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The distribution of instruction & the conduct of business in the
While ample provision is made for the tuition of the two upper classes, and the
professors can hardly find recitations enough in those two classes to give
themselves appropriate employment, the two younger classes are consigned almost
totally to the instruction of the tutors. Yet do these two inferior classes
compose a considerable majority of the youth of the
Nor is the effect upon discipline less disastrous than
upon scholarship. Such tutors have no weight of character. Feeling their
impotence they scarcely venture to interfere with the students, but let them
have pretty much their own way, & get along as easily to themselves as
they can. Indeed it is not much to be expected that such novices —
equals today & superiors tomorrow — should command respect
& enforce good order.
What has been the result of this state of things? We may fearlessly say, almost a total prostration of good scholarship and a considerable relaxation of discipline. The examinations bear testimony to the lamentable effects of tutorial instruction. It is in vain to attempt to repair the damage after they mount up into the superior classes. Inveterate habits of idleness & loose scholarship have been contracted. Rude, tumultuous manners & boisterous behavior at the door of the recitation room which we are compelled to witness too often, bear sad proof of the want of respect & authority of such tutors as we are now obliged to put up with.
The Professor of Languages, to whose Department
Unless this is done parents had better keep their sons in the academies during
the first two years of the college course & not send them to the do choose to incur the
expense, & to hazard their sons' morals at College, ought they to be
imposed on with the belief that the University will of course impart more able
& thorough knowledge, when in fact, for two whole years their sons are
under teaching inferior to what they have left behind them at their own homes?
Let us tell them in good faith, you had better keep your sons at home for they
will be better taught there, with far less expense to you & less
jeopardy of their virtue at that tender age.
According to the present arrangement of professorships the whole instruction of 3
professors & the partial instruction of a 4th will
be given to the Senior Class; the Junior Class will have the advantage of being
instructed by three Professors, while the Sophomores & Freshman will not
have any share of this large furniture of means but be thrown upon the mercy of
any accidental tutor who may be willing to accept the pittance we give. That is,
of 100 & more
The above complaints might be made with as much propriety by the mathematical
Professor, but as his studies occupy only about a third of the two first years
while the classical Professor's occupy nearly two thirds, he does not feel the
evil as heavily. But the new professorship will in some measure remedy the
mathematical part because the Professor will be enabled to turn more of his
attention to the inferior classes, while the classical Department will be left
as defenseless as ever, unless the