Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1879 — Western Fducational Institutions. [ARTICLE]

Western Fducational Institutions.

No greater truism was ever written by pen or uttered by lip than that “Education is the lever that moves the world.” And no people in the wide world seem to have a truer appreciation of this fact than the dwellers in that grand region denomipated “the West.” In the giant strides which that section of our country has of late made in population, wealth and material progress, no interest has improved and expanded with more rapid pace than her educational institutions. It is only a few years since parents living in the West who desired to give their children a thorough education, preparatory or collegiate, were compelled to send them to some Eastern sehool, college or university, hundreds of miles away, thus eutailing the additional expenses incident to traveling, besides the unpleasant feature of having them so far away from home. Happily for the West, this difficulty has been removed. Her institutions of learning to-day will compare favorably with those of the older States, and her preparatory schools are equal to any in the country. Many of her universities are richly endowed, and have professors who, for deep learning and capacity for dispensing knowledge, are unsurpassed anywhere in the land.

The educational facilities of the West being fully equal to those of the East, there no longer exists any reason why parents should send their children so far away from home to educate them. On the contrary, there are manifold reasons why they should look nearer home for fountains of knowledge. In the first place, when the expense of getting to and from the Eastern schools and colleges is taken into consideration, the cost of an education acquired in Western schools is much less than in the Eastern. In fact, the difference is so very great that it will in future figure as a very important factor in influencing the public in favor of the Western schools. Again, those who patronized the Western colleges will enjoy the advantage of having their children nearer home. They will be enabled to see and converse with them frequently, and refresh their minds regarding their morals and the duties devolving upon them as students and seekers after knowledge, and in case of uckness they can be more readily reached and cared for. Fiually, the schools and colleges of the West are comparatively free from many vicious practices that have grown up in the old universities of the Eastern and Middle States, and which seem to be a sort of second nature with the students in those institutions. We allude to the disreputable and dangerous pastimes known as “hazing,” “rushing,” and occasionally open rebellion against the authorities. There is none ot that petty spite and animosity against their instructors winch, in many of the Eastern col.'eges, is so deplorably prevalent. Parents living in the West who contemplate giving their children a liberal education ought to take these facts into consideration and patronize home institutions.