Ohio State University - Makio Yearbook (Columbus, OH)

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Its unique and most characteristic services unquestionably lie in the domain of natural science, as, for example, in chemistry, physics, zoology, botany, agriculture, horticulture and the like. The progress in-these subjects is so rapid that only an institution endowed like the State University can provide the specialization of research and instruc- tion by which the results attained can be made available to the popular service. At the same time, the new knowledge is so important and practical and contributes so directly to the relief of man's estate, that the people of Ohio are bound to hold in appreciation and honor the agencies by which it is brought home to them. livery student of the institution can rest assured that a great future, commensurate with the greatness of the state, awaits alma zmzlar. She commands the elements that command success. gfxe G. S. cu. and the State. O the States that have been carved out of the great Northwest Territory, a public school system, in all that the words imply, seems both natural and necessary. 'l'heir great charter provided that public education should be forever fostered as one of the corner-stones of every free State, and as a condition precedent of all sound and wholesome public life. Beginning with the so-called com- mon schools, those of the rural districts, in both constitution and special statute these States have been true to the trust and have loyally followed the injunction, till in each of these imperial commonwealths of to day, Huxley's educational ladder is in place, with every round in reach of the child of the humblest citizen. Not all of this growth and plan and purpose has been at all times clearly and intelligently perceived by all citizens 3 but the great undercurrent of popular thought has been that the treasures of the past, economic wisdom, adminis- trative skill, all that history and philosophy and literature and art have to offer-all these are to be placed freely within the reach of all. ln self-defense and because it so sadly needs large-minded and well- trained citizens, the State has made the pathway to knowledge and consequent power broad and safe and easy of access to all alike. 33

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iv GYMNASIUM AND ARMORY HALL.

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As American life has grown more complex, as economic relations are more difficult of apprehension, as the larger life has called for greater power and keener insight, as it has become daily more and -more evident that a free government will only endure when in the hands of a people wide between the eyes, the necessity of more than common school training has become more and more painfully apparent. When we were still an exceedingly simple folk, with comparatively few wants and these easily satisfied, with slight contact with the great outside world, and with unusual unity of purpose and method, the peoples college seemed to give to eachall the start on the royal road that was needed, But as we developed the most varied and marvelous, resources that the world has ever seen, as we scattered through the vast domain of the Union and found our interests becom- ing as diverse as our climate or our soil or our mineral deposits, as we gathered in the peoples of every known country and tongue, as our ingenuity and our capacity for organization and for individual effort began to have full course, it became very evident that the district school was but the beginning, and that more than this was needed if men were not to be left far behind in the race. So we Gnd that the high schools have sprung up in every town-taking the place of the old academies, which were fee schools and for a restricted patronage, and that the universities, with full and wellfrounded curricula, are taking the place of the old colleges with the more limited work and narrower limits. They played their part well in their day, but when the demand is for accurate information and vital instruction in every department of human knowledge, when men need to be trained in the arts of modern civilization and all the public is directly affected by the accuracy and breadth of this training, when the State has become as profoundly interested in the electrical engineer or the mechanical engineer or the civil engineer as in the astronomer or the philosopher or the lawyer, then the university with its general culture work, side by side with the technical courses, comes into the preferred position and easily holds the coign of vantage. So it happens that Ohio has to-day a state system of public and free education, beginning with the lowest form in the district school or 34