- Nov 2017
-
engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu
-
The considerations which have governed the specification of languages to be taught by the professor of Modern Languages were that the French is the language of general intercourse among nations, and as a depository of human Science is unsurpassed by any other language living or dead: that the Spanish is highly interesting to us, as the language spoken by so great a portion of the inhabitants of our Continents, with whom we shall possibly have great intercourse ere long; and is that also in which is written the greater part of the early history of America.
This excerpt Is remarkable because in order to feel the need to establish a new university, the board must have seen discrepancies in education amongst the other universities of the day. Languages being a missing component of a university that was of need to be changed is interesting since the board's purpose of including it so specifically shows that UVA was meant to be very cutting edge. It is mentioned that Spanish and French are needed to communicate with the other people of the Americas, which shows that the boar meant to educate generations of men who should amount to great stature in order to be needing these skills. This nuance shows me to me the thriving character of UVA, which is an education that is very practical.
Muhammad Amjad
-
A Professor is proposed for antient Languages, the Latin, Greek and Hebrew, particularly, but these Languages being the foundation common to all the Sciences, it is difficult to foresee what may be the extent of this school. At the same time no greater obstruction to industrious study could be proposed than the presence, the intrusions, and the noisy turbulence of a Multitude of small boys: and if they are to be placed here for the rudiments of the Languages, they may be so numerous, that its character & Value as an university, will be mixed in those of a Grammar school. It is therefore greatly to be wished, that preliminary schools, either on private or public establishment, would be distributed in districts thro the state, as preparatory to the entrance of Students into the University.
This quotation strikes me particularly as brilliant and also ironic. In the rockfish report, the founders are including not only the foundation of UVA but also a prep. school system to feed into UVA. This is mentioned in with the purpose of including the multiples languages being taught because it is indicative of the element of selective control that UVA was founded to uphold. It seems as if, on top of selectively admitting students who are deemed ideal enough to study at Mr. Jefferson' University, the board finds it crucial to grow generations of boys who will continue to fit their mold for years to come. The idea of preparatory schooling for a university is pretty progressive for the time which makes it brilliant as this model continues to be followed. However, it is ironic as it is going against the "life-long learning" mindset of Jefferson's plans. With a school filled with the exact same type of student, what dynamic between collaboration is there to learn from?
Muhammad Amjad
-
- Oct 2017
-
engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu
-
To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business. To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express & preserve his ideas, his contracts & accounts in writing. To improve by reading, his morals and faculties. To understand his duties to his neighbours, & country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either. To know his rights; to exercise with order & justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciaries of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence with candor & judgment. And, in general, to observe with intelligence & faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.
This entire excerpt of objectives represents a very strong dichotomy between the Jefferson viewpoint on equality (i.e all men are born equal) and the early goals of the University; it is so clearly stated that UVa should teach men to know their rights and freedoms while expanding their intellectual horizons (in addition to being able to defend all these notions) but these exact points are what are explicitly denied to the minority population at this time. This is very profound because it is not as though people in this era did not consider the importance of rights, liberties, and equality- it is the stark inability of these same people to impose those ideas onto the very people who needed them the most (minorities). While many abolitionists and suffragists later on argued for equality and education for all, it is important to note that these ideas did not just gloss over the white elite mindset, rather it was a conscious denial of basic rights that really enforces the true foundation of this university
Muhammad Amjad
-
- Sep 2017
-
engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu engagements2017-18.as.virginia.edu
-
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 foresee. Indeed we need look back only half a century, to times which many now living remember well, and see the wonderful advances in the sciences & arts which have been made within that period.
I found this particular quotation particularly interesting because of the amount of irony and hypocrisy that it is riddled with. It speaks of the importance of education to create "a new man", however we know that this new man is of only a light skin color and most likely a slave-owner, not to mention the exclusion of women. Moreover, in my engagement Making the Invisible Visible, a key focal point is that what is unwritten is often just as important as what's written. Here, in the mentioning of the fact that education is better for the "well-being of mankind", it is implied that solely educating the white male slave owners will be progressive to civilization because of newfound knowledge that will be entrusted with them. As such, in mentioning that education is meant to be passed down to successive generations, the unwritten irony is in the fact that increasingly only a smaller amount of the entire population will be educated because of the ratio to the enslaved people population to the non-enslaved people population. This quotation shows the naive yet justified mindset of the elite class in education administration and society as a whole in the early 19th century America.
- Muhammad Amjad
-