Southern educational conditions are bad enough now, but they were far worse in 1875, the year Vanderbilt University opened its doors. At that time the public school systems of the South were striving to get under way and make some impression on the mass of illiterates. Nothing could be attempted outside a few favored cities in the way of public high schools. The common schools were running ninety-three days in the year, spending 81 cents per capita of population and meagerly educating 45 per cent of the school population. Clearly it was useless to await the coming of the public high school. The old antebellum academies for the most part had passed out of existence. Here and there a few survived, preserving charters that antedated the war and memories of happier and more prosperous existence. If the early copies of the reports of the Commissioner of Education are consulted there will be found few secondary schools having any historic background. The Episcopal High School near Alexandria, Va., has a charter dating from 1854. The Abingdon Male Academy was organized in 1822, and the Bingham School at Mebaneville, N. C., in 1793. These and quite a number of others opened again after the end of the Civil War, but most of them had a brief and uncertain career. In the report for 1877, the earliest one at hand as this is written, we find also mentioned the old Mt. Zion Institute of Winnsboro, S. C., then in charge of R. Means Davis, who was afterwards prominently known in the educational history of that state. Others are the Hanover Academy, Taylorsville, Va., the Yeates School, Belleville, Va.; Fletcher Institute, Thomasville, Ga.; Dawson Institute, White Plains, Ga. The Madison Academy, Rutledge, Tenn., has now become a public high school, the Sam Houston Academy at Jasper, Tenn., has given place to Pryor Institute, and Green River Academy at Elkton, Ky., to the Vanderbilt Training School at the same place. Of all those mentioned only two, the Episcopal High School and the Bingham School, seemed to be really taking up the task of preparing students for college. Each of these sent ten students to college from the class of 1877.
As an attempt to meet the educational needs of the South, quite a large number of new schools sprang into being between 1870 and 1880. These were generally considered academies or secondary schools, but undoubtedly most of their pupils were of an elementary age. In many cases the teachers were unprepared for their tasks. They were doing the best they could, trying to instruct according to the needs of their pupils and trying to make a living for themselves. Many an old soldier and many a good woman, whose property was gone and whose natural supporters had fallen on the battle field, took up these opportunities to earn a scant subsistence. From such schools, few if any students went to college. The preparation was insufficient, the atmosphere of school life was not such as to awaken a desire for a college education, and the colleges made no effort to get in touch with the schools. In the report just mentioned, of 1877, about forty such schools—male academies—are enumerated in Tennessee, yet it was a rare thing for one of their pupils to go to college.
In general the preparation for college was done by the colleges themselves. Practically all established preparatory departments; in many cases the college professors taught these departments, and frequently they contained more students than the college classes proper. As endowments had been swept away and state appropriations hardly begun, the faculty had to be supported from the fees alone. In 1877 East Tennessee University, now the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Tenn., is credited with 195 preparatory students and 90 college students; the University of Mississippi with 257 preparatory and 174 college students; South Carolina College with 95 preparatory and 89 college students. Where some other institutions give no reports of preparatory students, we are inclined to believe it was because these had been fully incorporated with college students, under a most injudicious system of grouping, rather than that they were altogether lacking. From that system with all its faults we have not yet recovered. The best Southern colleges and universities have tried to eliminate this preparatory work, and where this could not be done, they have established independent academies, dissociated from all connection with the college proper. But quite a large number have not been able to take this step and still maintain the confused practice of reconstruction days.
Worse than the evils above enumerated was the creation of a number of chartered colleges and universities that were really nothing more than high schools, and in many cases did not furnish as good an education as an honest academy. Such institutions of course never sent students to college, but rewarded with baccalaureate and master degrees attainments insufficient to grace a freshman. Instead of being friends and fosterers of education, these institutions have often been its worst foes. They have served to transform ignorance into conceit, and make impossible true progress on a substantial basis. Boom towns have started universities as an advertisement; local high schools are called colleges in order to gratify local pride, and college degrees have become a farce. Thus we have in every Southern State colleges whose libraries contain less than a hundred volumes, whose scientific apparatus could be hauled away in a cart and cost less than $100, and whose endowment is nothing.
When Vanderbilt University opened its doors in 1875 it had no intention of receiving preparatory students; indeed, its first plan was to receive only such students as had completed half of their college course. Hence, preparation was made for two college classes and two university classes. But with the coming of the first class the ideals of the faculty were rudely shattered. A crowd of earnest but untrained students poured into the college halls. A large number of the courses that had been provided was found to be unsuitable and uncalled for, while there was an imperative demand for elementary classes in English, mathematics, Latin and Greek. In his report on the first year’s work Chancellor Garland stated that if the University had stood firmly by its rules it would have rejected fully two-thirds of those who had presented themselves for matriculation: “few had any power of fixed and prolonged attention or any practical knowledge of the modes of successful study.” In this way, then, Vanderbilt University found itself compelled to begin preparatory classes. These were continued for twelve years under protest. They were not advertised, no effort was made to secure students for them, but there were always enough candidates to make them a necessity. This continued until 1887 when they were finally abolished and the task of preparing students for the freshman class was boldly thrown upon the schools of Tennessee and the South. The immediate result of this step was alarming. Many prospective students saw it was needless to apply for admission, and of those that did apply a large per cent had to be rejected. The number of literary students fell to 112 in 1889-90; only 29 students finished the year in freshman English, and only 16 had been enrolled during the whole year in freshman Greek. But slowly the situation began to improve; schools arose to do the work demanded by the University and the number of students surpassed even the totals of former years. Gradually, too, it was seen that the University had not merely furthered its own interests, but had been the means of building up a whole system of training schools, thereby directly influencing for good the educational development of Tennessee and setting an example to the whole South. The results of this movement are worthy of special consideration.
Perhaps the University would not have dared to make the experiment it did if it had not felt sure of at least one strong school on which entire reliance could be placed from the very beginning. This was the Webb School, which had then been in operation seventeen years and which had recently been moved from Culleoka to Bell Buckle, Tenn. Shortly before Vanderbilt University was founded Mr. W. R. Webb came to Tennessee from North Carolina to engage in school work. Educated at Bingham School and the University of North Carolina, he had become familiar with the best methods of school work and realized the great need of such work in the South at that time. The establishment of a university in close reach of his school gave him an objective point for his labors, and his students were very promptly turned in that direction. So successful was the Culleoka school, from the very beginning, that in a few years Mr. John Webb, a younger brother, was brought in as partner. It would be hard to overstate the value of the work of these two men for Tennessee and the South. For thirty-five years they have labored, and have put their stamp for good on at least 2,500 Southern boys. Their patronage has come from every Southern State and the size of their school has been limited only by the number they were willing to receive. Their old students are scattered over all the world. A year ago when this writer was in Constantinople without an acquaintance, as he supposed, within a thousand miles, he was surprised to receive a call from the resident physician of Robert College, who was an old Webb boy, delighted at the chance of seeing some one he had known while at school. The Webb School has always been considered unique. Its buildings are plain and its furnishings are of the simplest kind. It has no scientific apparatus, for it is strictly a classical school. But it has a good library, the doors of which stand open winter and summer, day and night, and the books are used. Life is keyed to a high tone in the schoolroom, and the boys feel it. Form counts for little—perhaps too little—but substance counts for much. Professional students of pedagogy, visiting the school, go away surprised—and grieved, for they do not find much respect shown their pet theories. The whole school is wrapped up in the personality of the two men who have made it. Some of the Tennessee training schools could not have come into being or could not now continue without the support of Vanderbilt University, but the Webb School would have been a success under any circumstances. When the surroundings at Culleoka did not seem to be suited at one time to the success of school work, Messrs. Webb quietly informed the citizens that they would move the school, and they did. The success of the Webb School, as well as the demands of Vanderbilt University, have made it easy for other schools to come into being.