MEMORIAL SERVICES.
Held January 16, 1898.
President Ross as an Educator.
BY DR. BITTLE.
lii the eloquent tributes to the memory of Gen. Ross to
which, the press, various organizations, and the individual
have given utterances, one point has been to a degree left un
emphasized. This occasion demands its especial notice, and
in the name of the Faculty of the'Agricultural and Mechani
cal College of Texas, I honor General Ross as an educator,
cognizant of the seeming anomaly in the association of terms.
History will record, has already recorded, his career as a sol
dier, legislator, and statesman; I venture the assertion that
his greatest work—or I should rather say, the work in which
he proved himself greatest, was that in which he gave vent
to his personality—if I may be allowed the expression—in
the training of men. Understand me, it is not necessary that
one have the title of “Dominie,” “Doctor,” or “Professor,”
to be an educator of men. It is not necessary that he use any
of the paraphernalia of the school or lecture room, or that
he subscribe to any text-book or that he have adopted any
Socratic, Pestalozzian, Frosbelian or other form of pedago
gics, in order to be a teacher, and a successful teacher.
In the good old days of a broad and thorough scholar-'
ship, not gauged by any mercenary ends, men boasted, not
that they had taken degrees at such and such great schools,,
but that they had been pupils of this or that great teacher.
Now, with our systems and methods and grade differentia-