Illinois State Normal University - Index Yearbook (Normal, IL)

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Page Nineteen Qihp Hjuhpx Cirxs. A. Meal vnnv To the old members of the Normal School this fifty years' his- tory suggests interesting reminiscences and equally interesting problems for the future. It is now more than forty years since l was first a pupil in the Model School and in the light of present conditions and facilities those days sometimes seem even more than forty years removed. In later years as I have studied and taught in other institu- tions the old Normal with its prevailing spirit and modes of work has heen a standard with which to measure up the substantial worth of later schools and educational movements. There was undoubtedly in the old Normal of thirty or forty years ago a powerful and formative spirit, which shaped up the lives of many young people and produced wide-reaching and benefi- cent results. The later enlargement of studies and interests has somewhat modified this spirit but we may trust that it has not weakened its energy and educative efifect. In comparison with other institutions which I have known, it has long seemed to me that the Normal as I knew it, was among the very strongest of them all. Aside from the changes which have taken place in the Normal curriculum itself, I think, the closer adjustment of the Normal in recent times to the high schools on the one side and to the colleges and universities on the other is of fundamental value. At present the Normal is becoming an indispensable link in our great educational system, recruiting itself from the best mate- rials of the public school system, and sending its well-trained, progressive youth of both sexes forward to still greater achiev- ments in the higher schools, and then returning them as well qualified scholars and trained teachers to the elementary schools again. The future of Normal School effort thus broadens out with still greater opportunities and responsibilities and, like a growing plant, a historical school, as it grows older, roots itself deeply in our whole society. The future therefore of the Normal will be greater than its past, proud as we may be of that record. OT. DICKEY T13MPLEToN As I Index my name in the souvenir of the fiftieth anniversary of the I.S.N.U., I am reminded that it has been on the books of my alma 7llClfCl' as a debtor for thirty-nine of these fifty years. - My first impressions were of stern professors and strange faces, but the stereopticon of time has changed the reception room into a Hall of Fame, and the strange faces of forty years ago re- appear from year to year in the dissolving views of the Alumni meetings, wearing the smile of recognition which won't come Off 77 o

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E112 fdnhrx Page Eighteen- Qvrnllrrtinna nf lumni. ELMER ELLSWORTH BRowN I was a student in the Illinois State Normal University for a longer time than in any other school or university, and many of my strongest school associations are accordingly connected with it. My student days there began with the beginning of the spring term of 1876, and closed with the end of the school year of 1880-SI. Doctor Hewett was elected President during my first term in the school. A large proportion of the student body, as I remember it now, was of fairly mature age, and was recruited from the farms and smaller towns of the State. The Normal University was not only a place of preparation for the practice of teaching, but was in a very marked degree an educational cen- ter, if not the educational center, for the middle portion of the State, with a constituency extending even to the remoest borders of the State and to neighboring states and foreign countries. I take it that these conditions have by no means altogether past away with the passage of the years since I was at Normal, but have been very considerably modified. It is necessary that every insti- tution should change with the change of the times. I trust, how- ever, and believe, that two or three of the strongly marked char- acteristics of the Illinois State Normal University of the seventies and early eighties are still maintained, if they are not even more strongly emphasized now than they were then. Among these are the ideals of scholarship reaching out beyond the home institution,-ideals which worked in a steady procession of young people who past year by year from the normal school to various colleges and universities, the warm and wholesome social inHu- ence brought about by the free, co-operative, literary and musical activities of the Philadelphian and XVrightonian Societies: a spontaneous and widely influential religious interest, joined with large freedom of individual opinion, a sense of seriousness and responsibility in the relation of the institution and the prospective relation of the members of the student body to the educational development of the State of Illinois. Wfe felt and knew in my days at Normal, that the strictly professional spirit was not so strong in the institution as it should be, but it was even then ris- ing, and I doubt not that it has continued to make the wholesome advance which it was making in those days, though in new fields and under new forms. I hope that with such advance in profes- sionalism the institution may, through all its days, continue to contribute to the making of that high scholastic and personal character in those preparing to he teachers, which is even more valuable and inllucntial than the purely professional spirit.

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E132 Elnhrx Page Twenty EDMUND -I. ,lAMEs My recollection of the work of the Normal School extends perhaps over as wide a range of work and as many years as that of almost any other man who was ever connected with the insti- tution. It was in the spring of 1863 that I remember following my mother about as she went from one class room to another,listening to the recitations, in order to determine for herself whether this was a school to which she desired to send her children. The ex- amination was so satisfactory to her that my father purchased a small farm a mile and a half east and north of the Normal School building, diagonally across from the little red school house, just east of the Central road, and a little over a mile north of the Alton. It was in the spring of the year 1867 that I entered the Nor- mal School, first in the grammar school department, which at that time was conducted by john NV. Cook as principal. He remained only one term after I entered the grammar school and was followed in the autumn of 1867 by joseph Carter. The school under Principal Cook had been located in the village school house, as an arrangement had been made between the vil- lage and the Normal School by which the public schools of the former were to be considered as the training school of the latter. The arrangement was not fully satisfactory to either party, and the connection was dissolved in the autumn of 367 when the Model School was located on the hrst floor of the Normal School build- ing, in the northeast corner. After completing the course of this department, I entered the high school department, located on the same iioor in the north- west corner of the building, in September, 1869. I was for one year in this school under the tuition of Wfilliam L. Pillsbury, a graduate of Harvard, an earnest, sincere, and well trained and successful teacher. Here also for one year I enjoyed the tuition of Miss Horton, a rare woman for any time, and any country, especially rare for those days, in the accuracy of her classical scholarship, in her wide knowledge of subsidiary subjects, in her conscientiousness and faithfulness as a teacher. Miss Horton remained only one year and was succeeded as principal of the school by IC. XV. Coy, who had been principal of the Peoria High School. lf. XV. Coy was a graduate of Brown, and a devoted admirer of IIarvard, and he first turned my at- tention in a very definitive and hnal way toward Harvard as the institution which I intended to enter upon graduation from the high school. For two years I pursued my studies in the classics under Mr. C'oy's tuition, graduating from the high school in 1873.