5. ALUMNI AS ADMINISTRATIVE EDUCATORS AND AS TEACHERS IN STATE
INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING
In speaking hitherto of the teachers of the State who have been students
here, attention has been directed especially to that great army in the
common schools. When we enumerate school officials and those teachers in
our State institutions of higher learning who bear the University's seal the
number is smaller, to be sure, but no less influential. Consider, for example,
the division superintendents of schools in the counties and cities of Virginia.
Twenty-eight of them, almost exactly one fourth of the whole number, are
on the rolls of our alumni. Ten members of the Virginia State Normal
School Board, the body which since 1916 has had the oversight and the
direction of our four state normal schools for white women, have been University
men. Prior to 1916 there were separate boards for these four institutions,
and a goodly proportion of the members of those separate boards
were also alumni of the University.
The first of these four normal schools was established at Farmville in
1884. The second was opened at Harrisonburg in 1909; the third at Fredericksburg,
in 1911; and the fourth at East Radford, in 1913. From official
records it appears that up to this date 20,551 different students have been
enrolled in these institutions. Most of this great multitude have been
teachers for shorter or longer periods in the public schools of Virginia, and
they have been distributed in every county and every city of the State.
The significance of all this in our present study appears in a moment when
we observe the fact that almost or quite forty members of the four normal
school faculties that have trained these 20,000 teachers have been graduates
of the University or sometime students here.
For many years past the contribution of the College of William and
Mary to the life and administrative efficiency of our state public schools has
been so great as to win general acknowledgment and appreciation. To this
historic institution the University of Virginia herself owes much. Jefferson,
Monroe, and others saw to it that the rich legacies of the older foundation
became really and truly the younger school's inheritances. But may we not
say, speaking truly and gratefully, that in some measure, through the century
that is closing, the talents that were received have been invested and
returned? For instance, during twenty-one years (1898-1919) the honored
president of William and Mary was Lyon G. Tyler, an alumnus of the University
of Virginia; and contemporary with him, or at least serving the same
generation with him, we may count twelve other distinguished sons of the
University on the faculties of William and Mary. Surely, therefore, one
may be justified in saying that, in this splendid contribution that
William and Mary has made to our public schools, the University has
had some cordial share. The coöperation of kindred can certainly be no
robbery.
It would doubtless be possible, if one had time, to trace relationships of
wholesome coöperation between the University and every other State institution
of higher learning in Virginia in this laudable task of uplifting
the common schools; but a reasonable limit must be our law.
