Ohio State University - Makio Yearbook (Columbus, OH)

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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

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in the grades of the towns, and ending with graduation from a univer- sity of high standing. Every teacher in every grade feels the inspiration of this larger and closer organization, the pupils catch the spirit and push on with eager ambition, faithful effort meets with its due and certain reward, and to the several communities are returned those who will serve more wisely and efficiently along the line of every private or public interest that may be entrusted to their care. For there is no community in this State possessed of even one thoroughly trained man or woman, which has not again and again recognized the value of that training, and found it a constant benediction. A layman's benediction, it may be, but as efficient and as inspiring as that of gowned priest or mitred bishop. In education the American people are saying to-day that they will be content with nothing short of that which is the best, and because the best and only for this reason, good enough for each and all. The State University, standing at the head of the State system, and itself an integral part of that system, is the grand fruitage of years of steady growth under intelligent and persistent demand. Its hold upon the confidence of the entire people is increasing in strength every day. Its practical beneficence is more keenly recognized every hour of every day. It is the one institution that is pre-eminently of the people and by the people and for the people. 9-'he Q. 8. Cu. and the grustees. HE veritable Trustee. Who is he, from where does he come, where is he going, and what does he amount to anyhow? He is nearer everything to the University than the gener- alty of mankind generally admit. The O. S. U. nor any other university would not exist many moons without a Board of '1'rustees. Our government consists of three coordinate departments. So the University consists of three departments, Trustees, Faculty and Students, each has a mission but they are not co ordinate. The Board of Trustees is Master of the situation. While others may express a sentiment, in man cases the Board alone can act. At ever Y 37