So far as the institutions of the American Missionary Association are concerned, I am inclined to think that there is a nobler ideal to be realized under the name of university than any feeble imitation of older institutions. A field is open here in the South for the development of an institution such as the world has not yet seen, and which, in a somewhat new but not unnatural sense, would justify its claim to be called a university.
The university which missionary effort can make most useful in the South is one that shall represent, in their most perfect form, all the successive grades of education from lowest to highest. It should be prepared to train ordinary pupils of all ages rather than extraordinary ones of mature age only. It should also provide ample facilities for normal and industrial training, now so much needed in all the South. But especially it should magnify and dignify the work of primary instruction, regarding this as a permanent feature of its work, and not as an unavoidable evil to be shaken off as soon as possible. It should neither undervalue nor neglect the higher education. This should be held up as a worthy object of aspiration for all who show themselves fitted to receive it, by thorough work lower down. Such an institution would present, under one management, a kindergarten, or something like it, a graded school, a normal school, an industrial department, an academy, a college, and in course of time the professional schools.
In favor of such a university several reasons may be given. In the first place, the interests of the higher education would be better served by such an institution than by one devoted to the higher education alone. It is taken for granted that the Freedmen and their descendants, for whom largely our institutions are established, should, like all other people, have the opportunity of the higher education given them to the extent of their ability to receive and use it. The welfare of the masses demands that we train up leaders of intelligence and principle. That this work is not being overdone at present is evident from the fact that only ninety-one college students are reported in all the institutions of the American Missionary Association put together, and only about fifty in all have ever been graduated from our college courses since our work in the South began. Now, the principal reason why our work in the higher education has been so limited, has been the great scarcity of suitable material for college classes; and the reason of this scarcity has been that our preparatory departments have not been able to get hold of their pupils early enough. Pupils come to us heavily handicapped by a lack of proper training, moral and intellectual, in early childhood. Now, who can doubt but that the universities that are going to have the best college classes twenty years from now, and do the best work, will be those that soonest put the kindergarten, or some equivalent of it, underneath all their present courses of study, and thus manipulate the entire education of their pupils from the age of five onward? A thoroughness and symmetry of training could be realized by such an arrangement which would be scarcely possible under any other.