17G BEVIEWS — THE COURSE OE COLLEGIATE EDUCATION. 



— the course which Michigan has been aiming at in her intermediate schools, and 

 which it may be her high destiny finally to mature and bring into full operation. 

 "Whatever these schools may eoet, the State has no higher interest than their 

 perfect constitution and development. They will afford the possibility of educa- 

 tion as widely and freely as the common schoole, but it will be the possibility of 

 a higher education, consistently and harmoniously ordered. Now, a vast amount 

 of time is lost in childhood and youth for the want of early opportunities of 

 educational training ; and young men who propose to enter the higher institu- 

 tions of learning, have either to suffer the loss of knowledge which ought to 

 have been acquired long before, or are compelled by spasmodic efforts, often 

 ruinous to the health, and injurious to tbe mind itself, to make up, and that in 

 an imperfect manner, the deficiencies of early life. Conceive of a gymnasium 

 open to you from childhood. At twelve years of age you h ive acquired French, 

 have overcome the difficulties of the Latin, and begin to feel the charms of its 

 literature, and arc grounded in arithmetic, geography, drawing, and music. At 

 fifteen you are reading Greek and German with pleasure, and have acquired the 

 elements of mathematics, and a general knowledge of history: And at eighteen 

 or nineteen — instead of beginning to prepare for college, as many now do, 

 tortured by the Latin and Greek grammars, and in the haste inspired by the con- 

 sciousness that you are almost men — you find yourselves in the easy and almost 

 natural command of languages and the principles of science, with the habits of 

 a scholar thoroughly matured, and the art of study mastered, and ready to step 

 into the university as an inviting field of knowledge, where everything is pre- 

 pared to your hand, and where you feel prepared to put your hand to every 

 thing, with the skill of one who, having thoroughly learned his trade, is never 

 embarrassed in handling his tools, 



Ye who kuow by hard experience the want of all this, sympathize with those who 

 are to come after you, and in the true spirit of literary association, determine united- 

 ly to labour for the elevation and perfection of the institutions of your country ! 



The proper constitution of these schools, by whatever name they are designa- 

 ted, will require great wisdom, great care, great energy, and a supply of teachers 

 who know how to do their work. 



Where shall we fiud these teachers ? The Normal schools cannot supply 

 them, for they are designed to supply teachers for the primary schools — a great 

 aud important work, embracing what we have called the logical basis of the 

 whole system of public instruction. Or they can supply them only to a limited 

 extent, and in the more juvenile classes. The University alone can supply teach- 

 ers for the gymnastic schools. In Germany you will find university educated 

 men giving instruction in arithmetic and geography ; masters of their subjects, 

 they instruct without text -books, aud fill their claas-room6 with the vivacity and 

 charm of oral communication, aud keep the interest of their pupils alive by the 

 necessity of prompt answers to unexpected questions. 



And here rises up to view, again, the great principle I have expounded and 

 illustrated throughout this discourse, that in the historical order of development 

 the highest institutions come first- Without a perfected University, ice can never 

 have a perfected system of public education, even in the lowest degrees; and as 

 it has been, so must it ever be, that popular education must flow out of the 

 higher institutions, as the showers that water the valleys and plains fall from 

 clouds which were gathered on the mountains. 



