, was one of dramatic change with the new provision of education to black children.Parkwells (talk) 17:46, 4 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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