The San Francisco call., 1898-03-06
Professor Brown Traces It's History and De-
 velOpment.
T. L. Heaton Decrtes Anglo mania in the Pronuncia-
 ton of Words.
Declares There Should Be an Amer jean as Well as an English
 Language.

Professor E. Brown, in an address at the University of California yesterday morning, gave an interesting historical account of secondary education in the Western States during the early dec ades of the present century. In the course of his remarks Professor Brown said:
 "The influence of New York upon the history of education in this country has been very great. The university idea and the tendency toward unitication can be directly traced to the influence of the Empire State.
 'The University of Michigan furnish es an interesting study in educational history. The university as at present constituted is the third form in which 1t has existed In 1877 it was first es- tablished as the 'CatholeDistemiad, or University of Michigania- Of all pe- dantio schemes l have ever heard any, thing of this was by far the most pedantic. Yet, in spite of this marvel ous pedantry, there was, out there in the wilderness of Michigan, a strong movement toward better general edu- cation, and in the attempts to provide systematic education for all classes, the tendency toward unification is to be discerned. The University of Michigan In its present form was established in 1887, when Michigan entered the Union, but it was truly the outgrowth of the earlier institution.
 Tn Illinois, during the second and third decades of the present century, the State Legislature showed a strong antipathy to the establishment of col leges, but 1t encouraged the founding of academies. Religious considera tions were principally responsible for this. A number of ecclesiastical bodies wanted to found colleges, but strong preju- dices against anything like ecclesias- tical control of education prevented the College of Illinois from obtaining a charter in 1880. The growing idea that church and state should be totally sep arated appeared more strongly in the new States of the West than it had in the colonies, and some of the preju- dices entertained against ecclesiastical schools were most bitter. In Illinois one of the strongest charges used to prevent the establishment of colleges was that the Presbyterians were be- coming powerful in State and national politics. Secondary education, ac- cordingly, in Illinois and many other Western States, took the form of acad- mics, rather than colleges.
 ''The idea of manual labor colleges took a strong hold upon the minds of the people of the West for a certain time. The idea was taken from Swift Zerland, where such a school had been successfully established. Although tried all over the country, east as we'll as west. the manual labor colleges have almost invariably proved failures; the demand for institutions of this kind has been met more effectuaIly in later years by the manual training schools and colleges.
 T. L. Heaton concluded his criticism upon prevailing methods of teaching literature in the public schools and took occasion to condemn the practice of some teachers of trying to compel children to give the English rather than the American pronunciation to the voWels in many such words as last" and past" In his remarks Mir Hea- ton said:
 Children should be encouraged by all means possible to form clear inn ages. Nothing is more helpful toward this end than having plenty of pictures of all kinds to show the children. If you are teaching them geography-the New England States for instance-try to have some pictures of the New Eng land coast before them. Gradually the pupils may be trained to form distinct images from letters and words. The imagination can be thus developed to iAdAe real picture out oI a word p1c- ture- In the formation of such inn ages lies the greatest benefit of the study of literature.
 Altogether too much time is spent in trying to teach pupils to pronounce the vowels in words as they are pro- nounced in England. Teachers drill their pupils to give the 'ah' sound to the vowel a in such words as last and past I, for my part, see no reason why we should try to compel our chill dren to pronounce such words differ entity from the way they are usually pronounced in America. There IS no reason why we should not have an Amercan language as well as an Eng fish language. We do not pronounce scheme sheme,' as they do In England, and to spend hours upon hours in attempting to compel Ameri- can children to pronounce last IaiIst'