- Oct 2017
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engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu
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Certainly not with the Alphabet for reasons of expediency & impracticability, as well as from the obvious sense of the Legislature, who, in the same act make other provision for the primary instruction of poor children, expecting doubtless that, in other cases, it would be provided by, the parent, or become perhaps a subject of future, and further attention for the legislature.
This sentence shows that the men who wrote the document expected a certain level of education of those who enrolled, and left how that basic level was met to the families of students as well as the government. They expected the government to take charge of educating the poor.
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It has been undergoing, with time, those gradual changes which all languages, antient and modern, have experienced: and even now, needs only to be printed in the Modern character and Orthography, to be intelligible in a considerable degree to an English reader.
The men who wrote the document have a clear emphasis throughout on language, but here they place an emphasis on an earlier form of the same English they spoke (and we still speak). It's interesting that they place such importance on being familiar with the language of the past, and the roots of the modern language, and therefore their modern world. The importance of recognizing the past and learning how it has led to the future is still an important thought process at UVA today.
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