UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.
From the gloom of Buffalo, the smoke of Cincinnati, and the dirt of
Pittsburg, I should have been glad to escape as soon as might be, even
had not the death from cholera of 240 persons in a single day of my
visit to the “Queen City” warned me to fly north. From a stricken town,
with its gutters full of chloride of lime, and fires burning in the
public streets, to green Michigan, was a grateful change; but I was full
of sorrow at leaving that richest and most lovely of all States--Ohio.
There is a charm in the park-like beauty of the Monongahela valley,
dotted with vines and orchards, that nothing in Eastern America can
rival. The absence at once of stumps in the cornfields, and of untilled
or unfenced land, gives the “Buckeye State” a look of age that none of
the “old Eastern States” can show. In corn, in meadow, in timber-land,
Ohio stands alone. Her indian-corn exceeds in richness that of any other
State; she has ample stores of iron, and coal is worked upon the surface
in every Alleghany valley. Wool, wine, hops, tobacco, all are raised;
her Catawba has inspired poems. Every river-side is clothed with groves
of oak, of hickory, of sugar-maple, of sycamore, of poplar, and of
buckeye. Yet, as I said, the change to the Michigan prairie was full of
a delightful relief; it was Holland after the Rhine, London after Paris.
Where men grow tall there will maize grow tall, is a good sound rule:
limestone makes both bone and straw. The Northwestern States, inhabited
by giant men, are the chosen home of the most useful and beautiful of
plants, the maize--in America called “corn.” For hundreds of miles the
railway track, protected not even by a fence or hedge, runs through the
towering plants, which hide all prospects save that of their own green
pyramids. Maize feeds the people, it feeds the cattle and the hogs that
they export to feed the cities of the East; from it is made yearly, as
an Ohio farmer told me, “whisky enough to float the ark.” Rice is not
more the support of the Chinese than maize of the English in America.
In the great corn-field of the Northwestern States, dwells a people
without a history, without tradition, busy at hewing out of the forest
trunks codes and social usages of its own. The Kansas men have set
themselves to emancipating women; the “Wolverines,” as the people of
Michigan are called, have turned their heads to education, and are
teaching the teachers upon this point.
The rapidity with which intellectual activity is awakened in the West is
inexplicable to the people of New England. While you are admiring the
laws of Minnesota and Wisconsin, Boston men tell you that the
resemblance of the code of Kansas to that of Connecticut is consequent
only on the fact, that the framers of the former possessed a copy of
this one New England code, while they had never set eyes upon the code
of any other country in the world. While Yale and Harvard are trying in
vain to keep pace with the State universities of Michigan and Kansas,
you will meet in Lowell and New Haven men who apply an old Russian story
to the Western colleges, and tell you that their professors of
languages, when asked where they have studied, reply that they guess
they learned to read and write in Springfield.
One of the difficulties of the New England colleges has been to
reconcile university traditions with democracy; but in the Western
States there is neither reconciliation nor tradition, though
universities are plenty. Probably the most democratic school in the
whole world is the State University of Michigan, situate at Ann Arbor,
near Detroit. It is cheap, large, practical; twelve hundred students,
paying only the ten dollars entrance fee, and five dollars a year during
residence, and living where they can in the little town, attend the
university to be prepared to enter with knowledge and resolution upon
the affairs of their future life. A few only are educated by having
their minds unfolded that they may become many-sided men; but all work
with spirit, and with that earnestness which is seen in the Scotch
universities at home. The war with crime, the war with sin, the war with
death--Law, Theology, Medicine--these are the three foremost of man‘s
employments; to these, accordingly, the university affords her chiefest
care, and to one of these the student, his entrance examination passed,
often gives his entire time.
These things are democratic, but it is not in them that the essential
democracy of the university is to be seen. There are at Michigan no
honor-lists, no classes in our sense, no orders of merit, no
competition. A man takes, or does not take a certain degree. The
university is governed, not by its members, not by its professors, but
by a parliament of “regents” appointed by the inhabitants of the State.
Such are the two great principles of the democratic university of the
West.
It might be supposed that these two strange departures from the systems
of older universities were irregularities, introduced to meet the
temporary embarrassments incidental to educational establishments in
young States. So far is this from being the case that, as I saw at
Cambridge, the clearest-sighted men of the older colleges of America are
trying to assimilate their teaching system to that of Michigan--at least
in the one point of the absence of competition. They assert that toil
performed under the excitement of a fierce struggle between man and man
is unhealthy work, different in nature and in results from the loving
labor of men whose hearts are really in what they do: toil, in short,
not very easily distinguishable from slave labor.
In the matter of the absence of competition, Michigan is probably but
returning to the system of the European universities of the Middle Ages,
but the government by other than the members of the university is a
still stranger scheme. It is explained when we look to the sources
whence the funds of the university are drawn--namely, from the pockets
of the taxpayers of the State. The men who have set up this corporation
in their midst, and who tax themselves for its support, cannot be called
on, they say, to renounce its government to their nominees, professors
from New England, unconnected with the State, men of one idea, often
quarrelsome, sometimes “irreligious.” There is much truth in these
statements of the case, but it is to be hoped that the men chosen to
serve as “regents” are of a higher intellectual stamp than those
appointed to educational offices in the Canadian backwoods. A report was
put into my hands at Ottawa, in which a superintendent of instruction
writes to the Minister of Education, that he had advised the ratepayers
of Victoria County not in future to elect as school trustees men who
cannot read or write. As Michigan grows older, she will, perhaps, seek
to conform to the practice of other universities in this matter of her
government, but in the point of absence of competition she is likely to
continue firm.
Even here some difficulty is found in getting competent school
directors; one of them reported 31½ children attending school. Of
another district its superintendent reports: “Conduct of scholars about
the same as that of ‘Young America’ in general.” Some of the
superintendents aim at jocosity, and show no want of talent in
themselves, while their efforts are to demonstrate its deficiency among
the boys. The superintendent of Grattan says, in answer to some numbered
questions: “Condition good, improvement fair; for ¼ of ¼ of the year in
school, and fifteen-sixteenths of the time at play. Male teachers most
successful with the birch; female with Cupid‘s darts. Schoolhouses in
fair whittling order. _Apparatus_: Shovel, none; tongs, ditto; poker,
one. Conduct of scholars like that of parents--good, bad, and
indifferent. No minister in town--sorry; no lawyer--good!” The
superintendents of Manlius Township report that Districts 1 and 2 have
buildings “fit (in winter) only for the polar bear, walrus, reindeer,
Russian sable, or Siberian bat;” and they go on to say: “Our children
read everything, from Mr. Noodle‘s Essays on Matrimony to Artemus Ward‘s
Lecture on First Principles of American Government.” Another report from
a very new county runs: “Sunday-schools afford a little reading-matter
to the children. Character of matter most read--battle, murder, and
sudden death.” A third states that the teachers are meanly paid, and
goes on: “If the teaching is no better than the pay, it must be like the
soup that the rebels gave the prisoners.” A superintendent, reporting
that the success of the teachers is greater than their qualifications
warrant, says: “The reason is to be found in the Yankeeish adaptability
of even Wolverines.”
After all, it is hard even to pass jokes at the expense of the
Northwestern people. A population who would maintain schools and
universities under difficulties apparently overwhelming was the source
from which to draw Union volunteers such as those who, after the war,
returned to their Northern homes, I have been told, shocked and
astonished at the ignorance and debasement of the Southern whites.
The system of elective studies pursued at Michigan is one to which we
are year by year tending in the English universities. As sciences
multiply and deepen, it becomes more and more impossible that a “general
course” scheme can produce men fit to take their places in the world.
Cambridge has attempted to set up both systems, and, giving her students
the choice, bids them pursue one branch of study with a view to honors,
or take a less valued degree requiring some slight proficiency in many
things. Michigan denies that the stimulus of honor examinations should
be connected with the elective system. With her, men first graduate in
science, or in an arts degree, which bears a close resemblance to the
English “poll,” and then pursue their elected study in a course which
leads to no university distinction, which is free from the struggle for
place and honors. These objections to “honors” rest upon a more solid
foundation than a mere democratic hatred of inequality of man and man.
Repute as a writer, as a practitioner, is valued by the Ann Arbor man,
and the Wolverines do not follow the Ephesians, and tell men who excel
among them to go and excel elsewhere. The Michigan professors say, and
Dr. Hedges bears them out, that a far higher average of real knowledge
is obtained under this system of independent work than is dreamt of in
colleges where competition rules. “A higher average” is all they say,
and they acknowledge frankly that there is here and there a student to
be found to whom competition would do good. As a rule, they tell us this
is not the case. Unlimited battle between man and man for place is
sufficiently the bane of the world not to be made the curse of schools:
competition breeds every evil which it is the aim of education, the duty
of a university to suppress: pale faces caused by excessive toil,
feverish excitement that prevents true work, a hatred of the subject on
which the toil is spent, jealousy of best friends, systematic
depreciation of men‘s talents, rejection of all reading that will not
“pay,” extreme and unhealthy cultivation of the memory, general
degradation of labor--all these evils, and many more, are charged upon
the competition system. Everything that our professors have to say of
“cram” these American thinkers apply to competition. Strange doctrines
these for young America!
Of the practical turn which we should naturally expect to discover in
the university of a bran-new State I found evidence in the regulation
which prescribes that the degree of Master of Arts shall not be
conferred as a matter of course upon graduates of three years’ standing,
but only upon such as have pursued professional or general scientific
studies during that period. Even in these cases an examination before
some one of the faculties is required for the Master‘s degree. I was
told that for the medical degree “four years of reputable practice” is
received, instead of certain courses.
In her special and selected studies, Michigan is as merely practical as
Swift‘s University of Brobdingnag; but, standing far above the ordinary
arts or science courses, there is a “University course” designed for
those who have already taken the Bachelor‘s degree. It is harder to say
what this course includes than what it does not. The twenty heads range
over philology, philosophy, art, and science; there is a branch of
“criticism,” one of “arts of design,” one of “fine arts.” Astronomy,
ethics, and Oriental languages are all embraced in a scheme brought into
working order within ten years of the time when Michigan was a
wilderness, and the college-yard an Indian hunting-ground.
Michigan entered upon education work very early in her history as a
State. In 1850, her legislature commissioned the Hon. Ira Mayhew to
prepare a work on education for circulation throughout America. Her
progress has been as rapid as her start was good; her natural history
collection is already one of the most remarkable in America; her medical
school is almost unequaled, and students flow to her even from New
England and from California, while from New York she draws a hundred men
a year. In only one point is Ann Arbor anywhere but in the van: she has
hitherto followed the New England colleges in excluding women. The State
University of Kansas has not shown the same exclusiveness that has
characterized the conduct of the rulers of Michigan: women are admitted
not only to the classes, but to the professorships at Lawrence.
This Northwestern institution at Ann Arbor was not behind even Harvard
in the war: it supplied the Union army with 1000 men. The 17th Regiment
of Michigan Volunteers, mainly composed of teachers and Ann Arbor
students, has no cause to fear the rivalry of any other “record;” and
such was the effect of the war, that in 1860 there were in Michigan 2600
male to 5350 female teachers, whereas now there are but 1300 men to 7500
women.
So proud are Michigan men of their roll of honor, that they publish it
at full length in the calendar of the university. Every “class” from the
foundation of the schools shows some graduates distinguished in their
country‘s service during the suppression of the rebellion. The Hon.
Oramel Hosford, Superintendent of Public Instruction in Michigan,
reports that, owing to the presence of crowds of returned soldiers, the
schools of the State are filled almost to the limit of their capacity,
while some are compelled to close their doors against the thronging
crowds. Captains, colonels, generals, are among the students now humbly
learning in the Ann Arbor University Schools.
The State of Michigan is peculiar in the form that she has given to her
higher teaching; but in no way peculiar in the attention she bestows on
education. Teaching, high and low, is a passion in the West, and each of
these young States has established a university of the highest order,
and placed in every township not only schools, but public libraries,
supported from the rates, and managed by the people.
Not only have the appropriations for educational purposes by each State
been large, but those of the Federal government have been upon the most
splendid scale. What has been done in the Eastern and the Central States
no man can tell, but even west of the Mississippi twenty-two million
acres have already been granted for such purposes, while fifty-six
million more are set aside for similar gifts.
The Americans are not forgetful of their Puritan traditions.