The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1910-08-23
INSPIRING TEACHERS Il
MORT THAN EQUIPMENT.

our colleges and universities are
cramped for the lack of money. 1t
should be supplied. The state ought
to adequately equip and support the
educational Institutions it has estab-
lished and private philanthropy ought
to generously endow the church
schools. Men who are giving their
lives to drawing out the best that is
in our youth ought not to be cramped
for proper apparatus and ought not
to be crippled by being poorly paid.
The Southern people are not rich,
but they annot afford not to deal
more generously by their institutions
Of learning.
But, beloved, are we not in danger
in cOveting the donations of the
Rockefellers and Carnegies, Of putting
too much stress upon building and
equipment-of looking too much to
the aids to teaching instead of the d.
vine inspiration that comes from the
born teacher when he depends chiefly
upon himself to lead the youth into
the wider fields Of learning? 1t is i'm
portant to have modern apparatus,
but it IS an hundredfold more impor-
tant that college professors shall be-
consumed by the love Of learning and
the high zeal of imparting it to their
students. indeed his is the only es-
sential to teaching-the desks and
the apparatus are mere aids.
In a recent issue Of the New York
Evening Post there appeared a COM
munication from the former president
Of Trinity College hat suggested the
above suggestions. It is as follows:
ITO the Editor.
Sir: A writer refers to Trinity
College, North Carolina. as a made
to-order college, built on an old
she'll
In ~ OF great material prosper
lty Of Institutions it has become the
fashion to ~depreciate the earlier period
OF comparative material poverty. But
any institution of learning which had
forty years of continuous activity as
a college, had in that an asset in ira
ditions, history, graduates, and friends
which counted for a good deal Of
what is now expressed in the eQuiva-
lent Of dollars.
although Trinity College, now To-
Gated at Durham, n. c., is no excep-
ton to this rule, there are numerous
institutions in the South where indi-
vidual devotion Of teachers goes a
great way to make up for lack Of en-
Handicapped as these in
sGtutlons may be, they nevertheless
have in the personnel Of their teach
ing forces many capable men who
nave been We'll trained in the larger
Universities men who love their work.
and are achieving results.
The earlier Trinity had much OF
this element IN it etween the years
1888 and 1894, when the college was
moved from country to town. There
was that mingling of traditional worth
in the older faculty with the mod
ern training of the members,
which, to my mind, made a happy
blending in the product which came
out OF the transitional process. The
content of the educational idea. at
work, IN ~ieavening the institution, and
revitalizing its powers, while extend
ing its scope and strengthening its
schools, was altogether too rich to be
called an old shell
"It was a living force in the Old
North State Commonwealth. Even
though it did not have what YOU call
an elaborate laboratory eQuipment.'
it had men from Clark University,
Yale, and elsewhere, who could teach
the principles Of physics effectively
without having q modern moguI en-
CINE as a part Of their laboratory
outfit.
Let me say, in this connection
that rnen-men Who can teach under
graduates, and inspire young men
with aspirations and desire to over
co1ne-are still worth more than mod
ern material equipments. Some Of
the best teaching in undergraduate
physics which I have ever seer was
done on a less than $50 appropriation
by young men who succeeded in i'm
pressing their students with the fact
that the man must be the master Of
! his materials enough to make his own
equipm ent up to a certain point, when
more technical apparatus is required
for exact Measurement
DO not let us, therefore, get the
IMPRESSION that the contemporary col