Our National Education.
From the time that Washington boasted of a system that proposes to
furnish the means of education to “every child of the republic,” the
educational spirit has been a prominent characteristic of our people.
Amid all our national vicissitudes and struggles, defending the
flag from foes without and within, cutting down the forests to make
farms for cultivation, and clearing up the waste places to make them
habitable, we have never lost our educational enterprise. In the far
West, as well as in Maine and Massachusetts, you meet it. Not to be
wondered at, either, is this in a people who had the courage and faith
to launch such a governmental scheme as is ours. Indeed, it required
little discernment to see that popular institutions could be served by
no other handmaid than popular education.
It is gratifying to note that our zeal for education did not prove
a transient impulse, but that of an abiding conviction. Never have
the reports from all parts of the Union, taken as a whole, been so
encouraging as now. Stupidity and demagogism are still to be found
in many places, and, of course, as ever, doing their best to hinder
progress. But in spite of all such influences, educators throughout the
nation feel that the cause, with the modifications of better methods,
is understood and appreciated by the better and larger part of the
public. An examination of reports and statistics of all the States
and Territories for ten years past, shows advancement in almost every
instance. Financial depression or shifting population will explain
the exceptions. In the State of Ohio in the single year of 1879-80,
three-fourths of a million dollars was expended in new school-houses.
The young State of West Virginia reports seventeen hundred more
teachers employed at the close of the decade than at the beginning. The
State of Missouri reports a like number, and an increased enrollment
of nearly sixty thousand, exclusive of those who had come of school
age, thus showing a deep inroad into the ranks of illiteracy. These
citations illustrate the advance movement all along the line. And
while our common schools are thus moving onward, it is no less a sign
of national devotion to education that schools of higher grades are
springing up everywhere. Special and charitable schools for the deaf
and dumb, for the weak-minded, industrial training schools, etc., all
of them upheld by the same national spirit. Nor to be forgotten are the
schools for all classes at home, where by correspondence and concert of
work, results which none can measure are attained. Let us rejoice and
give thanks!
But the most hopeful thought that comes to us in connection with
our national education, is of the fact that in nearly all parts of
the country it is required that moral instruction be given in the
schools. “Instruction in morals and good manners,” is the language
of requirement in the school laws of many States. Others charge “all
instructors to impress on the youth committed to them the principles
of morality, justice, a sacred regard of truth, love of country,
chastity, temperance, etc.” The school code of New Hampshire demands
that “religion, piety, and morality be encouraged.” In several States
the Bible is to be brought before the pupils by the prescribed daily
reading of it, as in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia; and
in many others the reading of it has express legalization. Herein is
the sheet anchor of all our hopes. Cultured mind and heart alone give
assurance of a successful national voyage.
Professor Henry Draper.
The scientific world has suffered a heavy loss in the death of
Professor Henry Draper, of New York. He was the son of Dr. John W.
Draper, one of the most eminent scientific men this country has
produced. Professor Draper inherited the tastes and talents of his
illustrious father, and, while yet a youth, began his scientific
and physiological investigations. He received his early educational
training in the public schools of New York, after which he spent two
years in the Academic Department of the University of the City of
New York. During all this time his studies were under the careful
supervision of his father, who was a professor in the University. After
completing his sophomore year he entered upon the study of medicine,
and received his degree in 1858. After his graduation he spent a year
in Europe in study and travel, and on his return to this country he
received an appointment on the medical staff of Bellevue Hospital. He
continued in this position for two years, when he was elected to the
chair of physiology in the City University. When he entered upon his
duties as professor he discontinued the practice of medicine, which he
never afterward resumed, and gave himself wholly to teaching and to
original investigation in natural science, but was especially devoted
to the study of chemistry and astronomy. He was not, however, dependent
upon the facilities afforded by the University to enable him to pursue
his investigations in his favorite sciences, but, being possessed of
ample means, he had a finely equipped laboratory fitted up in his own
apartments, and also erected an observatory for his own use.
In order to facilitate his astronomical observations, Professor Draper
constructed an equatorial telescope, with an aperture of twenty-eight
inches, for his private observatory at Hastings, on the Hudson. This
telescope was the work of his own hands, and when completed was
the largest one of the kind in the United States. His astronomical
investigations were principally of a photographical character. He
was peculiarly adapted to this kind of work, since he had studied
photography with his father, who was a pioneer in the photographic art,
having taken the first photographic likeness of the human face ever
obtained. By means of his large telescope, Professor Draper was able
to take the largest and finest photographs of the heavenly bodies ever
obtained, and by this means greatly advanced the interests of science.
To him was due also the discovery of the gelatino-bromide dry process
of photography, which has proven so useful to the art of photography,
especially in its application to astronomy. In 1874, after much labor
and many costly experiments, he succeeded in obtaining photographs
of the fixed lines of stellar spectra, which no one before had ever
been able to accomplish. By obtaining photographs of the spectrum of
the sun he was able to demonstrate the existence of oxygen in that
luminary, a fact never before known to astronomers. His numerous and
successful efforts in this line of work rendered him so conspicuous
that he was conceded to be without a peer in the department of sidereal
photography. As a result of his grand achievements the commissioners
appointed by Congress to make arrangements for the observation of the
transit of Venus, in 1874, selected him as the superintendent of the
photographic department. He performed his duties with such efficiency
that Congress ordered a gold medal to be presented to him, bearing the
inscription: “He adds lustre to ancestral glory.”
In addition to being an expert in astronomical photography Professor
Draper was a fine analytical chemist, and in addition to his work
as professor of physiology, for several years he taught analytical
chemistry in the University. During the last few years of his life
he was very much interested in the subject of electricity, and gave
much time and study to the problem of overcoming the difficulties of
adapting the electric light to practical use, and contributed much
valuable information on this point.
Although so enthusiastically devoted to the interests of science,
Professor Draper was not a recluse, but was of a fine social turn. He
was a fluent talker, an entertaining companion and a genial host. When
the first symptoms of his fatal illness came upon him he was engaged
in entertaining at dinner, in his hospitable home on Madison avenue,
New York, the members of the National Academy of Science. He died in
the prime of his years and in the fulness of his mental strength.
The country can ill-afford to lose men of such mental ability and so
enthusiastically devoted to scientific research.
Co-Education.
Rising in interest and importance above every other phase of the “woman
question,” is that of her education, her higher education, and from
this the question of co-education. The first cause which has associated
the idea of co-education with the higher education of women, has
been the fact that higher educational facilities are, with very few
exceptions, limited to the colleges and universities established for
the education of men. If woman is to receive higher education it is
apparent at the start that the institutions called woman’s colleges
and seminaries are inadequate to the work. Hence, whatever other
considerations may enter into the co-education problem, this much is
clear: if women now, or at any time in the near future, are to have
these facilities they must come by some system of co-education, as only
institutions now existing for men can furnish them. This suggests the
economic and time element of the question. Colleges and universities
of ability to do the work of higher education are not born in a day.
The best representatives of such institutions in this country and in
England are the growth of centuries, and their cabinets, laboratories,
museums, libraries, and endowments the results of weary, slow
accumulations.
Not to speak now of the other and more positive reasons in its favor,
reasons growing out of the association of the sexes in recitation and
lecture-room, and the wholesome influences on each thus secured, let us
see what are the objections urged by its opponents. We hear a good deal
about the tendency to make coarse the naturally fine fibre of woman,
about constitutional differences of intellect, and difference of sphere
and pursuits in life. Now, in all soberness, if there is anything in
this idea that association of the sexes tends to rob woman of the
charms of fineness and gentleness peculiar to her, how is it that she
has managed to keep them from the days of Adam and Eve until now? And
as to differences of intellect, they are neither so constitutional
nor “unconstitutional” as to disqualify her for an even race with her
brother. If the testimony of professors and college authorities, where
the opportunity has been given her, can be relied upon, whenever the
race is uneven it has been in her favor. The objection about sphere and
pursuits in life misconceives the true purpose of education. The true
conception is not addressed to pursuits, but is of a solid foundation
on which the special education of pursuit or profession is erected.
Recognizing the force and truth of these and other considerations, and
acting up to their convictions, the great and time-honored universities
of the English speaking world, Oxford and Cambridge, have led the
way, and thrown wide open their doors to young women seeking their
privileges. At these honored institutions young women live in their
own “halls,” as at some of our American colleges, under care of women
of highest social standing, enter the same lecture-room and listen
to the same lecture with the young men. The following from a leading
educational journal, reveals the growing favor of co-education at
Cambridge: “Since the modest beginning thirteen years ago of Girton
College,—the woman’s college at Cambridge,—it has twice been found
necessary to make considerable extensions. The students have proved
themselves eager to profit by the advantages afforded to them, as was
shown by their distinctions obtained at Cambridge this year. It is
now once more intended to develop the work of the college by making
further and more elaborate extensions. For some time past a number of
applicants have been refused admission owing to the want of space, and
plans have at last been adopted which will make room for more students.”
It is not a little strange the illiberal spirit manifested by some
of the leading institutions of this country, instance the narrow and
partial conditions of the “Harvard Annex” and the opposition by the
trustees and part of the faculty of Columbia College. In the latter
case there is just now a tidal wave of public sentiment in New York
City sweeping against the opposition, which, it is to be hoped, will
overcome all resistance. The leaven is working. It is a reform, and
reforms go forward in this nineteenth century. Geologists tell us that
six thousand years ago the age of man was ushered in. Let the future
geologists record this as the age of man and woman, too.
Thurlow Weed.
Among noteworthy recent events is the death of Thurlow Weed, the
veteran journalist and politician. Mr. Weed had nearly reached his
eighty-fifth birthday with faculties well preserved, and for more than
half a century he was a very prominent figure in our national political
life. The son of a poor cartman who never prospered, he had his own
way to make in the world, and from a striker in a blacksmith shop, a
cabin-boy upon river boats, and a chore-boy of a printing office, he
worked his way up to be the trusted adviser of senators and presidents,
and the man by whom officials, high and low, were made and unmade.
He was twice a member of the State Assembly of New York,—in 1824 and
1829,—but never held any other office. He refused official position
for himself, but no man has been more influential in securing it for
others. Mr. Weed’s work as a journalist was for the most part in
connection with the Albany _Evening Journal_, though before assuming
control of this paper he had edited a number of others, by one of
which, the _Anti-Masonic Enquirer_, he had gained wide celebrity.
During the thirty-two years of his management of the _Journal_ he made
it with his trenchant pen one of the mightiest of the auxiliaries of
the Whig and Republican parties, and he was himself a political leader
second in influence to none. Retiring from this paper in 1862, he
afterward edited for a time the New York _Commercial Advertiser_, but
failing health soon obliged him to drop finally the editorial pen. He
continued, however, to write for the press until a short time before
his death, and the occasional articles he sent to different journals
always commanded an eager reading. In 1866 letters which he wrote to
the Albany _Evening Journal_ from Europe and the West Indies, when
different visits were made to these countries, were collected and
published in a handsome volume, without his consent.
There is much in the life-work of Mr. Weed for which he should be
gratefully remembered. Though he was a strong and earnest partisan, he
was a true patriot. He was a consistent friend of human liberty and
human equality. In the early part of our civil war, in company with
Bishop McIlvaine and Archbishop Hughes, he went to Europe charged with
the important mission of promoting friendliness to the Union cause
on the other side of the water, and the mission was discharged with
great skill and faithfulness. Perhaps to Mr. Weed for his work in
connection with this embassy the nation owes a greater debt than we
know. To the close of his life he was the earnest advocate of what we
believe to be a vicious principle in politics. He was not of those who
demand reform in the civil service. A change in the mode by which the
offices are filled in our land found no favor in his eyes. The old way
was good enough for him. He believed with Andrew Jackson, that “to
the victors belong the spoils.” We can not greatly admire that _role_
of party manager which he played with such consummate ability. There
are higher ends certainly to which a man may give his powers than the
success of party and the elevation of men to political stations. But
this is to be said of Mr. Weed, he was an upright and honorable man,
and in playing the game of politics he was actuated by better aims
than those of many. He left for his family quite a large estate, but
it was acquired through legitimate transactions of business. He had a
circle of friends of whom any one might be proud, and they were by no
means confined to the members of his own political party. Probably by
far the most valuable collection of autograph letters in the land was
in his possession. His home-life was admirable. He had a benevolent
spirit, and his charitable gifts were many. And it is pleasant to have
it to record of him that he lived and died a believer in evangelical
religion. His interest in the Moody and Sankey meetings in New York
City a few years ago is well remembered. We sum up his character: a man
of strong will, of indomitable perseverance and energy, of remarkable
power to control men and attach men to himself, and pure and good in
private life.