Academy (institution)

“ A Military Academy was formed, principally with a view to bring forward extraordinary talents and employ them in the civil or military public service. Anyone was admissible. The children of the meanest mechanics and day-labourers, provided they had very extraordinary natural genius, a healthy constitution, and a good character, were educated. It was an establishment designed for the encouragement of genius, and for calling forth into public utility talents which would otherwise remain buried and lost in obscurity. ”

“ As a national institution, following the prescribed rules of the Academy, it has, of course, met with frequent assaults at the hands of men for whom prescribed academic law was as naught in comparison with the higher law of genius. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In regard to education, the records of the Commission are defective in not showing how long those who have been at an academy or college have remained at either, nor how many are graduates. If a person has been but a month at an academy or college, he is put under the head of those institutions. ”

“ And the gentlemen who opposed him most violently have repeatedly told me that I did the utmost service to the Academy by bringing him in, for never was a man in such a situation so eminently qualified for the task of education. ”

“ Academies have always been considered as higher schools, in contrast with the lower preparatory schools, or schools properly so called;—hence the student at the academy as distinguished from the pupil at the school. The freedom of the former could thus only be understood to be emancipation from some constraint to which the latter was subject. ”

“ And Dan liked what the catalogue said about the school’s purpose: “The object of the Academy is to furnish the elements of a solid education. The discipline is not adapted to boys who require severe restrictions, and the method of instruction assumes that the pupils have some power of application and a will to work. The purpose of the instructors is to lead pupils to cultivate self-control, truthfulness, a right sense of honor, and an interest in the purity of the moral atmosphere of the school.” ”

“ Consider the influence you may have upon the other institutions of our country, by attaching yourself to some one under the existing organization. If you take an [Pg 231] academy or a private school, constituted and organized like other similar institutions, success in your own, will give you influence over others. A successful teacher of an academy, raises the standard of academic instruction. A college professor, if he brings extraordinary talents to bear upon the regular duties of that office, throws light, universally, upon the whole science of college discipline and instruction. ”

“ No portion of any future class should be graduated in advance of the full four years' course, and under no circumstances should the standard of instruction be lowered. The Academy in almost all of its departments is now magnificently equipped, and it would be very unwise to make the course of instruction less exacting than it is to-day. ”

“ Though this Academy is called a Military Academy, it is by no means confined to the education of those who are destined for the army; but it is rather an establishment of general education, where the youth are instructed in every science, and taught every bodily exercise, and personal accomplishment, which constitute a liberal education; and which fits them equally for the station of a private gentleman,—for the study of any of the learned professions,—or for any employment, civil or military, under the government. ”

“ Each academy, except the Academie Française, which comprises a general reunion of all the other academies, is divided into sections for the consideration of special subjects, and is made up of members of the institute who are regarded as specialists, or acknowledged authorities in different departments of learning. ”

“ We have now been in possession of an Academy more than half a century; all the intrinsic means of forming a style alternate at our commands; professional instruction has never ceased to direct the student; premiums are distributed to rear talent and stimulate emulation, and stipends are granted to relieve the wants of genius and finish education. ”

“ Standing as it does between both the local societies and the specialist societies, limited as these are by neighborhood and by subjects respectively, and the more advanced and select National Academy, the association may be likened in position to the college, standing between the schools and academies and the advanced work of the universities and professional institutions. It is the only body, in its very nature and scope, that can bring genuine science before and among the people at large. ”

“ An academy quite like the French Academy, a sovereign organ of the highest literary opinion, a recognised authority in matters of intellectual tone and taste, we shall hardly have, and perhaps ought not to wish to have. ”

“ It would be well, if our collegians would try to estimate the effect, moral, intellectual, and physical, of the training of the Academy, as contrasted with that which they are receiving, and, in comparing a collegiate with a West-Point graduation, to remember that the cadet has been on service, and would have been discharged by his paymaster, if he had not done his duty, while in the colleges the professors serve for the pay, and would lose their bread and butter, if there were no degrees given. ”

“ With this arrangement of its forces the academy could now be defined as 'a society of learned men organized to advance and spread general knowledge apart from the function of teaching.' It was agreed that each class should determine and direct its own work, that special meetings for each class should be held once a month, general meetings each week, that no person should belong to two classes at the same time, that each class should propose its own members, though they must be elected by the vote of both classes of the academy and that vote confirmed by the king. ”

“ It is a work more proper for an Academy on a Royal foundation than for any individual. But as no such Academy is to be looked for, and as all private societies pay their attention to desultory objects, as often to those already ascertained as to points in which we want information the most, I undertook the work myself more than ten years ago. ”

“ Matthew Arnold’s plea for an English academy of letters to save his countrymen from the note of vulgarity and provinciality has met with no response. Academies have been supplanted, socially by the modern club, and intellectually by societies devoted to special branches of science. Those that survive from the past serve, like the Heralds’ College, to set an official stamp on literary and scientific merit. The principal academies of Europe, past and present, may be dealt with in various classes, according to the subjects to which they are devoted. ”

“ First, the law expressly recognized an Academic Staff, who should confer degrees. Secondly, that the cadets of West Point should be students, subject to the regulations of the Academy. All this evidently meant that these two hundred and fifty young men should be placed, like students in college, under regular academic instruction, and that the professors and teachers should constitute an academic faculty, with power to regulate the education of the cadets, and confer degrees according to merit. ”

“ The business of an academy is therefore to govern change; and for this business an academy is ill fitted. It must inevitably consist of men of letters who have already won their way to public esteem. These men might perhaps preserve the great literature of bygone ages and foster its influence; they would be more likely to pay undue honour to yesterday, and to shut the gate against to-morrow. They would certainly be men of mature years, and the chief of their duties would be the choice of younger associates. ”

“ An Academy, in which the Polite Arts may be regularly cultivated, is at last opened among us by Royal munificence. This must appear an event in the highest degree interesting, not only to the artists, but to the whole nation. ”

“ If the teacher succeeds by the force of his word and his person in developing the mental powers of his pupils so that they eagerly look forward to the next year's course and are thoroughly roused to work for themselves, he has accomplished his task. For the Academy is not to give fragments of disconnected knowledge; in its course of teaching the necessity of every new subject must rest upon truths which the pupils have already perceived and made their own. ”

“ Notwithstanding the neglect of this matter at the Universities, do you think, at the present moment, you could not find ten non-professional persons, of the character you would think desirable, to add to the Academy?—If I may be so impertinent, I may say that you as one of the upper classes, and I as a layman in the lower classes, are tolerably fair examples of the kind of persons who take an interest in art, and I think both of us would do a great deal of mischief if we had much to do with the Academy. ”

“ We may grant that the real office of an Academy should be—what the nominal office of this Academy is—culture and perfection of intelligence, elevation of the general standard of work, the average of mind and taste and sense which precludes absurdity or aberration and ensures something of care and conscience among the craftsmen of literature. Greater work an ideal Academy could hardly undertake, for greater work would require the vivid and personal advent of genius ”

“ While we are indebted to the talents and industry of the professors and teachers of the Academy, for the flourishing condition it is now in, and the progress of the cadets in every branch there taught ”

“ In the first draft of the new Institute, October 25, 1795, no class corresponded exactly to the old Academy of Inscriptions; but most of the members who survived found themselves re-elected either in the class of moral and political science, under which history and geography were included as sections, or more generally under the class of literature and fine arts, which embraced ancient languages, antiquities and monuments.
In 1816 the academy received again its old name. The Proceedings of the society embrace a vast field, and are of very various merits. ”

“ Even now, though the system is, so to speak, in its infancy, graduates judge of universities not so much by the standing of the professors or by the grade of instruction offered, as by the value of the fellowships. Students about to graduate have been known to ask their professors what inducement the college offers them to remain—more than that, have been candidates for appointment at more than one institution. ”

“ Your not being in favor of it results from your belief that the lay element that would be useful to the Academy does not at present exist in this country; but you think, if it did exist, and if it could be made to grow out of our schools and universities by art teaching, it might, with advantage to the Academy and to artists, be introduced into the Academy?—Yes. ”

“ VI. A sound body and constitution, a fixed degree of preparation, good natural capacity, an aptitude for study, industrious habits, perseverance, an obedient and orderly disposition, and a correct moral deportment are such essential qualifications that candidates knowingly deficient in any of these respects should not, as many do, subject themselves and their friends to the chances of future mortification and disappointment, by accepting appointments to the Academy and entering upon a career which they can not successfully pursue. ”

“ The teachers of the people must be actuated by high principles; otherwise society will suffer. Newspapers, magazines and business papers form a continuation school which affects throughout life the graduates of every other educational institution, be it common school or university. As is the press, so will be society.
Observance by journalists, then, of the highest ethical standards is an imperative social necessity. There have always been sound rules of journalistic conduct, unformulated, seldom written, that have guided the best of our newspapers and magazines. ”

“ It is very proper that those rules should be given in the Academy; it is proper the young students{140} should be informed that some research is to be made, and that they should be habituated to consider every excellence as reducible to principles. Besides, it is the natural progress of instruction to teach first what is obvious and perceptible to the senses, and from hence proceed gradually to notions large, liberal, and complete, such as comprise the more refined and higher excellences in art. ”

“ It is well known, from their memoirs, that these academies included among their members men of eminent talents. The Academy of Sciences, in particular, could boast of several first-rate geniuses in the different branches which they respectively cultivated, and the unremitting labours of some of them have, no doubt, greatly contributed to enlarge the sphere of human knowledge. ”

“ This University is celebrated for the solidity of the learning which it communicates, and the severity of its requirements as regards its students. Young men, therefore, who have obtained diplomas at the University may be sure of situations and official appointments when they leave it. There is here a separate establishment which affords indigent youths of good character, and who have the desire to learn, the opportunity of maintaining themselves at the academy free of cost.
When Jefferson founded the academy he excluded from it any ecclesiastical establishment or clergy. ”