University of Virginia Library

XIV. System of Education

The founding of the University of Virginia was not
confined solely to erecting a stately group of edifices,

which would, with equal splendor and comfort, furnish
dwelling-houses for the teachers and pupils, and halls for
the lectures, recitations, and scientific experiments. The
adoption of a course of studies, the selection of professors,
the purchase of a useful library, and the organization
of a system of administration, were as preliminary and as
essential to the completion of that work as the laying of
the brick and stone, the hoisting of the capitals, the
moulding and painting of the entablatures, the construction
of pillar and portico, cornice and arcade, sloping roof
and rounded dome. These we now propose to consider
in turn, in detail, as supplementary to the actual building.

Jefferson, it will be recalled, had very often expressed
his conviction as to what departments of knowledge should
be embraced in the platform of instruction of every higher
institution of learning. On the seventh of April, 1824,
before the Rotunda had been finished, the Board of Visitors,
under his guidance, adopted a scheme of studies which
was precisely the same in general character as the one
recommended by himself in the Rockfish Gap Report.
The chair of anatomy was only omitted because the poverty
of the funds did not, at that time, supply the amount
needed for an additional salary; but on October 6, of the
same year, this deficiency was removed. The several
schools prescribed on that date, in anticipation of the
opening of the University in the ensuing February, comprised
the following: I.—Ancient Languages: Latin,
Greek and Hebrew; and there were to be taught in the
same school in addition, belles-lettres, rhetoric, ancient
history, and ancient geography; II.—Modern Languages:
French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English in
its Anglo-Saxon form, while modern history and modern
geography were also to be included in the same
course; III.—Mathematics in all its branches, to which

was to be appended military and civil architecture; IV.
—Natural Philosophy: the laws and properties of bodies
in general, such as mechanics, statics, hydrostatics, hydraulics,
pneumatics, acoustics, and optics; and the science
of astronomy was also to be attached to this chair;
V.—Natural History: the sciences of botany, mineralogy,
zoology, chemistry, geology and rural economy;
VI.—Anatomy and Medicine: the sciences of anatomy
and surgery, the history of the progress and theories
of medicine, physiology, pathology, materia medica,
and pharmacy; VII.—Moral Philosophy: the science of
the mind, general grammar, and ethics; and VIII.—
Law: common and statute law, chancery law, federal
law, civil and mercantile law, law of nature and
nations, and the principles of government and political
science.

The eight broad courses of study embraced in this
short but pregnant list represent the three prime divisions
of the Higher Education; namely, the disciplinary, the
scientific, and the vocational. In their association in that
list, they resembled three great apartments, entirely distinct
from each other, but so closely connected as to be
standing under the same roof. As a whole, the scheme
was not more disciplinary than scientific, nor more scientific
than vocational. It reflected an equal respect for
the humanistic studies, which are essential to the intellectual
cultivation of men, and the practical studies, which
fortify their physical well-being, and enhance their
worldly prosperity. The follower of Locke, who looked
upon education as precious for its intellectual drill rather
than for the facts learned, would have detected in it
enough to satisfy his requirement, while the pupil of the
modern Spencer, in spite of his exclusive and intolerant
convictions, would have been unable to reject it altogether.

There was the classical course for mental discipline; there
was the scientific course for practical knowledge in general;
there was the vocational course for equipment for a
special pursuit. Utilitarian and rationalistic in spirit as
Jefferson was, he did not regard all education as only useful
so far as it prepared its recipient for a calling in life.
The culture of the moral and intellectual sides of the
individual was, in his view, of incalculable benefit in itself,
independently of its influence in sharpening the capacity
for winning success in some future business or profession.
Pestalozzi, it will be remembered, placed the
Latin and Greek languages in the class of studies that
were interesting only as curiosities. On the other hand,
Jefferson, who admired the methods of that revolutionary
teacher, and had as just an esteem for Real Knowledge
as the Germans themselves, nevertheless reckoned the
value of classical learning as high as Milton or Johnson,
and would have looked upon his system as radically incomplete
had not the ancient languages been included; and
he would have considered it to be equally defective had
not the most important natural sciences also been brought
within its scope.

Apart from the catholicity and perfect equilibrium that
distinguished the course of studies thus selected, the general
scheme possessed three practical features of an uncommon
character: (1) the division into schools; (2)
the ability of each school to expand more or less as the
funds of the institution increased; and (3) the unhampered
right of election which the student enjoyed instead
of his being bound down to an inflexible curriculum. It
will be seen hereafter that, when Jefferson came to draw
up rules to govern the choice of professors, he revealed
his dislike of single attainments, however great, by requiring
that the men to be selected should be so broadly

qualified that they could converse with ease with each colleague
on the subject which that colleague was employed
to teach; and yet by this division into schools, he created
a powerful influence for the production of specialists,
which his elective system was to confirm and make absolute.

Each school was confined to one great subject of study.
At the start, a single professor was in charge of each
school, but with a larger attendance of students, and a
rising income, the number was increased. Thus arose
what were designated as departments, which, in every
instance, were devoted to the study of at least one branch
of one fundamental subject. In 1851, the School of Law
was subdivided into two departments,[17] which were under
the direction of two professors; and in a broader manner,
the School of Ancient Languages expanded into two
schools in 1856, when the single chair was abandoned,
and the course in Latin was taken up by one professor,
and the course in Greek by another.

Each of the original schools of 1824 was independent
of the rest; each not only had an exclusive property in its
professor, but possessed, in that professor's pavilion, an
academic building of its own, in which its students were
required to assemble from day to day in their private
lecture-hall. In the beginning, each of these pavilions,
as we have stated, was expected to cost as much as one
of the intermediate academies which Jefferson had so
carefully planned as the secondary part of his scheme of
public education. His attitude towards each school and
its pavilion was almost as if he looked upon the two
combined as an institution as distinct as one of these district

colleges, but still, like the district college, a link in
the chain of a system. The tendency of his mind seemed
to be to disapprove of whatever leaned towards consolidation.
His preference was always for numerous bodies
held together by some sort of centripetal power, but existing
and moving in their own separate orbits. The principle
that he advocated in the relations of the States, he, in
a different way, put in force in the establishment of these
new schools, and in the regulations which he devised for
their practical working. Had he been an astronomer
also, it might be said of him that, as an upholder of statesrights,
and as the creator of university schools, he had
caught his inspiration while following the revolutions of
the Heavens, where every star is at once dependent and
independent.

In the curriculum that prevailed in other colleges, definite
courses were assigned to the freshman, sophomore,
junior, and senior years respectively, and no departure
from the rule was tolerated. On the other hand, in
the system of schools which Jefferson created for his university
in 1824, there were to be no such limitations as
these. If the student aspired to graduate in the entire
round of studies provided for in the general scheme, he
was to be at liberty, not only to begin and end with such
as he preferred, but he was to be under no compulsion
even in selecting his grades; if he wished, he was to be
permitted to attend, for instance, the senior class in Latin,
the intermediate class in Greek, and the junior class in
mathematics during the same session. In the curriculum
college, time was an element of controlling power. In
Jefferson's system of schools, on the other hand, time was
expected to play no part whatever. The student might
pass ten years, or even twenty years, if he liked, in the
endeavor, successful or unsuccessful, to graduate in one

or all of the schools; or if he had the physical strength
and the intellectual capacity as well required for so extraordinary
a feat, he might spend only one year in winning,
or strenuously striving to win, the whole number of
diplomas which the institution awarded. Each school
was to confer its own diploma, and the acquisition of this
single diploma was to entitle the winner as much to the
designation of "Graduate of the University of Virginia"
as if he had gathered in the entire eight. This fact very
naturally tended to increase further the dignity of the
separate school.

The diploma was to be won by the study of text-books
that were to be chosen, not by the Board of Visitors, but
by the professor himself. The incumbent of the chair
of law alone was not to enjoy this right; for that course,
from some points of view the most important of all, the
text-books were to be selected by Jefferson and Madison,
in accord with their own political doctrines. This was a
significant departure from the principle of independence
which had been adopted as the mainspring of the other
schools. "In most public seminaries," Jefferson remarked
in a letter to Cabell, "text-books are prescribed
to each of the several schools as the norma dociendi in
that school, and this is generally done by the authority
of the trustees. I should not propose it generally in
our university, because I believe none of us are so much
at the height of science in the several branches as to undertake
this, and, therefore, it will be better left to the
professors until occasion of interference be given." The
conclusion thus expressed was the one suggested and confirmed
by common sense. With all his versatility of
knowledge, Jefferson was too wise to think that he possessed
the exact as well as the varied information required
of one who was called upon to select the text-books for

such a diversity of courses as those embraced in the round
of at least seven of the schools. The obvious part of
discretion was to leave their choice to the experts who
were to fill these professorships. In the subjects of law
and political economy, on the other hand, he not only felt
that he was as much of a specialist as any man who might
be chosen to teach those subjects, but he was fully determined
that such principles alone should be imparted in
both as were satisfactory to his convictions.

As one of the purposes for which the University was
founded was to propagate and fortify what he considered
to be the only sound principles of government, it was
right, from his point of view, that he should show the
utmost jealousy in restricting the professor of law to
text-books which had been picked out by him with discriminating
care. But in its broadest aspect, this spirit
of exclusiveness,—which, it is significant, he exhibited
in connection with no other school as a whole,—was inconsistent
with the general character of independence
which he endeavored so sedulously and so successfully
to stamp upon the institution. When it came to political
theories, his attitude of liberal impartiality vanished at
once. A limitation of thought and action took its place.[18]
The intolerance which he justly condemned in sectarianism,
only too perceptibly animated him in the bent which
he deliberately gave to his school of law on its political
side. That school, instead of teaching the Federalist
and Republican respective views of the National Government
on a footing of historical and academic equality,
put its emphatic imprimatur upon the Republican theory,

with the result of giving the University a definite bias,
from a purely party point of view, from the start,—a
bias which, fortunately for the broad and universal usefulness
of its general work, was restricted to a single school.
If he went too far in his insistence upon the inculcation of
his own partisan convictions only in the new University,
time has corrected the possible evil effect of this exclusiveness
by transferring some of his dogmas to the domain
of past history, and leaving those that have survived in
practice to be studied in a spirit of impartial comparison.

Secondly: While the number of schools established
on the threshold was only eight, there was embedded in
the whole system the elastic principle which allowed, not
only expansion within each school by the broadening of
its several courses of instruction through the employment
of additional professors, but also an indefinite increase
in the number of independent schools. We have seen
that the plan of building rendered possible an unlimited
extension of the double lines of pavilions and dormitories.
This physical feature was adopted in anticipation both
of a spreading out within the existing schools, and of the
augmentation of their number. Jefferson looked forward
to the time when many subjects which received but
meagre consideration in his day would become an indispensable
part of every general scheme of higher education.
He foresaw, for instance, the importance of technical
philosophy, manual training, agriculture, horticulture,
veterinary surgery, and military science,—to designate
only a few departments of vocational instruction.
His provisions for teaching architecture and astronomy
were necessarily restricted, but he laid the foundation for
the acquisition of the fullest knowledge of both sciences,
although time has assured ample facilities only in the

case of astronomy.[19] Had the condition of the University
at the beginning allowed it, he would have set up Schools
of Commerce, Manufacture, and Diplomacy. He did
plan for thorough instruction in the theory of music and
other arts of a similar embellishing nature. It can be
asserted with accuracy that there have been few, if any,
large divisions of learning added to the courses of study
in any of the higher American institutions since the establishment
of the University of Virginia, which Jefferson
did not suggest in the various schemes of general education
that he formulated from time to time in his long
career, and for which his system of independent schools
was so precisely adapted.

Thirdly: The adoption of the elective principle was
the consistent, though not the inevitable, consequence of
the first division into schools, and of the power to add
new schools to the old indefinitely. The rapid increase
in the number of subjects, which, in our times, have forced
themselves upon the attention of teachers as indispensable
to a liberal education, has compelled the introduction of
elective courses even in colleges that remain loyal to the
formal curriculum. Had the number of schools at the
University of Virginia been permanently restricted to
those adopted at first, there would have been no impediment
in the way of prescribing a curriculum that would
have embraced them all. But Jefferson was hostile to
such a system by the sheer force of principle; and he foresaw,
that, in time, with the vast expansion of knowledge,
it either would become impossible in practice in his university,
or would have to be so stretched that it would
amount to the general right of election.

In 1816, Dr. Timothy Dwight, of Yale College, ventured
to assert,—amid growls of sour dissent, no doubt,
—that there was not a single university in the United
States at that time. There were seven, he intimated,
that pretended to that broad and liberal framework, but
tested by the standard of the great seats of learning in
Europe, only one in his judgment, Harvard College, approximated
it. Eight years after this bold and sweeping
pronouncement, the Board of Visitors of the University
of Virginia, which was not yet in operation, adopted the
following rule: "Every student shall be free to attend
the schools of his choice, and no other than he chooses."
This principle did not spring up now for the first time
even in the United States, for, many years before, it had
been put in limited practice at the College of William and
Mary.[20] Now, however, it was flung down as a tacit
challenge to Dr. Dwight amid far more imposing surroundings,
and with far brighter prospects of success,
than had ever greeted it before in America. It was to
become, indeed, the corner-stone of the institution; and
through it that institution was to claim identity in spirit
at least with the universities of the Old World, which had
enjoyed renown for ages. "I am not fully informed of
the practices of Harvard," wrote Jefferson to Ticknor,
in 1823, "but there is one principle we shall certainly
vary, although it has been copied, I believe, by nearly
every college and academy in the United States, that is,
the holding of the students all to one prescribed course
of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those
branches only which are to qualify them for the particular

vocation to which they are destined. We shall, on
the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures
they shall choose to attend, and require elementary
qualifications only and sufficient age."

Jefferson had a clear perception of the difference between
the college and the university. It was not a part
of his original plan that his own institution was to undertake
the work of a college even to a moderate extent.
The work which he designed it to do was graduate work,
and the only academic diploma—independent of the
doctrinate granted for advanced graduation—which
it was authorized to award was the graduate's diploma.
The adoption of the degrees of master of arts and bachelor
of arts was not in harmony with the principle upon
which his university was built, in its theory at least, and
was a distinctly regrettable, though perhaps, for practical
reasons, an unavoidable departure from its fundamental
character. It was special culture and not general
culture, which he had primarily in view, although the system
permitted also of general culture in the highest measure,
should the student succeed in passing through all
the classical and scientific schools. But it was not to the
aspirations of this set among the young men that he directed
his most earnest gaze; it was rather to the ambitions
of those who had come up to acquire knowledge
along some special line, scientific or classical, that appealed
to their individual tastes. It is true that, under
the existing regulations, each student was required, except
in cases of parental dispensation, to pursue at least three
courses of study; but these three he was at liberty to
choose; and it was always in his power, if he wished to
perfect himself in one school, to find two other schools
that would be more or less closely related to it.

It was not because of any defect in Jefferson's scheme

that the University of Virginia was, in the beginning,
more of a college than a university. The ideal college
stands midway between the school and the university;
the college looks backward,—the university looks forward;
the one treats of the conservation of truth,—the
other of its discovery or of vocational training. The
University of Virginia, at the start, when, in theory, it
was so purely a university, was more taken up with instruction
than with research; with undergraduate studies
than with graduate. This was due primarily to the incomplete
system of secondary education prevailing in
Virginia at that time, upon which, it will be recalled,
Jefferson had, with palpable exaggeration, animadverted
with sarcastic bitterness,—a shortcoming which so far
as it existed, his own institution was, in time, as we shall
see, so largely to correct. If the full fruit of such a
system of instruction as he framed for his own seat of
learning is to be garnered, then the community which it
is to benefit should contain, not simply public or private
secondary schools, however meritorious, but numerous
colleges of a high order to pour a constant stream of students
into the reservoir of the University at the top.
Jefferson sought to create these institutions by urging
the General Assembly to adopt a scheme of district colleges,
which would have enabled the student to complete
his undergraduate studies before beginning his graduate
studies at Charlottesville.

The need of these advanced colleges, as distinguished
from the large number of superior private schools that
existed, was perceived more and more clearly by the
Faculty as time passed. "Without an ample provision
for intermediate colleges and academies, and a judicious
distribution through the State," wrote Professor Lomax
to Cabell, in January, 1827, "the University can never

display the utility of which it is capable, and be secure of
having its proper support." Professor Dunglison had arrived
at the same conviction: "It will be an important
event for the institution when efficient academies are established
to do away with the necessity of the professors
of ancient and modern languages and mathematics
fulfilling those duties which ought previously to have been
performed in the schools." Jefferson himself could not
repress his impatience in contemplating this fact: "We
were obliged to receive last year," he wrote to W. B.
Giles in December, 1825, "shameful Latinists in the classical
school of the University, such as we will certainly
refuse as soon as we can get from better schools a sufficient
number of the properly instructed to form a class.
We must get rid of the Connecticut tutor."[21]

At this time, there were not in Virginia sufficiently
numerous facilities for preliminary instruction of a high
order, to equip every student to the degree required by
the standards of the University; and the depressing influence
of this fact on some of the junior classes of that
institution, during the early years of its existence, was
so much exaggerated by report, that colleges like Washington
and Hampden-Sidney apparently looked on it at
first, not as a superior, but as a common rival, engaged
like themselves chiefly in undergraduate work. And this
was also the prevailing attitude of the College of William
and Mary, although that institution had a better right,
both from an historical and a scholastic point of view, to
assume it.