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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 50

II. The Professional Schools of the Missouri University

page 65

II. The Professional Schools of the Missouri University.

XII.—1. Agriculture—Agricultural and Mechanical College.
XIII.—2. Pedagogics—Normal College.
XIV.—3. Law School.
XV.—4. Medical School.
XVI—5. School of Mining and Metallurgy.
XVII.—6. Engineering School.
XVIII.—7. School of Military Science and Tactics.
XIX—8. School of Art.
XX—9. Commercial School.

The primary aim of the Academic Schools of Science and Language (I—XI) is culture; that of the Professional Schools (XII—XX) is practice. Self is the end of culture, but self is the instrument of practice. The academic training views man himself as the end; but the professional training views the man as the means, and the calling, (as farming, teaching, law, medicine, mining, engineering, art, etc.,) as the end or business for the pursuit for which he is to be fitted. The academic or general training, fits for no line of business in particular, but it furnishes culture as the condition of the highest attainment in any special vocation. The man, cultured, has more fullness and strength, as a specialist, than the same man uncultured.

But as all kinds of culture have not an equally important bearing on every line of activity in life, there is occasion for discrimination and choice, as to the subjects to be pursued in the Academic Schools, when anyone of the professional courses is in contemplation. Hence, there are arranged, as will be seen in the Synchronistic, Table, several under-graduate academic courses, or curricula, for the convenience of students in conforming their efforts to this natural principle of selection. As a matter of fact and of experience, it is found that a student usually accomplishes very little till a settled and definite purpose presides over his movements. The energies of youth are limited; and hence, to qualify them for life's work, which is the great aim of scholastic education, as much definiteness as is practicable should be given to their efforts page 66 to save them from waste. In every properly arranged educational [unclear: institution] whole course of study is a crystallized selection. The idea that a [unclear: university] I "institution where any person can find instruction in any study," is [unclear: visionary] I such institution now exists, ever has existed, nor, from the nature of the [unclear: case], I can exist. A selection of those subjects, and of those practical or [unclear: profession] I activities, which alone have been deemed most effective in conserving, [unclear: import] and transmitting the civilization of any age, have been singled out for school[unclear: ab] In this elective sense, and in this sense alone, every age has taught what it and all it knew. Informer days, the physical sciences were not taught, [unclear: be] they were not known; they are taught now because they are known; and a[unclear: be] interpretation of the senses in the order of the acquisition of knowledge, as[unclear: and] logically preceding abstraction, assigns these sciences in their phenomenal [unclear: and] piricai aspects, a place in the foreground. The sciences deal with the subject [unclear: if] of language, and rationally precede its forms.

It is important to note that the word science, here used respecting the [unclear: side] of the University, is not to be understood in its popular and etymological [unclear: sermon] designating simply knowledge or information, whether in a miscellaneous [unclear: fjgjj] classified form, but technically and strictly as a term of art, in which sense, [unclear: see] is a systematic classification of the laics of phenomena.

Progress in science, according to this definition, can only be effected, [unclear: either] adding to the stores of our knowledge a new fact, referable to known laws, [unclear: dgdfg] adding a new law. It is the business of the teacher, as such, to put his [unclear: punish] the possession of the sciences as known, rather than to add thereto.

There are two thoughts which seem to be entitled to preside over the [unclear: department] of language. The first is, that the professors should be able to think, [unclear: write] speak the leading languages which they teach. What would be thought of [unclear: professor] of English who did not have such a mastery of it? and this case is not [unclear: fhdfgdf] The second thought is, that in language, as in science, the mind is fed more [unclear: be] contents of the forms than by the forms themselves. It is truth possessed, [unclear: and] truth pursued merely, that disciplines and unfolds the powers of the soul. [unclear: He] the live chairs of language, by teaching the literature, antiquities and history [unclear: of] peoples who used these forms of speech, map out the world's history, [unclear: especial] far as it has been bound up in that of our race. Man, who has thus [unclear: revealed] self, is the most conspicuous part of nature, and hence the schools of [unclear: languages] by way of eminence, in a popular sense, schools of natural science.

As the languages pre-suppose their subject matter in the sciences, so the [unclear: professional] courses of instruction pre-suppose, as their natural [unclear: antecedents] academic courses. The tabulated and textual exhibit of the academic and [unclear: provisional] schools, is believed to rest on a rational method.

It will be observed that our group of professional schools, and their [unclear: associate] with the academic group, is somewhat unique, although it is in the general [unclear: fdghdfh] our American Universities, however unlike those of Europe. The [unclear: distinguish] features of our University, which are of home growth, including the [unclear: in] autonomy, adjustment and dove-tailing of the associated schools, give it an [unclear: attention] to our wants, institutions and condition, such as no exotic possesses.

Disposition, therefore, is to apologize for these unique characteristics, not by [unclear: way] deprecation, but only, in the old sense of that word, and that is, by way of [unclear: defeat] This, however, is not the place for discussion, but only for statement and [unclear: announcement].