A PLEA FOR THE LOCAL SCHOOL.
The examination of the Students of this Institution, under the control of Mr. James Grant, jun. took place last week and afforded much interest to those who attended the exercises. While this School is undoubtedly entitled to take a prominent rank among the Seminaries of the State, on account of the advantages which it offers for a classical education, it deserves commendation also, for the attention which is bestowed upon those indispensable requisites, Arithmetic, Writing & Composition—branches, which, in our higher schools, are too often entirely neglected.
We were gratified at the performances of the Senior Class, who are about to leave the Academy and enter College—more particularly as their destination is our own University. It has become so fashionable to undervalue everything at home, that many parents think their children, to graduate with eclat, must be sent north of the Potomac to finish their education. So accordingly they are despatched to Harvard, Yale or Princeton, there to to figure with plenty of cash and credit, until they are pronounced moribus inculcatus, literisque humanioribus imbutus. Thus it is, that the Poet's idea of "distance lending enchantment to the view," is not merely a fanciful idea, but a serious practical fallacy, which is constantly imposing upon mankind in some form or other. Our own domestic customs, our native literature and institutions, are comparatively ungenteel, insipid and vulgar. We look abroad for whatever is classical, ingenious or tasteful. This is miserable taste and worse policy, and ought speedily to be corrected.
—Raleigh Register, June 4, 1833.
(Source: North Carolina Schools and Academies, 1790-1840, By Charles L. Coon 1914)
