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 foe 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 m 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,[51] 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 he said of him that, as an upholder of states rights, 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 in consistent 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.[52]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.[53] 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.[54] 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 he 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 he 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 or 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." [55]

At this tune, 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 locked 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.