William Barton Rogers Essay ⋆ Education Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

William Barton Rogers is best known as the conceptual founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A common thread that runs through his writings is the social dislocation of laboring classes affected by industrialization. His educational reform efforts were directed at addressing this dislocation by way of formal instruction in the practical and theoretical branches of science.

Born in Philadelphia to a family of scientists (his father and three brothers all were professors of science), his early studies were largely scientific at home under his father’s instruction. At age fifteen, he enrolled at the College of William and Mary; later taught at his alma mater; and, in 1835, became professor of natural philosophy at the University of Virginia until 1853. While in the South, he directed the first geological survey of Virginia, published widely on geological and natural philosophical topics, and drafted two major proposals for schools of science or “polytechnic institutes.”

Rogers’s ideas about developments in antebellum education and society informed the founding of MIT in 1861. The specific plan he advocated for MIT included three major components: a society of arts, a museum of technology, and a school of science. Of the three branches, the school of science attracted the most attention and became the primary focus of the public’s response to the idea of the Institute. Rogers became the Institute’s first president as well as professor of physics and geology. He died in the midst of delivering a commencement speech at the Institute in 1882.

Bibliography:

Angulo, A. J. (in press). William Barton Rogers and the idea of MIT. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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