Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 148]

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140 however, has not been neglected, as much instruction is given in topics which would perhaps be transferred to such a teacher when one should be appointed. The course of instruction in English and Modern Languages, with its line of theoretical and applied science, is especially a teacher's course, and as such has been largely accepted, especially by ladies. It should be remembered, too, that the University has maintained from the first a thorough course of study in the ancient languages, equivalent to those of the leading Eastern colleges. Some of the best representatives of the University have graduated from this course; yet its numbers have been few, and it has been quite overshadowed by the technical courses. . Is there any reason in the fitness of things why this course may not have a fair amount of the care and nourishment which the other courses enjoy? Not at their expense, or to their diminution, but as one of the children of the same family, sitting in a place of equal honor at the common table. A late step of progress affects not the department of Literature especially, but all departments as well. It has been observed that many of the graduates of the University, particularly from the technical schools, were deficient in power to speak and write intelligently and forcibly. Yet they were representatives of the University, duly accredited, taking stand in their several communities as persons of education and culture, and assuming—compelled to assume whether they would or would not;—the responsibilities and places of educated persons. The power to do, the capacity to know, needs also the ability to tell what one knows, and to explain what one can do. This ability comes not usually as a natural gift, but rather from large experience and long practice. Accordingly, a chair of rhetoric and oratory has been established and filled with an accomplished writer and speaker. It is required that all students, of whatever course, shall take a course -of training under this officer, beginning with matriculation and ending only at graduation. The evidences of the value of "this training are already beginning to accumulate, and there can be no doubt that it will tell ultimately in the very decided improvement of all our students in these essential graces and accomplishments. More detailed accounts of the work in the various departments of the University are given in the repoits of the Professors herewith appended.