- Dec 2017
-
engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu
-
What, but education, has advanced us beyond the condition of our indigenous neighbours? and what chains them to their present state of barbarism & wretchedness, but a besotted veneration for the supposed supe[r]lative wisdom of their fathers and the preposterous idea that they are to look backward for better things and not forward, longing, as it should seem, to return to the days of eating acorns and roots rather than indulge in the degeneracies of civilization.
What is being said here is very ironic. Throughout the document, the author forwarded the idea of striving to obtain knowledge and utilizing it to better their society. But at the same time, they refuse to learn from "indigenous neighbours" and realize that their neighbors is not inferior, but maintain a lifestyle completely different from theres. They should act like educated individuals and learn rather than demean.
-
- Sep 2017
-
engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu
-
Education generates habits of application, order and the love of virtue; and controuls, by the force of habit, any innate obliquities in our moral organization. We should be far too from the discouraging persuasion, that man is fixed, by the law of his nature, at a given point: that his improvement is a chimæra, and the hope delusive of rendering ourselves wiser, happier or better than our forefathers were.
Although the establishment of the University was an effort to further the white population, the board provides hope for the application of education. Here, they highlight how education gives us the opportunity to act. They highlight how our intelligence is not fixed. We can always improve. This also give hope to the fact that education should not be racial, because any human has the ability to improve their education. The board let their ignorance blind them from what should be really taken into account.
-
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:
These lines show the racism the University was built on. Upon constructing the university, the board acted on benefiting the white population. By the establishment of the university, we see a little insight as to why there was tension when it comes to the admittance of the first black students on the university.
-