Education

THERE has lately been an interesting discussion in California respecting the scope of university education, which is not yet closed. Directly opposite the Golden Gate, on the western slope of the Contra Costa hills, and within sight of San Francisco, two large and handsome buildings, costing over three hundred thousand dollars, have been completed within the last six months, for the University of California. Within these walls, nearly two hundred students, not including any preparatory department, are now receiving instruction in the higher branches of science and literature. Laboratories, apparatus, books, maps, photographs, and cabinets illustrative of geology, mineralogy, botany, and zoology have been already secured by munificent outlays. Two hundred acres of land, traversed by a brook which is lined with bay-trees and oaks, are reserved for the culture of every sort of plants adapted to the climate. Professors are engaged in teaching who represent varied ideas of intellectual training and the experience of many different Eastern institutions. More than a million and a quarter of dollars, in interest-bearing funds, have been secured for the institution by the liberal endowments of the State and National governments. Eighty thousand dollars ware voted besides by the legislature just in session, for current expenses during the next two years. The gifts of wealthy men are beginning to supplement the provisions of the State, and the voluntary zeal of the wise and good has been enlisted to build up around the university, and independent of it, homes, lodging-houses, and churches in all the attractiveness of a college village.

The site bears the name of Berkeley, a reminiscence of educational enthusiasm in the last century, and a token of liberality and hope prevailing to-day. The university is free from sectarian control, and its advantages are open, without the slightest fee, to all qualified applicants, young men and young women, and from every State, country, and race. The instructions include the various branches of literary and historical learning, ancient and modern, and they give equal if not greater prominence to all the claims of modern science, both in its abstract aspects and in its applications to human industry.

At the very outset the question whether the State should maintain an agricultural school, or a university including an agricultural school, was discussed and determined in favor of the comprehensive plan. The laws of the State are clear upon this point.

With all these prospects, there is a serious danger. The chief supporter of the university may become its chief destroyer. The funds having chiefly come from the public treasury, the legislature of the State has retained a visitorial power, and is disposed to supervise not merely the expenditures of money, but the interior organization, discipline, and courses of instruction. The university is not governed by a charter, but by sections of the political code. Its regents are civil executive officers, individually responsible. The legislature while in session is supreme, having in its hands a despotic power such as kings and parliaments have never possessed in the management of colleges and universities. It may, at will, abolish the board of regents, and substitute for it a body selected by popular suffrage. It may alter the code in any respect.

This supremacy is nominally the supremacy of the people; but there is danger that it will be the supremacy of ignorant and prejudiced men, acting in haste, under personal pique, and without full consideration of the consequences which are involved.

During the last winter a bold effort was made openly and persistently by the farmers’ granges of the State, to persuade the legislature that an agricultural school and not a university should be the chief object of care; that blacksmithing and carpentry as well as plowing should be taught; that boys should be trained, according to one of the popular phrases, “to be the peers of the laborer iu muscle, and the peers of the scholar in mind.” In order to accomplish this the effort was made to turn out the board of regents and replace the members by those who are “ fresher from the people.” Fortunately the danger has been averted.

Many persons had apprehended the interference of political partisanship in the university management, but the recent discussions were not the result of partisan zeal. They came from popular clamor. The cry was that of the uninformed, who wanted a good thing, but who disregarded the experience of other States, and called for methods and agencies which have elsewhere been abandoned as sterile.

Underlying this clamor was the feeling, sometimes uttered as a tenet, that the State should not only give an education, but, like the national government at West Point, should provide the means of simultaneous support; or at least, that the university should give manual labor to all who wish it, and should keep its standard so low that those who have spent their vital force in muscular exertion shall not he dismissed or disciplined because their cerebral action is feeble and confused. “ We don’t want a Harvard or a Yale, or an Oxford or a Berlin,” was frequently said. This did not mean that a slavish copy of these institutions was to he avoided,—a doctrine to which everybody would assent, but a result of which there was not the slightest prospect; it did mean that “ old-fashioned ” notions of culture, and learning, and long-continued brain-work should give way to the more “ practical ” ideas of muscular education.

Fortunately there was no crystallization of these parties into organized rivalry. The discussions were crude and mixed up with some personalities; and mistakes were doubtless committed by the friends of liberal culture as well as by their opponents. Perhaps the views of both sides were modified by the contest.

Many persons wonder why the friends of the university, in California, prefer State aid plus State interference rather than private generosity, minus State interference. The answer is easy. For twenty years, from 1849 to 1869, a vigorous effort was made to keep up a college on the Eastern basis, with a private corporation. Good men, wise, devoted, and efficient, toiled long and hard for this result, but success did not come as they expected. When the national grant of 1862 led the State to do something, the College of California gave up its plans and merged its possessions and its prospects in the State university.

If determination, perseverance, a careful scrutiny of education elsewhere, and a firm belief in all culture will avail, the University of California has a bright future before it. The views just uttered at Aberdeen, by the new Lord Rector, are precisely those which from its foundations have been recognized by the institution at Berkeley : “ Universities should be places in which thought is free from all fetters, and in which all sources of knowledge and all aids to learning should be accessible to all comers, without distinction of creed or country, riches or poverty.”

— The Boston University Year Book is the first official greeting of this new-born institution to its sister colleges, and to the friends of culture everywhere. Founded in 1871-72, by some prominent and munificent Methodists of Boston, — Isaac Rich, Lee Clafiin, and Jacob Sleeper, — Boston University has set before it at the outset of its career the highest educational aims of both hemispheres, and appears in the intellectual arena determined to be the most comprehensive and generous training-school for humanity in the world. German, English, and American experience and ideas are all drawn upon in the plan of its organization, and it only remains to secure adequate funds and professors of recognized ability to make it the most interesting educational experiment yet attempted.

The plan of the university, stated briefly, is to establish, under its general government and oversight, either colleges or schools in every department of learning, art, or science, and so to carry out the instruction in them, that along with the special knowledge which will enable the student to be a bread-winner, may be gained the higher and broader culture which makes the complete man or woman. In doing its work the university does not recognize any distinction between the sexes, and all its classes and professorships are equally open to both.

The departments thus far organized and in operation are, The College of Liberal Arts (fourteen male and eight female students) ; the College of Music (seven male and nine female students) ; the School of Theology (one hundred male students); the School of Law (eighty male students and one female); the School of Medicine (Homœopathic, forty-nine male and twentynine female students); and the School of Oratory (twenty-one male and fifteen female students); in all, deducting repetitions, three hundred and thirteen students, who are taught by fifty professors and lecturers, Dr. William F. Warren being the president. There are also preparatory schools for the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Music respectively. There is no dormitory system connected with the University, and the departments are not collected in any particular building or buildings, but hold their recitations at different points near the Common and Tremont Street. The latter is the great horsecar artery of Boston, and it is obvious that an arrangement so convenient for the immense suburban population of the city will induce many students of both sexes to complete their education by a college course, who could not have afforded a residence away from home for that purpose.

Boston University starts with such large numbers because it incorporated with itself a theological school and two medical schools already existing. The curriculum of its College of Liberal Arts corresponds very nearly to that of the recognized American college, which seems to us rather a departure from the fundamental idea. We should have supposed that separate schools for languages, mathematics, and the physical and natural sciences would have better carried out the theory of the university, and then, while each school would have had its own degree, a combined course among them all would have answered to the under-graduate course of other colleges. At the end of the catalogue a prospectus is given of a School of all Sciences. This is a post-graduate department only, and for “ qualified specialists it will aim to provide thorough instruction” in—in short, in every branch of human knowledge or attainment; and “for qualified students of generalizing aims, instruction will be provided in the universal sciences. ” Of these, one group, for example, is the “universal or comparative history of languages, universal or comparative philology, universal or comparative philosophy of language, or philosophy of language universally considered.” The prospectus says, “ Several years must elapse before the immense work of this department can be organized with anything like the desirable completeness,” but we fear that such a “ school of all sciences” as is here projected “for graduates only” is impossible to any but national resources. The picked men of the whole country would have to be enlisted as professors.

The manifesto of the new university on the question of the co-education of the sexes is manfully frank and explicit. It is as follows: “ Class schools are very well in their place. Schools for the Feeble Minded, Reform Schools, Schools for Deaf Mutes, — no one should object to these. So if any class of philanthropists feel called upon to organize special schools for girls or boys constitutionally too delicate to hear the nervous shock of school association with the other sex, let no one oppose. Such institutions may serve to illustrate the tender and gentle charities to which our Christian civilization gives origin. But a university exists for altogether different purposes. It is not instituted for the benefit of a class. It is the highest organ of human society for the conservation, furtherance, and communication of knowledge; for the induction of successive generations into its possession; for the service of mankind in all highest social offices. To artificially restrict the benefit of such an institution to one half of the community, by a discrimination based solely upon a birth distinction, is worse than un-American. It is an injury to society as a whole, a loss to the favored class, a wrong to the unfavored.” To us the great interest in the founding of this university is the hope that it will help on a new era in common-school education. There must be in every grammar school a college-bred female principal, before these institutions can become what the community is suffering for.

Whether this new institution can flourish into commanding intellectual life in the very shadow of old Harvard, time only can show, though it is said that its law school is already disputing the palm with that of the latter. There is little doubt that the great religious body from which it has sprung will put forth large effort to sustain it, and the liberality of its foundation should draw from other quarters many a sympathizing bequest. On the other hand, the intellectual standards of the Methodist church have hitherto been the reverse of high. Boston University must expect, therefore, to have the curricula of the “schools,” and the lists of its professors, scrutinized by those who are competent to judge of them with more than ordinary keenness.

— The Thirty-Seventh Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education, with its five hundred octavo pages filled with a great variety of matter relating to the public schools of the State, has just been issued. The report proper of the board is a brief and business-like paper. The bulk of the volume is composed of reports on the normal schools and the new normal art school, reports of the officers of the board, — namely, the director of art education, the agents, and the secretary, — a large body of selections from the school reports of cities and towns, and a hundred pages of clearly arranged statistics. The issue of this document is accompanied by no public sensation ; indeed, its appearance is scarcely anywhere noticed by the press. And yet, it is safe to say that no other publication, whether official or unofficial, has appeared among us during the past year, which affords more profitable matter for the careful study of all who are interested in promoting the public welfare. It does not pretend to be light and entertaining reading. It is not designed for the circulating library. But its purpose is to convey reliable information and sound practical suggestions respecting the most important interest of the community.

The establishment of the State Normal Art School, in Boston, last October, was doubtless, as the first report on that institution remarks, the most important event of the past year connected with the educational interests of the Commonwealth. It was in fact an educational event of national importance, as it is the pioneer institution of the kind in this country. It is provided with accommodations in the upper chamber and attic of a house in Pemberton Square, accommodations really inadequate and unfit for a primary school. But its importance is seen in the magnitude of the industrial interests it is designed to promote, to say nothing of the still greater interests of general education which it is calculated to subserve. The specific purpose of the school is to train teachers of drawing and the arts of design. When Mr. Walter Smith began his work of introducing art education among us, it became apparent immediately, that the first thing to be done was to form teachers competent to instruct, for such teachers were nowhere to be found among us, with the exception of a few specialists in our technical institutions who had enjoyed the advantages of foreign training. Hence the necessity of this new educational instrumentality. The name of Mr. Smith as director was sufficient to inspire confidence in the enterprise, as appeared from the crowd of applicants for admission on the morning of its opening, affording a striking contrast to the paucity of candidates — only three in number — who presented themselves for admission at the opening of the first State Normal School. The course of study for this first year, although called “elementary,” is really very formidable, apparently too severe for the most talented students. It is evident enough from the conditions of graduation that the director intends that the diploma of the institution shall mean something. The subjects for subsequent years are painting, sculpture and architecture, and engineering drawing.

An examination of the statistics of the secretary’s report reveals two very remarkable facts, namely, the large amount of school taxes voluntarily raised by the municipalities, and the unparalleled rapidity of the increase of this voluntary taxation within a few years. The exact sum raised last year for ordinary school purposes, that is, exclusive of the cost of sites and buildings, was $3,889,053.80, which gives for each child in the State, of school age, upwards of thirteen dollars, whereas, the law requires only three dollars per scholar to be raised. The increase in school taxes during the brief period of seven years has been almost exactly a hundred per cent., while, during the same period, the increase in the valuation of the property of the State has been only about fifty per cent. We could hardly place too high an estimate on the town reports and the abstracts from them printed by the board, for it has been by their means to a very great extent that the people have been educated up to this extraordinary liberality in support of public schools. It was in view of these two distinguishing characteristics of the system, so closely connected as cause and effect, — the reports, local and State, and the generous self-taxation of the people for the support of schools,—that the international jury for the educational department of the Vienna Exposition awarded the Commonwealth the Grand Diploma of Honor.

But the people of Massachusetts would make a sad mistake to suppose that their system of popular education as a whole is entitled, at the present day, to be held up as a model System. It needs very important reforms, reforms which have been repeatedly urged upon the attention of the legislature by the board and its secretary, without avail. One of the most important of the proposed reforms relates to the normal training of teachers. The existing provision for this purpose is wholly inadequate. Not one in seven of all the teachers employed in the State has enjoyed the advantages of a course of training at a normal school. The great majority of the teachers, especially those outside the cities, begin their work with no suitable preparation, and leave it before they have had the time to acquire much skill by study and experience. Hence a very large percentage of the people’s school money is wasted on imperfectly qualified teachers. There is reason to believe that hundreds and even thousands of the schools in the State are kept by young, inexperienced, and untrained girls, and schools so kept must be of comparatively little value. Even in a country so backward educationally as England, it is now conceded that every teacher must have a professional training before he is deemed competent to take charge of a school. Another of the reforms proposed is a plan for improving the supervision of the schools. In no State probably are the local committees more competent or faithful than in Massachusetts, but experience has proved that however valuable the services of such officers may be, they are not sufficient to produce the best results. They need the supplementary aid of thoroughly qualified professional superintendents or inspectors, who shall occupy an intermediate position between the State board and the towns’ committees. This important agency has been adopted and is now in successful operation in nearly all the Northern States of the Union. The other leading reforms recommended by the board are a more stringent and comprehensive law for compelling school attendance, and the levy of a moderate State school tax, the proceeds to be distributed to the cities and towns in proportion to the school population, not for the purpose of increasing the aggregate amount of taxes for schools, but to equalize to some extent the harden of school expenses.

The adoption of these greater measures of reform would no doubt vastly increase the efficiency and economy of the system. The existing instrumentalities are good as far as they go, but they have exhausted their capabilities. They need the reinforcement of new agencies, and if these are not provided, progress cannot be expected. These measures of reform would no doubt be speedily adopted, if the people were made to see the enormous loss they are yearly sustaining for the want of them. The cry has been, “ Raise more money.” The Board of Education now say, “Adopt measures to economize the expenditure of the money raised.”