FIRST PERIOD
STRUGGLE FOR A UNIVERSITY History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; The Lengthened Shadow of One Man, Volume I | ||
IV. Jefferson's Schemes of Popular Education
It was not until the close of his Presidential term in 1809, that Jefferson was so completely released from all official responsibilities that he could fix his mind continuously on the subject which had enlisted his earnest sympathy and support so early in his political career. Hardly had he taken up his residence under the roof of Monticello, when he once more turns to that subject, and during the remainder of his long life, it held a place in the very centre of all his daily thoughts. In no form did these ponderings find a weightier expression than in his famous letter to Peter Carr in 1814. In that letter, he again laid down the various lines which a system of public instruction, in his judgment, should follow. Again he broadly declared, by way of introduction, that every citizen was entitled to an education commensurate with his condition and calling in life. How was this to be determined? By the social station to which he belonged. The whole community was capable of division into two classes: (1) the laboring class; and (2) the learned class. Members of the first would require elementary tuition to qualify them for the proper performance of their tasks; members of the second would need it as an indispensable forerunner to further study. So soon as the primary school had been left behind, the laboring class were expected to begin the pursuit of agriculture, or serve apprenticeships in different handicrafts, while, on the other hand, the learned class were expected to enter the colleges, which were to be divided into General Schools and Professional Schools, representing, respectively, the second
The entire learned class was to receive their secondary training in the General Schools, in which the highest branches of knowledge were to be taught. The round of studies there was to embrace the languages, mathematics, and philosophy. Provision was to be made in the department of languages for lessons in history, both ancient and modern; and belles-lettres, rhetoric, and oratory were also to be included in this department as well as such special tuition as was suited to the needs of the deaf and dumb. The course in mathematics was to embrace pure mathematics, physics, chemistry, natural history, and anatomy and the theory of medicine, while the course in philosophy should take in ideology, ethics, the law of nature and nations, government, and political economy. The Professional Schools,-to which all deciding to follow a profession were to have access, after passing through the General Schools,-were to cover as wide a field as the latter, but on a higher level; they were to consist of three distinct divisions: (1) department of fine arts, which was to embrace civil architecture, painting, sculpture, and the theory of music; (2) department of military and naval architecture, projectiles, agriculture, horticulture, technical philosophy, practice of medicine, materia medica, pharmacy, and surgery; (3) department of theology and ecclesiastical history, and municipal and foreign law.
These several departments were designed to offer the graduate of the General Schools the opportunity to acquire the necessary knowledge of any one of the following professional subjects: law, medicine, theology, agriculture, army and navy architecture, painting, and landscape gardening. In the school of technical philosophy,
This letter to Peter Carr, -of which we have given only a meagre synopsis, -contains the most complete description which Jefferson ever drew up of his plans for public education. It reveals that his point of view had not changed in spite of the interval of forty years since 1776, during which his observations and impressions of scholastic institutions of every sort had been broadened and ripened by foreign travel. He himself, in a letter written to Governor Nicholas in 1816, referred to it as a digest of all the information which he had been able to gather on the subject upon which it bore; and it will always possess an uncommon interest as foreshadowing the courses of instruction which he introduced into the lecture-rooms of the University of Virginia. In the teeth of popular hostility, he persisted in pronouncing the local school, supported by local taxation, to be the only proper one for elementary tuition; and time and reflection, he said, had but confirmed his opinion as to the correctness of the general principle of subdividing the counties into wards for this purpose.
Jefferson perceived very clearly that the sentiment of
This bill differed only in petty details from the bill of 1779, or from the scheme of general education set forth in the letter to Peter Carr, in 1814. First, a school was to be established in each ward, in which the children of that ward alone were to receive instruction during three years at the common charge. The school-house and the dwelling-house for the teacher were to be built by the parents at their own expense. A log cabin was to be considered sufficient in each instance, since the constant shifting of the population was certain to render necessary the frequent removal of both houses to some situation more convenient for the majority of the pupils in attendance. A teacher capable of grounding these pupils in reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, was to be employed at a salary of one hundred and fifty dollars a year, with an allowance of bread and meat for subsistence. In selecting the instructors, the board of visitors, who were to have charge of the schools, were always to give the preference to members of the laboring class, such as mechanics, overseers, and tillers of the soil; and among these, the first choice should fall on persons who were infirm in health, crippled in limb, or advanced in years.
Secondly, the State was to be divided into nine districts, in each of which a college was to be erected, to be subject to a board of visitors composed of one member from each county belonging to that district, and all under the control of the President and Directors of the Literary Fund. There was to be built for each college a house of brick or stone, to contain two rooms in which the recitations
Thirdly, a university was to be established in a healthy and central part of the State; and here all the divisions of the useful arts were to be taught in their highest branches. Visitors were to be annually nominated by the President and Directors of the Literary Fund, now to be known as the Board of Public Instruction; the site of the new institution was to be chosen by the first set of these visitors; but the plan of the buildings vas to be furnished, or at least, approved by the Central Board. The dormitories were to be so constructed as to admit of additions to their dimensions as the number of students should increase. The-professors were not to exceed ten in number; and the fixed salary of each should be one thousand dollars, to be swelled by the tuition fees of his pupils. The courses of instruction were to embrace history, geography, natural philosophy, agriculture, chemistry, theory of medicine, anatomy, botany, zoology, mineralogy, geology, pure and mixed mathematics, military and naval science, ideology, ethics, the law of nature and nations, municipal and foreign law, the science of civil government, political economy, languages, rhetoric, belles-lettres, and the fine arts. The visitors were to have the
When Jefferson drafted this bill for public education he was eager for the conversion of Central College into the University of Virginia; and he went so far as to insert the name of the former seat of learning in the alternate column opposite the words that required the choice of a site for the projected university to be made in a central and healthy part of the State. He did this with the hope that the General Assembly would, if the bill were accepted, authorize the adoption of this secondary clause by amendment.
The bill is significant from another point of view: now that Jefferson was actively employed in building Central College, and was looking forward to its transformation into a great State university, which would need a large annual appropriation for its support, he appeared to be less generous and less enlightened in his attitude towards primary education. Log cabins for schoolhouses and crippled mechanics for teachers seem to he a rather scant provision for elementary tuition; and in making such a suggestion, he plainly had cheapness in view to an extent that promised little for the real improvement of the class that needed instruction most. He would hardly have ventured on this suggestion, had he not apprehended that an appropriation by the State at large for elementary education would diminish the chance of obtaining an appropriation for university education. In 1820, when the highest branch of his general plan had been adopted, and the University of Virginia was in the course of erection, his fear of a shortened State bounty for that institution returned, and again he deprecated a large outlay for the
There was an additional reason now, -and a highly characteristic one, too, -why Jefferson advocated the ward school: it would keep elementary education out of the hands of fanatical preachers, " who, in the county elections," he said, " would be universally chosen, and the predominant sect of the county would possess itself of all its schools."
But while he appeared to be inclined to favor the higher institutions at the expense of the dignity and prosperity of the elementary schools at this particular moment of his career, he never swerved in his loyalty to his general plan; and he went so far as to write to Cabell, in 1823, that, were it necessary to give up either the primary schools or the university, he would rather abandon the university, " because it was safer to have a whole people respectably enlightened than a few in a high state of science, and the many in ignorance." " The last," he added, " is the most dangerous in which a people can be." He saw at this time, with regretful clearness, that the resources of the Literary Fund were not sufficient to support that entire system of public education which he had so long urged, and he preferred that the second grade,
Cabell threw cold water on the proposition, because, in his judgment, the pear of public opinion was not ripe for it; and in addition, the colleges then in existence could not be effectively insinuated into the projected system. This, however, was not thought by Jefferson to be essential
FIRST PERIOD
STRUGGLE FOR A UNIVERSITY History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; The Lengthened Shadow of One Man, Volume I | ||