Queen's University

“ He deprecates extreme centralisation, as narrowing the scope of education for the many, even though raising its standard for the few. He thinks that for Canada, as for Scotland and the United States, several distinct universities, each with its own individuality and esprit de corps, will prove most useful in the end; and that the Queen’s University, for the good work she has done and the high position she has maintained, deserves to preserve her continuous historic life. ”

“ But the truth of it is there are too many old women at the head of the Universities. What you want are keen-headed men, men of experience in the world, who would move with the times, and get Oxford and Cambridge to move with them. I am so convinced I am right in this opinion, that if it were not for the cares of business, to which I must return when I have finished with Cambridge, I should apply for a Trinity fellowship after I have taken my degree, and try to infuse a little spirit into the counsels of the college and through it into the University. ”

“ Most likely these Universities grew as a tree grows from a seed blown by chance of the wind. It seems easy enough to understand why Paris, that great city, should have possessed a great University; yet I surmise the processes at Oxford and Cambridge to have been only a little less fortuitous. ”

“ Ope for thee their queenly circle ...
it is not in our Universities that the general redemption of English will be won; nor need a mistake here or there, at Oxford or Cambridge or London, prove fatal. We make our discoveries through our mistakes: we watch one another's success: and where there is freedom to experiment there is hope to improve. A youth who can command means to enter a University can usually command some range in choosing which University it shall be. ”

“ Not far from this institution, which is calculated to receive somewhat above twenty young ladies, is Queen’s College, a newly established academical institution, which enables young women to study and graduate in the same way as young men; and to advance as far in the acquisition of knowledge as their natural powers will admit of. The formation of a skillful class of teachers, of which it is said there is a great want in England, is the highest object of this college, which is under the direction of the Government and the Established Church. ”

“ That boast bespoke an undesirable uniformity which is not likely to find favour in British communities, least of all in these States, where we have become accustomed to strike out new lines in education for ourselves. Therefore, it is to be desired that the University of Queensland will in its turn, evolve an individuality of its own, that it will be inspired by the particular requirements of the State whose interests it serves ”

“ It is now well known to us all that the nation that is backward in education is, or soon will be, behind in all that makes a people great and prosperous.
I am aware that these facts were fully recognised by many men in Queensland long years ago, for I well remember the former efforts that were made to found a University here—efforts that failed through causes that happily no longer exist. One of the most noticeable facts in the social and economic life of English-speaking people in recent years is the great impulse that has been given to the development and extension of university teaching. ”

“ I hope that not merely morals, but, in some degree at all events, manners, will be cultivated in this University; and we, a handful of people, who spend comparatively enormous sums every year on primary and secondary education, shall have additional reason to be proud when we see the effects of the University now inaugurating being spread throughout the land. ”

“ I am convinced that after the liberal and, as far as we can see at the present time, adequate provision that has been made by the Government of the day for the management of this University, you will see men attending it who will make their mark upon the community. ”

“ Queen's College is fortunate in the possession of an excellent staff. Of the English staff, apart from the headmaster, there are three trained certificated masters, the remainder are graduates of universities—three from Cambridge, two from Trinity College, Dublin, one from Oxford, and one from Aberdeen. The senior Chinese masters leave nothing to be desired, and most of the junior are satisfactory. The native masters are trained under the charge of a normal master. ”

“ The Royal Institution may in some degree supply the [Pg 242] place of a subordinate university to those whose sex or situation in life has denied them the advantage of an academical education in the national seminaries of learning.
With regard to the special objects of the Institution, the theory of practical mechanics and of manufactures, he said:
We must be more practical than academies of science and more theoretical than societies for the improvement of arts ”

“ Matriculates and others, if they try for a scholarship, while they may not be successful in getting one, will have the satisfaction of knowing that they have added to the stock of their knowledge and done some useful work. It may, however, be thought more advisable for them to graduate in one of the Universities. Then comes the question of selection of a University. There are Cambridge and Oxford Universities on one side and London University on the other. So far as substantial knowledge is concerned, London University is by far the best. ”

“ The sole object of a university is not to instruct men to pass examinations; it has a wider sphere than that. There was a time—it existed through ages—when the conception of a university was an institution that turned out scholars. To-day, I venture to say, it has become recognised that the duty and the object of a university is the production of citizens. ”

“ Our oldest college owes its existence to John Harvard, of Emmanuel, Cambridge, and the name of the mother university still clings to her transatlantic offspring. The English institutions have become firmly associated in the vulgar mind with all that is dignified, venerable, and thorough in learning, but, beyond a vague sentiment of admiration, little adequate knowledge on the subject is abroad. American or German universities are organizations not very difficult to comprehend, and a vague knowledge of them is perhaps sufficient. ”

“ The boy, who is to be a soldier—one day he hears a distant bugle: at once he knows. A second glimpses a bellying sail: straightway the ocean path beckons to him. A third discovers a college and towards its kindly lamp of learning turns young eyes that have been kindled and will stay kindled to the end.”—James Lane Allen.
The opening of Queen’s College marked a great advance in the cause of girls’ and women’s education. It had its root in the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, which was founded for the purpose of helping governesses in times of need. ”

“ One thing is abundantly clear: that because we are determined to have a university equal to the needs of this great State, a university that shall stimulate those of the sister States, and because we start at so late a date, we must begin with the very best teachers that can be procured, the most learned and enthusiastic men in their several departments. On those men will in a large measure depend the future character and standing of our University. The best men will be the cheapest. Queensland can afford to employ them, and we know they will be a profitable investment. ”

“ I know of no institution in modern social life that equals the University in giving a fair chance in life to the youth that is capable and is able and willing to work; although, for my part, I can only regard schools of all grades as only preparatory for the studies that have to be incessantly pursued after one ceases to attend classes, if one does not resign oneself to falling behind ”

“ The college the distinguishing characteristic of Cambridge and Oxford
It is the collegiate system which distinguishes the English universities from all others. Everywhere else in Europe students live in their own private lodgings and have complete control of their lives, subject to no supervision whatever; the university has no rights over them and no means of ensuring their good behaviour during the period in which they choose to attend its lectures. ”

“ We require a broad and strong foundation, able to carry a great edifice, sufficient to provide the most comprehensive tuition, not only in what is known, but also to facilitate and encourage original research and invention, as set out in the Act. Even sport will not be forgotten, for it is an important consideration, in a non-residential university, to foster that feeling and regard for a bountiful mother that should animate the students of every great University. ”

“ The same desire which led to the foundation of Selwyn and Keble led to the passing of a grace by the Senate of both Universities, by which students were allowed to become members of the University without joining any particular college. Unattached students now form a considerable element at both Oxford and Cambridge. ”

“ Before, however, we offer any conjectures as to the probable effect of these yet untried changes, we must remind our readers of a certain characteristic of the Cambridge system, which is important in estimating the internal relations of the late reforms. The academic life of Cambridge circulates through two concurrent systems, which we may term the university and the collegiate system. The university is one corporation, and each individual college is altogether another. ”

“ While the University is thus only a union of the Colleges for attaining such ends and such status as can better be attained by united than by isolated existence, the College is a real and concrete thing, the foundation stone of the ‘Oxford System’. Each College is within itself independent; each has its own traditions and some characteristics of organization, life, and system which are peculiar to itself. With the affairs of the College individually the University is not concerned. ”

“ This infant University, launched as it is upon its career with the goodwill of a prudent Government and with, I believe, to an unusual degree the good wishes and support of the people, has the great advantage that it may profit by the example of the institutions that have preceded it; and fortunate will be the University of Queensland if, by adopting the good that may be discerned in its sister institutions, and by avoiding their mistakes, if such have been made, it shall enter upon and pursue a blameless career of which all men shall speak well. ”

“ During the centuries in which the English universities have existed, the first degree of excellence has been reached in every department of human knowledge and activity by men whom no university can claim. Shakespeare, Bunyan, Hawkins, Raleigh, Drake, the Hoods, Howard of Effingham, Clive, Warren Hastings, Marlborough, Nelson, Wellington, Scott, Dickens, Keats, Browning, were at no university ”

“ I deem it a fortunate circumstance that, a few days after my arrival in Brisbane, I should have the privilege of participating in a ceremonial for the establishment of "The University of Queensland," of taking part in a State function of historical and of great social and economic importance.
We live in an age of more rapid progress than any that has ever preceded our own day: and for my part I am prepared to believe that we owe to education the enormous advances in recent years in health, wealth, and in the amenities and comforts of life. ”

“ We need universities as well as we need "Dreadnoughts" and Kitcheners—as we do need them to keep our country foremost in the arts, not only of war—even in war a university may do much; we have a Director of Military Studies at our University at Sydney, and I trust you will have one here—but to keep us foremost in the arts of peace. In the matter of the foundation of the universities of the Old World, you will remember that it was through the Crusaders that those universities were founded. ”

“ What is a University almost everywhere else? It announces little more, as respects the academic buildings, than that here is to be found the place of rendezvous—the exchange, as it were, or, under a different figure, the palæstra of the various parties connected with the prosecution of liberal studies. This is their "House of Call," their general place of muster and parade. Here it is that the professors and the students converge, with the certainty of meeting each other. Here, in short, are the lecture-rooms in all the faculties. ”

“ Well, to begin with, Verdant Green, with all his faults, did contrive to be exceedingly youthful and high-spirited. And in the second place, with all its faults, it did convey some sense of what I may call the 'glamour' of Oxford. Now the University, on its part, being fed with a constant supply of young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty, does contrive, with all its faults, to keep up a fair show of youth and high spirits; and even their worst enemies will admit that Oxford and Cambridge wear, in the eyes of their sons at any rate, a certain glamour. ”

“ The history of the organization of the University and its staff is covered with almost impenetrable mist. For the Museum and Library were in the strictest sense what we should now call an University, and one, too, of the Oxford type, where learned men were invited to take Fellowships, and spend their learned leisure close to observatories in science, and a great library of books. Like the mediæval universities, this endowment of research naturally turned into an engine for teaching, as all who desired knowledge flocked to such a centre, and persuaded the Fellow to become a Tutor. ”

“ But success in an examination, as proved by marks or a certificate, is of the nature of an honorary prize, and Queen's College has not moved so high above the earth as to disdain examinations. The College was established and incorporated, "for the general education of ladies, and for granting certificates of knowledge." We have given, and continue to give, certificates to those who are proved by examination to be entitled to them. The general work of the pupils during the year is tested at the end of the Easter Term by Cambridge Examiners. ”