19.3] ROSENGARTEN— A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION. 249 



efficiency, how an exchange of professors may be systematized to the 

 advantage of teachers and students, and how the standard of educa- 

 tion may be raised. 



Much will be done by the teachers themselves, and there can be 

 no better inspiration to improve methods than to draw from the 

 great body of men trained in the work of education, the results of 

 their experience. Of course there will be impracticable suggestions 

 and unworkable plans proposed, but those will all be submitted to the 

 trained and experienced members of the State college and university 

 council, and after full discussion, their judgment will choose the 

 good and reject the bad. Plans and methods of teaching will be 

 entrusted to experienced teachers, and the profession will rise in dig- 

 nity and importance, as the work shows the good results of their 

 experience, knowledge and ability. All this and much else can be 

 accomplished if the new constitution of Pennsylvania makes the 

 business of education a matter of state support and state government. 



Andrew D. White, that Nestor of Higher Education in this 

 country, first president of Cornell University, and always its in- 

 spiration, read a paper on " Advanced Education," before the Na- 

 tional Education Association at Detroit, in 1874. Urgent arguments 

 are brought forward for a reorganization of American universities 

 and colleges and technical schools as part of the work of the state. 

 Dr. White urges the necessity of careful public provision by the peo- 

 ple for their own system of advanced instruction as the only re- 

 publican and democratic method. Public provision, he said, is alone 

 worthy of our dignity as citizens. It will stimulate private gifts 

 and free them from the dogmas of living donors and dead testators. 

 The nucleus of Cornell University was the national land grant, 

 which has been supplemented by an increasing flow of private gifts 

 to the endowment. 



The state of Michigan made the national land grant the founda- 

 tion of its great university, and has added to it from time to time 

 with the best results. It has thus strengthened the whole system of 

 public education throughout the state. The national grant and the 

 state grant together have thus been united to make a great university, 

 and provide the endowment of advanced instruction, and to coordi- 



