UIHistories Project: A History of the University of Illinois by Kalev Leetaru
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Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871 [PAGE 267]

Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871
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259 may be good and may be bad. Tou are working out, with a good deal of liberality, a great many of the propositions which we look at from a distance, and we are very desirous of learning how you are getting along with a great many of these questions, and, therefore, what I have to say will, I trust, be of a kind to provoke comment and remark from you* rather than with the expectation of adding much to your knowledge. In the first place I suppose—among us it is more the case than among you—that there are growing up among these national endowments to schools of science, which receive the benefit of the Agricultural College grant so-called, a great many private institutions, founded many of them by individuals, and many of the most noteworthy character; and among them is the Bnssey Agricultural School, which is connected with Harvard University. The fund has been accumulating, and now they are making announcements what they will do. Akin to that is the one at Worcester, a great school of Technology ; another at Hoboken, a great school of Mechanical Engineering; at Dartmouth College they have two funds aside from their national college fund, and so I might go on. Some are of a lower grade and some higher. The question has arisen how far these endowments, national or private, shall be allowed to exert an influence over the common schools; how far it is necessary to have preparatory schools adapted to them. Many of these questions have arisen which are not yet settled. I see that some remarks were made in St. Louis of a severe and cutting character, bearing upon this matter. We are already discovering that public schools or high schools and academies are modifying their course of instruction. We have two schemes of study, one fitting boys for college, and the other for the scientific school. The change in the last two or three years has been very noteworthy. I merely throw this out to show you how completely I think this movement has taken hold of New England and the East, and how it is receiving recognition from State Legislatures, private individuals, teachers and parents. With us the matter is going forward. The first point is the spirit of entire friendliness to all sorts of learning. A few years ago all the movements of practical education, so-called, were in the direction of hostility to all classical training. So far as I can judge there is no such feeling now existing. I think those connected with classical colleges do not look with confidence on those schools. They do not feel quite certain that they are going to answer. They are a little afraid it is a sort of royal road to knowledge; and now and then I hear the phrase that this is a bread-and-butter knowledge that you