Septembee W, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



369 



White's Hotel on December 27, 1824, and 

 resolved to establish an institution of 

 learning in their beautiful village had 

 foresight and courage. They were men of 

 patriotism, naming the institution Lafay- 

 ette College in recognition of "the signal 

 service of General Lafayette in the great 

 cause of freedom," and resolving that 

 military engineering and tactics should be 

 taught, because, as they said, "a freeman's 

 arm can best defend a freeman's home." 

 In the annual report of the trustees fol- 

 lowing the death of Lafayette, they said: 



We record an event "unparalleled in the annals 

 of the world's history, of one man's death arraying 

 in the habiliments of mourning, all the friends of 

 freedom on the globe. . . . Let ours be the sacred 

 duty of imitating his illustrious example and hold- 

 ing it up for admiration to the wondering gaze 

 of the dear youth of this institution, which bears 

 his venerable name. 



There were diificulties to overcome, but 

 in 1832 George Junkin, a true leader of 

 men, was elected president and three pro- 

 fessors were called. Two of them were 

 in mathematics and the sciences, one of 

 whom, Samuel P. Gross, became a great 

 surgeon of the last century. The tradi- 

 tional curriculum of Latin, Greek and 

 mathematics was, however, adopted, and in 

 its simplest form. The first half-year was 

 devoted to the first book of Euclid; the 

 third half-year to the fourth, fifth and 

 sixth books. More than a year was given 

 to Horace. There is in retrospect a curi- 

 ous incongruity between the gentle epicu- 

 reanism of the Odes, and the lives of these 

 young men, who had morning prayers at 

 five o'clock and drank coffee for breakfast 

 because milk was too expensive. 



At the instance of President Junkin 

 manual labor was substituted for military 

 training. The early reports lay stress on 

 the importance of the movement— how it 

 assured the health of the students, gave 

 them honorable independence and broke 



down class distinctions and class jealousies. 

 The plan failed; to the misfortune of the 

 college it may be. The existence of an 

 agricultural department and of a me- 

 chanical department then and there is not 

 without interest for the history of our 

 educational system. 



Another plan that failed was the course 

 for teachers established at the beginning 

 and seven years before the first normal 

 schools of Massachusetts. In their second 

 annual report the trustees wrote: 



As to elevating the standard of common school 

 instruction, we propose to eifect it by training 

 teachers to that business as a profession. . . . 

 Incompetent teachers very frequently receive in- 

 adequate support; and the inadequacy of the sup- 

 port secures and perpetuates the incompetency of 

 the teachers. . . . Let teachers be well educated, 

 that is, let them be taught thoroughly the branches 

 which tliey will be called upon to teach, and, 

 which is the principal thing, the art of communi- 

 cating instruction and governing a school; and let 

 their services be secured permanently in that 

 business, by adequate pay. 



In still another direction the founders 

 of Lafayette notably anticipated educa- 

 tional development, namely, in advocating 

 the study of English and modern lan- 

 guages. By the terms of the charter — one 

 of its two definite provisions— a pro- 

 fessorship of German was to be established. 

 In their original memorial to the legisla- 

 ture, the founders said that it is to be re- 

 gretted that students commonly limit their 

 attention to the dead languages. They 

 pointed to the ease with which the romance 

 languages can be acquired after Latin, and 

 said that German and Anglo-Saxon ought 

 long since to have been made a part of 

 education. They add: 



But the language most neglected in our semi- 

 naries of learning is the English. It is, we think, 

 one of the follies of the learned to expend time and 

 toil and money in minute investigation of the lan- 

 guages of other times and other people, at the 

 expense of omitting the equally curious and more 

 useful investigation of their own. 



