Columbia High School

“ If, as seems likely, Frank and a number of his chums who reached the graduation class on the last June school exhibition decide to stay in Columbia High another year, we shall hope and expect to meet them again amid scenes of boyish sports, where the honor of the school is the magnet that leads the contestants on to do their level best. ”

“ Here we only wish to point out that the university movement grew out of a high-school agitation, and that this was the result of a deep-seated desire on the part of representative citizens to have a school of higher grade within their midst, both on account of its benefit to the town, and because they naturally preferred to educate their sons and daughters at home. It is noteworthy that several of the leaders in the university movement had, twelve years before, been students of Columbia College. ”

“ Teachers College of Columbia University is on a graduate basis. Though many of the 250 training and normal schools throughout the country do not require a high school diploma for admission, the tendency is wholly in that direction. In no field of professional education has the application of scientific principles to actual practice made such progress as in that of the teacher. ”

“ In the fastest, fiercest, and most bitterly contested football game of the season, Columbia University yesterday defeated Portland High School by the score of 5 to 0.
Long before time for the game the grandstand was filled with rooters, the Cardinal and White of high school mingled with the Purple and White of Columbia. When the Columbia team trotted into the field a hoarse roar arose from the Columbia contingent. Cheer after cheer greeted the padded warriors from Columbia and this was followed by songs and waving of banners. ”

“ It is safe to assert that at the head of no school in the United States have there been teachers who have availed themselves of better educational advantages than have the principals of the high school for the education of Negroes in the District of Columbia. In looking over the list one observes that of the ten principals, who have guided and molded the school, two held degrees from Harvard University, three from Oberlin College, one from Dartmouth, one from Amherst, one from Western Reserve University, and one was educated in the University of Glasgow in Scotland. ”

“ Columbia High still moves majestically on year after year, turning out her graduating class of thirty-odd young people, and receiving twice as many from the ranks of lower-graded schools. Professor Parke is still in charge, and even honest old "Soggy" looks after the custody of the buildings as of yore, while Mrs. Louden caters to the appetites of the hungry hordes at intermission. ”

“ They had loud speakers, but not enough of them for me to hear from the seat I occupied. It took over an hour for the graduates and faculty to march in from four entrances. There surely must be over a thousand in the faculty. Anyway, I made up my mind then and there that Columbia was no place for an undergraduate to go to school. It is too big. The students have practically no campus life. A great part of them are from the City of New York and surrounding cities, and they room all the way from the Battery to the Bronx. Endless numbers of them never see or know one another. ”

“ There is nothing tending to make a teacher so enthusiastic and optimistic as any average class of freshmen, the great majority of whom come to Columbia eager, alert and responsive to every contact with beauty, nobility, aspiration and high endeavor; and there is nothing tending to make the teacher so disappointed and pessimistic as to see these same young men, after they have been blunted and flattened, go out with smiles of cynical superiority, to take their allotted places in the world of American business. ”

“ Efficiency is. No other American university has done more in giving men of light and leading to industrial, professional, and public life in the United States.
Columbia, by its location in the largest of the American cities, and by the direction which its last three presidents have given to its policy, has become much stronger in its professional schools and its advanced graduate work, than in its undergraduate college. Its schools of mines and law and medicine are famous. In its graduate courses it has as many students enrolled as Harvard, Yale, and Michigan put together. ”

“ Efforts to gain for young women the advantages of Columbia College, New York City, have been made at intervals since 1873, when several qualified young women applied for admission to the college, and one, a graduate of Michigan University, for admission to the medical school. ”

“ Columbia University, in the City of New York, which was organized in 1887 as "The New York College for the Training of Teachers," but since 1890 has been affiliated with Columbia University, under its present name. This institution has been a model copied by many others over the world; has trained a large percentage of the leaders in education in the United States; and has been particularly influential with students from England, the English self-governing dominions, China, and South America. ”

“ The story of the venerable ex-dean’s life is almost a history of Columbia College for the last fifty-odd years. To Columbia men he was more than a teacher. As Charles Halsted Mapes remarked, when the alumni presented a bronze bust of the dean to the Columbia University Club, in 1913: “Van Am has become more than a mere man to us; he is a sentiment. What the Yale fence is to Yale, the ivy to Princeton, Van Am is to Columbia—a tangible, concrete expression of sentiment to which our memories lovingly cling.” ”

“ Immediately the Columbia fellows began booting 'an old ball about, and falling on it with reckless abandon, just as they had been taught to do by the coach.
"Look there, will you!" exclaimed a girl close to Minnie Cuthbert in the grandstand. "How nice and white the suits of Clifford seem, while our boys are dirty. They ought to be ashamed, I should think. We have just as good a laundry in Columbia as they have up above."
But to those who knew more about such things there was an atmosphere of strictly business about the soiled suits of Frank's team. ”

“ Wherever boys congregated, on the campus before the morning session, or down in the lunch room during intermission, when they sampled the various types of sandwiches and pies supplied by Mrs. Louden, nothing was talked of but the chances of Columbia against the seasoned players of Clifford.
"They're heavier than our men," one would lament.
"But the day of weight in football is gone," cried another, quickly.
"Yes, for the game as played to-day calls for agility and pertinacity more than heft. And we've got the boys who can do stunts, believe me, fellows!" ”

“ Consequently he has made every endeavor to bring together the forces of the community and of the school in a sympathetic whole, around which the educational life of the town must center.
The industrial high school is an integral and highly important part of the work in the Columbus schools. Side by side with the academic high school, it affords an opportunity for the children who do not intend to continue their educational work beyond high school grade to get some assistance in the direction of a training for life activity. ”

“ The opening of the School of Mines gave an opportunity to enlarge the plan of studies in favor of science, and to encourage the preference of students who desired to give it predominant attention. Similar liberality toward other departments facilitated the ultimate adoption of elective studies. This is a factor that is changing the whole aspect of college life, Columbia College is not alone in the movement toward flexibility in the curriculum; but it is most largely due to President Barnard that it is in it at all, and has been able to turn it to advantage. ”

“ Of collegiate institutions, Columbia college is the oldest in New York. It is finely situated on a square ornamented with majestic trees; and the standard of classical education here is very high. This institution possesses an estate valued at four hundred thousand dollars. In 1831, the University of New York was chartered; it is projected on the broad and liberal plan of the continental universities, and promises to be of great utility. Schools of all kinds are numerous; bible and missionary societies are numerous and well endowed. Literary and scientific institutions flourish. ”

“ Another tendency in the same direction is to permit students in the junior and even in the sophomore years to elect subjects of a vocational nature. This has been bitterly contested by those who hold that the minimum essentials of liberal culture should be acquired before vocational specialization begins. Columbia permits a student to complete his college [Pg 28] and professional studies in six years, and at the end of that time he receives both the bachelor's and the professional degrees. ”

“ This anxiety for bigness has led to the prominence of semi-professional athletics, to the lowering of standards that college champions may 'get through,' to the lowering of ideals and even of morals. A student expressed well the general sentiment of his class when Columbia took its stand against certain forms of athletics—"What is Columbia coming to anyway? It's going to be nothing but an educational factory." ”

“ The total attendance grows steadily year by year and establishes the leading position of the school among institutions of its kind in this or any other country. The number attending is greater in proportion to the number of journalists in the country than is the number attending the law and medical courses in Columbia University in proportion to the number of those practicing law and medicine. In September, 1913, the school entered its new building, for which $500,000 was provided by Mr. Pulitzer's bequest. ”

“ As guardian in chief of this vast estate and director of the progress of a modern university, the president of Columbia needs to be a man of rare qualifications. High scholarship he should have as the head of a learned institution, and rare business ability he must have as the manager of the various interests intrusted to his care. The college is fortunate indeed to have at its helm one who so eminently combines the qualifications of the scholar, the gentleman, and the practical man of affairs as does Dr. ”

“ Ginger Harper was bending to his work like a Trojan, and doing his full share of the lusty pull that was carrying the colors of good old Columbia High to another glorious victory!
No need of any admonition from the coach, who was there at the bridge to witness the wind-up. He had done his work, and could only watch the result. Ralph stole one look at Coach Willoughby as he stood close by, and if sheer delight was ever shown on any man's ruddy face it was on his as he saw his boys shoot underneath, a full length and a third ahead of their determined rivals! ”

“ Aside from these three types of public normal schools, another important type of teacher-training organization is the department of education and psychology in our best colleges and universities, exemplified notably by the School of Education of the University of Chicago, and Teachers' College of Columbia University, the last-named being perhaps the most efficient teachers' college in the world. ”

“ The High-school, of over 600 pupils, is especially to be commended. Manual training is not introduced into the schools, and the present better sentiment is against it; but its foundation, drawing, is thoroughly taught from the primaries up to the High-school, and the exhibits of the work of the schools of all grades in modelling, drawing, and form and color studies, which were made last year in New York and Chicago, gave these Columbus schools a very high rank in the country. ”

“ The five departments of Columbia College are those of Arts, of Mines, of Law, of Political Science, and of Medicine, and in addition there is an annex for women, known as Barnard College, in honor of the lately retired president, Frederick A. P. Barnard. The schools of Law, Mines and Medicine are the leading ones of the country.
The School of Arts provides the usual classical education, at a cost to students of $150 for the annual fee. There are a number of free and prize scholarships, and seven three year fellowships of $500 per annum. There is also a post graduate course of wide scope. ”

“ Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, it will generally be admitted, still stand foremost, but New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore have built up universities whose subordination needs to be qualified in some particulars—for the scientific department of Johns Hopkins and the medical branch of the University of Pennsylvania rank at least as high as those of the older colleges, while Columbia’s rapidly increasing wealth has enabled it to advance with greater rapidity than any of its sisters. ”

“ Because of the things that have been done, we can make college as universal in the 21st century as high school is today. And, my friends, that will change the face and future of America.
We have opened wide the doors of the world's best system of higher education. Now we must make our public elementary and secondary schools the world's best as well--by raising standards, raising expectations and raising accountability. ”