Library Collections: Document: Full Text


Life Of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet

Creator: Edward Miner Gallaudet (author)
Date: 1888
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company, New York
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 2

Previous Page   Next Page   All Pages 


Page 33:

352  

To one point, gentlemen, permit me to invite your particular and candid attention. Ought the services which I have rendered to be estimated by the exact number of hours and minutes consumed in their performance, and ought they to be placed on a level with those of the other instructors?

353  

Before I went to Europe in your employment, I had received a very expensive education. I had graduated at Yale College; I had been a tutor in that institution two years; I was licensed to preach, and, in addition to all this, I had received a pretty thorough mercantile education. All this cost money, and enabled me to enter upon the discharge of the trust that you assigned me in the origin of the school, and has since enabled me to discharge additional ones, with so much the greater promptness, dispatch and success. In support of this position, may I allude to the peculiar difficulties which I had to encounter, and which, by the blessing of God, I overcame while in Europe; to the amount of funds which I was instrumental in raising; to the successive annual reports which I have prepared; to the impressions made by means of addresses, and sermons, and public exhibitions, on legislatures and the inhabitants of some of our largest cities, and on the Congress of the United States, favorable to the prosperity of the institution; to the securing, by previous correspondence and by my own personal attendance on their respective legislatures, the appointment of commissioners from the New England States, and the abandonment of projects almost ripe for execution, for the establishment of other schools, and the concentration of public patronage on one for all New England; to the conducting for years a very delicate and difficult controversy, if it may be so called, with the New York institution, and affording complete satisfaction to the commissioners chosen on the part of that state to visit the institution of the superiority of our mode of instruction; to the enlisting the feelings and good will of hundreds of respectable visitors from all parts of the Union; to the carrying on a correspondence with distinguished individuals and officers of government, with regard to the interests of the deaf and dumb generally and the welfare of this institution more particularly; to the making improvements in the course, and manner of instruction, and in the religious exercises of the pupils; to the educating some pupils who are now assistant teachers, and to the furnishing in the early progress of the school specimens of the attainments of the pupils which excited surprise even in the older establishments in Europe; and in these, and other ways, to the securing to this institution, while yet in its infancy, the approbation and patronage of our own country, and an elevated rank among those of long standing in foreign countries.

354  

So far as I have been instrumental, under the support of a kind superintending Providence, in the accomplishment of these objects; and, so far as I have performed the more ordinary business of the institution with promptness, dispatch and success, ought not a proper regard to be had to the qualifications in the possession of which I originally entered into your employment?

355  

Are not the services of all public agents and professional men estimated in this way, and ought my services, then, to be estimated by the precise number of hours and minutes that it has taken me to render them; or ought I, in this respect, to be placed on a level with younger men, who have not had the same advantages of experience and of education as myself?

356  

If we examine the arrangements of any extensive establishment of a commercial or manufacturing kind, or those of the naval, the military, or the civil department of our government, do we ever find that those occupying important stations of trust are obliged, in addition to the responsibilities growing out of these stations, to labor, also, in the details of business in the more inferior departments?

357  

Is the estimate placed upon their services, and the compensation which they receive for them, ascertained by the precise amount of time employed in rendering them, or are they placed, in this respect, on a level with those having less experience and occupying subordinate stations? On the contrary, are not their services estimated according to their experience and skill -- and do they not often receive double the amount of pay for spending much less time than is employed by one in an inferior station? These principles are acted upon in institutions of a similar kind in Europe, and none of the prominent ones for the instruction of the deaf and dumb require of the principal to be devoted to the daily instruction of a class.

358  

Nothing but the very peculiar circumstances under which I am placed, would lead me thus to allude to topics, to mention which, on almost any other occasion, would look too much like vain-boasting. But it seemed to me indispensable to make such a statement -- in order to place in its true light the reasonableness of my views with regard to releasing the principal, whoever he may be, from the daily instruction of a class, since no one but myself, however kindly disposed, is sufficiently acquainted with all the facts of the case, to be able to state them fully and accurately. Such a statement, for various reasons, I wished to leave on your records -- and having thus considered the past, the great question recurs, what is to be done with regard to the future.

Previous Page   Next Page

Pages:  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32  33  34  35  36    All Pages