The Skyland post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.) 193?-1988, 1937-10-21
Austin Gives Brief History OF
Appalachian State In Address

grown until 1t is now valued at
100000 or more. Our Alma Mat
er now has twenty-four hundred
graduates and an annual enroll
ment of nearly thousand stud
ents, representing nineteen differ
ent universities, eighty-five differ
ent colleges and ten different
states. The achievements accom-
plished here are sufficient it seems
to satisfy the ambitions of any man.
But the President of this institution
is still dreaming. He has visions
of this institution, located here in
the highest county east of the
Smoky Mountains, becoming one of
the greatest in all the country and
serving as a beacon light for the
entire Southland as it has served
for this immediate section and for
tn State of North Carolina. The
supreme success and the greatest
joy that can come to any person
is when he has so lived and his
achievements are such that he is
able to live to see the embodiment
of his own Immortality and in my
opinion this institution will some
day bear the name of its founders
along with that Yale, Harvard,
Vanderbilt, Duke and other great
institutions of our country.
While l have been speaking of
our Alma Mater and of some of the
work of its President I do not feel
that I should let this occasion pass
without referring in a brief way
20 what DR.. Dougherty has done
for popular education in North Car
Dina. I was member of the Leg
islature of North Carolina, Session
of 1927, and a member Of the Com
mittee on Education. The Legisla-
ture and the Committee were in a
wrangle. DR.. Dougherty came to
Raleigh and after seeing the situa-
ton sat down and in two days
wrote out a school machinery bill
and submitted same to the Commit
tee on Education which after care
full consideration the Legislature
enacted into law without the cross
ing of |'t'' or the dotting of an
'i'. After the bill had been enact
ed into law the Governor appoint
ed DR.. Dougherty as a member of
one great State School Commits
mission for the purpose of carrying
out it's provision. This bill added
100000 to the equalizing school
fund of the state and laid the
ground work whereby all taxes for
the support of schools were re-
moved from property in North Car
Dina DR.. Dougherty has con-
tinued to write school bills and we
have a great and benevolent state
sending its school buses into every
community and almost to every
home transporting their children to
modern schools for an eight month
term without one cent of tax on
property and almost without cost
and almost without price to either
the parent or the child. Never be-
fore has the state done so much to
educate it's people. We have pro-
ceeded on the theory that if educa-
ton is good for one it must be
good for all. But not Withstanding
the remarkable progress we have
mad. in the training of teachers,
in school buildings and in transpor-
tation we have found that many
of our boys and girls are not be-
ing educated. Up until now all our
public schools and all our high
schools have had practically one
! course of study. The curriculum
for all students has been practical
ly the same and designed with the
view of sending students after
graduation to college. But we
have found that all students are not
alike That they are not interest
ed in the same things. That we
can lead boy to school, but if
he is not interested, we can not
make him think. In mass educa-
ton we are facing new conditions,
new responsibilities and new
order. I have faith that our Alma
Mater and it's Alma Mater will
meet them. We are confronted W.?
the problem of the boy or girl who
has one talent as well as the one
who has five talents. I am one of
those who likes to believe that
every child is brought into the
world for a purpose and that every
man and every woman has work
! to do and that God intended for