Mark Hopkins Award
From Dr. Mac’s Cultural Calendar:
- “Mark Hopkins, U.S. educator, was born on this day in 1802. He taught at Williams College…. President Garfield, one of his students, said that all that was needed for a college was Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.”
I have never encountered a mentor figure capable of holding down his end of a log in the manner of Mark Hopkins. The closest I have come to such an encounter is with a book, The Practical Cogitator, by Charles P. Curtis and Ferris Greenslet.
This year’s Mark Hopkins award for the closest approach to the log-sitting ideal goes to David Lavery, whose online commonplace book appears in the column at left. Lavery, too, appreciates the work of Curtis and Greenslet, as his site indicates.
See also a quote from Lavery in today’s New York Times.