May 2

[In this letter, dated May 2, 1826, I am writing to Doctor John P. Emmet—a newly appointed professor at my beloved University of Virginia—to detail a three-year curriculum framework for our students that properly balances languages, mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Written in the final months of my life, I map out how he might partition his lectures across botany, zoology, and chemistry, and I dismiss the speculative geological debates of our era as idle dreams unworthy of an hour of a man's time, reminding him that our institution's duty is not to graduate scholars already enthroned on the pinnacles of science, but rather to give young men the foundational skills to become the next Newtons and La Places through a lifetime of self-education.]

What is the whole term of time which the students can give to the whole course of instruction? I should say that three years should be allowed to general education, and two, or rather three, to the particular profession for which they are destined. We receive our students at the age of sixteen, expected to be previously so far qualified in the languages, ancient and modern, as that one year in our schools shall suffice for their last polish. A student then with us may give his first year here to languages and Mathematics; his second to Mathematics and Physics; his third to Physics and Chemistry, with the other objects of that school. I particularize this distribution merely for illustration, and not as that which either is, or perhaps ought to be established. This would ascribe one year to Languages, two to Mathematics, two to Physics, and one to Chemistry and its associates. Let us see next how the items of your school may be accommodated to this scale; but by way of illustration only, as before.

The allotments to your school are Botany, Zoology, Mineralogy, Chemistry, Geology and Rural Economy. This last, however, need not be considered as a distinct branch, but as one which may be sufficiently treated by seasonable alliances with the kindred subjects of Chemistry, Botany and Zoology. Suppose then you give twelve dozen lectures a year; say two dozen to Botany and Zoology, two dozen to Mineralogy and Geology, and eight dozen to Chemistry. Or I should think that Mineralogy, Geology and Chemistry might be advantageously blended in the same course. Then your year would be formed into two grand divisions; one-third to Botany and Zoology, and two-thirds to Chemistry and its associates, Mineralogy and Geology. To the last, indeed, I would give the least possible time. To learn, as far as observation has informed us, the ordinary arrangement of the different strata of minerals in the earth, to know from their habitual collocations and proximities, where we find one mineral, whether another, for which we are seeking, may be expected to be in its neighborhood, is useful. But the dreams about the modes of creation, inquiries whether our globe has been formed by the agency of fire or water, how many millions of years it has cost Vulcan or Neptune to produce what the fiat of the Creator would effect by a single act of will, is too idle to be worth a single hour of any man's life. You will say that two-thirds of a year, or any better estimated partition of it, can give but an inadequate knowledge of the whole science of Chemistry. But consider that we do not expect our schools to turn out their alumni already enthroned on the pinnacles of their respective sciences; but only so far advanced in each as to be able to pursue them by themselves, and to become Newtons and La Places by energies and perseverances to be continued through life. I have said that our original plan comprehended ten Professors, and we hope to be able ere long to supply the other two. One should relieve the Medical Professor from Anatomy and Surgery, and a school for the other would be made up of the surcharges of yours, and that of Physics.