Prominent member Frederick Taylor Gates envisioned "The Country School of To-Morrow," wherein "young and old will be taught in practicable ways how to make rural life beautiful, intelligent, fruitful, re-creative, healthful, and joyous".
This meeting included John D. Rockefeller Jr., Robert Curtis Ogden, George Foster Peabody, Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, William Henry Baldwin Jr., and Wallace Buttrick.
Curry, Frederick T. Gates, Daniel C. Gilman, Morris K. Jessup, Robert C. Ogden, Walter Hines Page, George Foster Peabody, and Albert Shaw.
[4] Upon evidence that this work would be effectively carried out, and Wallace Buttrick's 1905 observation that "the fundamental problem of the South is the recovery of the fertility of the soil," the program grew further.
[6] Rockefeller eventually gave it $180 million, which was used primarily to support higher education and medical schools in the United States and to improve farming practices in the South.
Wallace Buttrick an influential member in the development of the General Education Board highlighted that, "the fundamental problem of the South is the recovery of the fertility of the soil".
Because of the discriminatory philosophy of the time, African Americans were granted limited knowledge in the realm of industrial training.
[16] The work done by the General Education Board paved the way for philanthropic foundations which provided financial grants throughout the American south.
The present educational conventions fade from their minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk.
We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply…The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are… So we will organize our children into a little community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm."