HILLSBOROUGH ACADEMY.
We have received a catalogue of the Trustees, Teachers and Students of this Institution, and are glad to be thus informed of its healthful condition, and widening prospects of usefulness. Its Students now number 99, among whom are several from other States. We make the following extract from the Prospectus of the School:
The Hillsborough Academy has been under the charge of Mr. Wm, J. Bingham, A. M., the present Principal, for the last twelve years, and its patronage has greatly increased during that whole period. Several causes have concurred in producing this result the chief of which are— the thorough mode of teaching, and the consequent scholarship of the pupils; the mild, yet strict, energetic and uniform discipline of the school; the regular and close supervision of the moral deportment of the scholars as well out of, as in school; the extraordinary healthiness of the town, and the high moral character of the citizens.
Neither labor nor expense has been spared to make the school worthy of confidence and patronage. The Principal, and three Assistants of his own previous training, men of tried scholarship, or experience, industry and tact in teaching, devote their whole time to it.
The English department is under the superintendence of the Principal, and to it one Teacher devotes the whole, and another the greater part of his time. Its object is to prepare boys well, either for the Classical department, or for the ordinary business of practical life. The Academy building is handsomely situated on a hill remote from the business of the town, and contains four spacious rooms, one of which is appropriated to the English department.
The Classical scholars receive regular instruction in all the branches of common English Education, four afternoons in the week, and Saturday forenoon is exclusively devoted to this object. In each department there are five classes; and with such a corps of teachers, and such classification as is rigidly adhered to, any probable number of scholars can receive ample and efficient attention.
The arrangement of classes contemplate four years from the beginning of Latin Grammar, as the period of preparation for College. Some, however, are prepared in much less, while others require still more time, the more intelligent and industrious being promoted to higher, while the more indolent and dull fall into lower classes. The rate of progress depends on the age, intellect and application of each individual. The more active are not retarded; nor are the slowpaced dragged over books without understanding them. That it is better to have a perfect knowledge of a few books, than a mere superficial acquaintance with many, is a cardinal maxim of the school. Solidity should not be sacrificed to despatch. A fine superstructure should rest on a solid foundation; it can rest on no other. It is believed that boys of ordinary capacity cannot be properly prepared for College in less than four years. In education, as in other things, those who profess to despatch work on the shortest order, generally execute it in the worst manner. The carelessness and inaccuracy engendered in the boy by hasty and superficial habits of study, are deeply felt and deplored, but seldom corrected by the future man.
—The Register, June 15,1839.
(Source: North Carolina Schools and Academies 1790-1840, by Charles L. Coon, 1915)
