To improve by reading, his morals and faculties
I really like that morals was mentioned in goals of attending this university. Most of the other concerns are academic, career based and civilian related. It's really cool that an emphasis is placed on ethics and learning how to be an ethical human being. This tends to lack from lots of other university and educational systems. It seems as if Jefferson wanted to differentiate Virginia students from others.
Ethan Chase
each of these was unexceptionable as to healthiness & fertility
This is a very interested factor to consider when building a university. Sure Jefferson deemed agriculture very important but what does this have to offer for students? Having fertile land may only help students interested in agriculture excel. I wonder if Jefferson wanted agricultural studies to be one of the focuses of this unviersity?
Ethan Chase
I disagree with the comment o Higher education being as American as possible. This is a worldly desire to have higher education.
Ethan Chase
To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express & preserve his ideas, his contracts & accounts in writing.
The only pronoun in this is "he". This stresses how Jefferson and UVA had a college only In mind for men. I also was shocked at the "preserve" his ideas. I believe a huge part of college is not to preserve but to expand, get uncomfortable and learn about new things. I wonder why a person of Jeffersons intellect wouldn't encourage others to expand their ideas rather than preserve.
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: and the board,
I find this very interesting, but not surprising given the time period. This mentions how it was chosen based off of convenience to white people to get an education closer to them. I'm curious if this pertained to white women as well, because they are "white" but during this time most women weren't going to college. It's also interesting to see this school's more conservative roots, something that gets forgotten today. This expresses the white male dominance during this time, a southern conservative value that today really isn't shown at UVA.