Schoolhouse Used as a Social Center.
When our State Normal School was established there were not more than a dozen other such schools in the United States and none that prepared teachers for high-school positions. To-day there are many normal schools, but none larger than ours or more amply equipped to prepare teachers for all lines of teaching. The course of study, reaching from the kindergarten to the completion of a college course, places our State Normal School in the front rank of institutions of its kind.
In 1901 the Western Branch State Normal School was established at Hays, and in 1903 another branch, the Manual Training Normal School, was opened at Pittsburg. Each of these has since been made an independent school. The one at Hays is now known as the Fort Hays Kansas Normal School.
Kansas State Agricultural College, Manhattan.
The Agricultural College. In 1862 Congress passed an act providing for land grants to states for the purpose of establishing colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts. Kansas was among the first states to accept the endowment, and the next year Bluemont Central College, a Methodist school at Manhattan, was given to the State and made the State Agricultural College. During the first ten years the growth of the Agricultural College was very slow. This was chiefly due to the fact that industrial education was something new and did not receive much attention. The College gave only a little work in agriculture or manual training, and what was given was merely supplementary. It was doing little to educate toward the farm or the workshop. In 1873 the school was reorganized. Farmers began to be interested in it and to discuss its possibilities. Such subjects as Latin and Greek were dropped and agriculture, home economics, and mechanic arts were emphasized. Workshops, print shops, kitchen and sewing rooms, agricultural implements, and live stock, were provided. This was a very advanced step at that time and it aroused some opposition. It was called the “new-fangled” education, and farmers who read and studied methods of farming were often sneered at as “book farmers.” But in time people began to view these things in a different light. It has now come to be generally recognized that successful farming requires a broader and more varied knowledge than almost any other business, and that in an agricultural state like ours nothing is more important than the training of its citizens for home and farm life. The Agricultural College now occupies the position of leadership in the agricultural and industrial interests of the State, and is one of the largest agricultural colleges in the United States.
The University of Kansas, Lawrence.
The University. The University of Kansas was established by an act of the Legislature of 1864, and its object, as given by this act, is to “provide the inhabitants of the State with means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the various branches of literature, science, and the arts.” The university idea is hundreds of years old, and so there was nothing new in the thought of a university in Kansas. The University of Kansas was built on the flat-topped hill in Lawrence where the first party of free-state settlers pitched their tents. It was opened in 1866 with forty students and three professors. To-day there are twenty great buildings on Mount Oread. The central department of the University is the college, which provides a liberal education in languages, sciences, mathematics, history, and kindred subjects. Besides the college there are schools of engineering, of fine arts, of law, of pharmacy, of medicine, and of education. Ours now ranks high among the universities of the United States.