- Nov 2017
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engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu
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These innocent arts furnish amusement & happiness to those who, having time on their hands, might less inoffensively employ it; needing, at the same time, no regular incorporation with the institution, they may be left to accessory teachers, who will be paid by the individuals employing them; the university only providing proper apartments for their exercise.
The addition of the arts into the practices of the university shows that Jefferson acknowledged the fact that all aspects of knowledge play a role in enriching an individual. However, the document's statement that the "arts furnish amusement & happiness to those who, having time on their hands..." employs the precedent of setting non-math and non-science subjects to be seen as second-tier education.
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Education, in like manner engrafts a new man on the native stock, & improves what in his nature was vicious & perverse, into qualities of virtue and social worth; and it cannot be but that each generation succeeding to the knowledge acquired by all those who preceded it, adding to it their own acquisitions & discoveries, and handing the mass down for successive & constant accumulation, must advance the knowledge & well-being of mankind: not infinitely, as some have said, but indefinitely, and to a term which no one can fix or fore
This lengthy proclamation of what education's role is in society is foundational to the University of Virginia, because it encompasses all the value that Thomas Jefferson saw in higher education. This sentence alone provides a thorough explanation as to why Jefferson was such a strong advocate of an "endless pursuit of knowledge", and why he felt so compelled to create a University that offers a public education.
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- Sep 2017
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engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu
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The advantages of this plan are, greater security against fire & infection; tranquillity & comfort to the Professors, and their families thus insulated; retirement to the Students, and the admission of enlargement to any degree to which the institution may extend in future times.
The initial layout of the foundation having such an emphasis on the durability and flexibility of central grounds promotes the fact that Jefferson visioned his university prospering through many generations into the far future. His confidence in the success of the University of Virginia is clearly felt through this excerpt.
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It was the degree of centrality to the white population of the state which alone then constituted the important point of comparison between these places:
This sentence alone encompasses the controversy on racism that has plagued the University of Virginia 'til this day. The fact that the location for which these grounds were built upon was chosen solely based on the "...degree of centrality to the white population..." (meaning the most profitable and nurturing location for white people to flourish, with no regards toward people of color) emphasizes the 19th century's view of racial superiority and the founders' initial intent for inequality. This single sentence painfully and unmistakably claims that this university was founded entirely for the advancement of the white population, and no one else. Today, as Charlottesville, and the University of Virginia, proudly thrives on its growing diversity, this sentence also alludes to some irony.
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