Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871 [PAGE 310]

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302 Mr. Welch—I harmonize with the views expressed generally, with regard to the object that such a Convention as this could react if it should become permanent. I do not fall into the idea of making this Association that is to be, a branch of a National Association of Education. The questions that we want to discuss, it seems to me, are peculiar, and arise from the newness of the enterprise. These immensely important subjects that are discussed by the convention of teachers— the National Convention—have been before them for years and years. Most of us have reached our conclusions with regard to them. But with these new institutions we are facing some new problems that are intense.y interesting, and that are portentidus in their importance. Hence we might be trammeled by any connection of the National Association. At any rate, our attention would be more or less distracted by the multiplicity of subjects that are discussed by that body. And then again, it might not be convenient for us to meet at the same place that they meet. And for my own part, I have not time for attending more than one or two conventions in a year. These are reasons, however, which may not appeal to most of you. What I want to know is not whether languages are more efficient in giving general mental discipline than science; not how to conduct primary education, or to get at the exact value of object lessons, or how to teach geography ; but I want particularly to know how to manage in the solution of the new problems that we have to face the moment we organize an industrial institution, as to the admission of the sexes ; as to the labor question ; as to the exact relation to the sciences and their practice in the field, and as to the new problems that, in the organization of these new institutions, come before us in regard to college government. Such things I come to get light on. The old subjects that have been discussed, from time immemorial, and which you and I have hammered away at for twenty-five years, I have laid aside. Now, there is another point that suggested itself tome this moment. For my part, I am sure that if we, who are present here from our institutions, give our assent to this Convention, it will be heartily acquiesced in by those we left at home. And though we were not actually elected as delegates to this Convention, yet we are considered as representing these institutions, and institutions will be bound by our actions ; and I am confident that will be the case with all the faculties of the new industrial colleges that are not present in the Convention. And I believe, sir, that this meeting can reach, or leave matters in such a hape that we shall become a permanent organization, with definite