and that this was the result of a deep-seated desire on the part of representative citizens to have a school of higher grade within their midst, both on account of its benefit to the town, and because they naturally preferred to educate their sons and daughters at home. It is noteworthy that several of the leaders in the university movement had, twelve years before, been students of Columbia College.[1] The people had not forgotten the advantage and the distinction of having a college in the town, and were therefore the more ready to gird themselves for the effort.
But in all this we must not forget that John C. Arnold had prepared the way by actually establishing a graded school and maintaining it, under great difficulties, for two years. His effort had been skillfully connected with the public school, and served to carry it forward in its development and in the favor of the people. The "higher" department of the public school was simply Arnold's Graded School, kept under. more favorable circumstances. Let us now see what was actually taught in this first public high school of Eugene.
On the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of November, at the close of the fall term, a public examination of classes was held at the court house. In the programme, printed in the Journal of November 23, the following are enumerated as subjects in which classes are to be examined:
- Rudiments of Arithmetic and Bookkeeping.
- Geography.
- Grammar.
- Practical Arithmetic.
- Sounds of Letters and Spelling.
- ↑ Both Judge Thompson and Judge Walton, among the promoters of the university, were educated at Columbia College.
