Virginia Military Institute - Bomb Yearbook (Lexington, VA)

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parts, sitting on the floor, rocking their bodies and studying half aloud the Koran. This Mohammedan education of today is somewhat typical of the monastic education of mediaeval times. Thus the monks and ]n ' iests alone studied and taught, and preserved such learning as existed, for the most part profitless. In England down to times less than one hundred years ago, little progress had been made in improvement of media3val educational aims and methods. Greek and Latin, with some metaphysics, were almost the sole topics taught, notwitlistanding that the Baconian inductive process for investigating and establishing truth had long been known. The educational system of Eng- land, as it continued into the 19th century was designed to fit men for the church, the bar, for literature, and to refine and polish, as they thought, the idle and unprofitable upper stratum of their social body. The educational system prevailing in this country until well on into the nineteenth cejitury was modeled upon that of England. The true aim and end of education is to develop, train, and bring ijito conscious existence those faculties with which the good God has endowed to a greater or less degree all men in execution of His benevolent will and purpose toward us. Education should be designed not for a class, but for all according to their several capabilities. This his- torian Motley, speaking of education as it existed until times comparatively recent, says : The whole system was, however, pervaded by the monastic spirit, which had originally preserved all learning from annihilation, but which now kept it wrapt in the ancient cerecloths, and stitt ' ening in the strong sarcophagus of a bygone age. As late as i850 the U. S. Commission of education wrote : Although there are millions who know that there is something wrong in the system of education, yet it is extremely difficult to discover the cause, as we are in a measure brought up in the same error, and as that requires unusual effort to remove the vail of error which shrouds the truth. The i3resident of Brown University wrote, about the same time : We have constructed the colleges upon the idea that they are to be schools of preparation for the professions. Our customers, therefore, come from the smallest class of society and the education which we prescribe is not so universally recognized as formerly, even by this class. We have produced an article for which the demand is diminish- ing. We sell it at less than cost and the deficiency is made up by charity. We give it away and still the demand diminishes. There has existed for the last twenty years a demand for civil engineers. Has the demand been supplied by our colleges ? We presume the single academy at West Point, graduating annually a smaller number than many of our colleges, has done more for the

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certificates of distinction in tlie several schools taken by him. On leaving the University, he entered Yale College to comjjlete the couree of studies marked ont for himself in the profession of law, which he had chosen. He did not, however, remain long at the bar, his inclinations leading him in an- other direction. When the discussion commenced in 1836, in connection with the organization of the Military Institute, his mind was actively at work on this important scheme; so that, when the Institute entered upon its mission in 1839, he was willing to lend the influence of his talents in one of the most important department of instruction, as more in harmony with his own tastes, and as an earnest of his interest in the success of the school. The French and German languages occupied the attention of Professor Preston for the first two years. Subsequently, at diiferent times, he was relieved from instruction of the languages, above mentioned, and taught Latin logic, rhetoric, intellectual philosophy, and constitutional law, never, of course, having all these subjects at any one time. These two, Colonel Smith and ] Iajor Preston, constituted the whole corps of permanent instructors for the first two years. A three-years ' course had been marked out for cadets, and the thirty-two cadets who first entered were all assigned to the third, or lowest class. The next year, when most of these cadets were advanced to the second class, and a small new class had entered to take the places of those who had been for any cause discharged, an arrange- ment was made with the trustees of Washington College by which Professor Armstrong of that college gave cadets instruction given to those students of the College who might desire such instruction. The conditions of education existing in Virginia, indeed throughout the country, and in England, at the time the Institute was organized were pecTiliar. It is difficult to realize and conceive the state of existence of the most highly civilized people in the world, a short four himdred years ago, when few could read or write, even among those of highest social position, and the cost of such hand-transcribed books as existed was almost prohibitive. Of course, there have always been books of some sort, and masters and scholars. Thales and Pythagoras, Zeno and Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, wrote and taught in ancient Greece, hundreds of years before the Christian Era. Even today in ancient Cairo of Egypt in the mosque of Al Azahr, you will find a library of seven thousand volumes, all on the Koran, and many hundreds of grown men from all parts of the Mohammedan world, men from Cyprus and Crete, from Egypt and Turkey, Zanzibar and Xubia, Bokhara and Samarcand, and other remote

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The JACKSON Statue