The founders realized early on how crucial a university hospital would be to the quality of medical education students could receive. Of course this would pave the way for the founding of the hospital a few years after the university, but this sentiment allowed the school to concentrate resources into the hospital, helping it rank so highly in the present day. At the time of the school’s founding however, realizing that they did not yet have the means to establish a hospital allowed the school to make wise decisions on what they were prepared to offer students. Consolidating the classes to a single professor saved the university money, as the talent of more specialized professors would have been wasted without access to a hospital to teach in. This professor would be able to give a comprehensive overview of medicine, and preparing the students to pursue more specialized medical training at another school if they so desired.

This was an important step in founding the University, determining where to start. At the time, Universities had been established, most notably in England, but they were by no means standardized like they are today. Presently, Universities can rely on people receiving some standard of education before applying, as well as using standardized testing to evaluate students knowledge. Realizing the universities potential for teaching advanced courses, the founders also had to address the quality of primary education the public received. Ensuring the public had a solid foundation in writing and math allowed them to pursue the intellectually enriching education the university hoped to offer.

I found this concern to be a very interesting addition to their rational for the districts. I thought it was revealing of some of the social dynamics at the time, and contradicted my previous assumptions. On one hand, I understand that it was common for families to come together to support a sick family member in a time where someone could be bedridden for months. Despite this, I still had a prevailing assumption that in this time period, children were far less “taken care of” by parents. Even though this is only referring to Grammar School, many kids that age worked hard jobs, and not all were in school to begin with. My understanding of the 1800’s American family’s dynamics, shaped by books (Frankenstein) and modern day portrayals, was that sons would be shipped off to boarding schools, or venture out on their own with little contact with their family. I now have two main theories for why this concern was addressed. The first, would be that in the 1800’s, “sickness” wasn’t as removed from death as it is now thanks to modern medicine, so the very real possibility that a child could die of sickness would be an incentive to want the family close by. The second theory, would be that considering UVA started with the sons of many wealthy white families, these families would be far more inclined to keep in touch compared to the average family. While the son of a poor man may have had to start from scratch to create a name for himself, a wealthy man's son would be able to carry on a family legacy and inherit the fortune, which would create a stronger tie between parents and kids.

I was surprised to see that Hebrew was on the course list. At this point in time, the American Jewish population was very, very small. I suspect this would have been taught in the context of history, relating to the bible, as the old testament was written in biblical/classical Hebrew. From what I know about Western education historically, many of the "humanities" type subjects were very interdisciplinary, so I could understand religion and history being incorporated into this course.