Читать книгу A Cyclopædia of Canadian Biography - Various - Страница 13

Table of Contents

MacVicar, Rev. Malcolm, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Apologetics and Christian Ethics, McMaster Hall (Baptist College), Toronto, was born on the 30th September, 1829, in Argyleshire, Scotland. His father, John MacVicar, was a farmer in Dunglass, near Campbeltown, Kintyre, Scotland, and was known as a man of great physical and intellectual vigour, and was well known in his native Scotland and the land of his adoption, Canada, for his ability, generosity and sterling integrity. His wife, Janet MacTavish, possessed a similar character, and reached the age of ninety-two years before she died, having seen her children’s children in positions of usefulness and influence. Malcolm, the subject of this sketch, was one of twelve children, and came with his parents to Canada in 1835, and settled on a farm at Chatham, Ontario. His early years were spent at first on a farm, then at Cleveland, Ohio, where he learned the trade of ship carpenter. Being ambitious and anxious to get on, he decided to secure an education, and along with his brother Donald, now Principal of the Presbyterian College in Montreal, went to Toronto, in 1850, and entered Knox College to study for the Presbyterian Ministry, where he remained for two years. In the meantime his views of doctrines having undergone a change, he became connected with the Baptist denomination, and turned his attention to teaching and fitting young men for the Toronto University, preaching occasionally. He was ordained to the Baptist Ministry in 1856. In 1858 he went to Rochester, New York State, and entered the senior class at the University of Rochester, taking his degree of B. A. the following summer. He immediately went to Brockport, in the same county, where he became a member of the faculty of the Brockport Collegiate Institute, then under the principalship of Dr. David Barbank. Here, with the exception of one year spent in the Central School at Buffalo, he remained until the spring of 1867 (when that institution was transformed into a Normal School), first as subordinate, then as associate principal, and from April, 1864, sole principal of the school. He was a very successful teacher from the first, being full of energy, and ambitious to devise new and improved methods of illustrating and impressing the truth. Nor were the class-room walls the limit of his intellectual horizon, but he was constantly seeking some better plan of organizing the educational work immediately in hand, and over the whole state. He was quickly recognized by the regents of the University as one of the foremost teachers and principals in the state. In August, 1865, he, by appointment, read a paper before the convocation of that body on Internal Organization of Academies, which looked towards and proved the first step towards putting in practice regent’s examinations in the academies as a basis for distribution of the income of the literary fund. He was shortly afterwards appointed by the chancellor, chairman of a committee of principals of academies to consider the practical workings and results of the system of regent’s examinations just being instituted. During these years of his connection with the Collegiate Institute, he took a lively interest in the subject of the so-called normal training in academies, and became convinced that the utmost that could be done for teachers’ classes under the circumstances was too little to meet the needs of the common schools of the state. He, therefore, with the advice and cooperation of friends of education in Brockport and Rochester, and the Hon. Victor M. Rice, then state superintendent, proposed to the State Legislature, in 1865-66, a bill authorizing the establishment of a Normal and Training School at Brockport, and offering to transfer the Institute property to the state for that purpose on very liberal terms. Subsequently this measure was so modified as to provide for four schools instead of one, and to leave the location of them to a board consisting of the governor, state superintendent and state officers and others. In this form the bill became law. It now became necessary to adopt some definite plan of organization for the new schools, and Superintendent Rice at once turned to Professor MacVicar for assistance. The professor submitted a plan, which, with some slight modifications, was adopted and became the basis for the organization of all the schools under the law. In consideration of the services rendered by Professor MacVicar and other friends of the cause, the first school was located in Brockport, with Professor MacVicar as its principal, and he immediately set to work to organize this school, and opened it in the spring of 1867, having among the members of his faculty, Professor Charles McLean, William J. Milne and J. H. Hoose, now the Principals of the Normal schools of Brockport, Genesee and Courtland. The first year of Normal school work, carried on as it was in connection with planning and supervising the erection of the new buildings, proved a very trying one to Principal MacVicar, and his health giving way under the pressure, he resolved to offer his resignation at the end of the school year of 1867-8. This he accordingly did, but the state superintendent, preferring not to lose him from the state, granted him a year’s leave of absence, instead of accepting his resignation. He then took a trip west, during the summer of 1868, and was invited to become superintendent of the schools of the city of Leavenworth; after some consideration, he accepted this position, and remained there until the following April, in the meantime reorganizing the schools from bottom to top, a work that had been neglected hitherto. His western trip having restored him to perfect health, he returned to New York state, but thought it best not to again take up his work at Brockport. A Normal School having been located in Potsdam, St. Lawrence county, and about ready to open, he was invited to become its principal, and accepted the office. He at once gathered around him a corps of teachers, and opened his second Normal school, three weeks after he left Leavenworth. The regents of the University welcomed him back to the state, and expressed their estimation of his ability by conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the summer of 1869, and his alma mater added an LL.D. the following year. The school at Potsdam was no sooner organized than he gave himself anew to the study of methods of instruction and the philosophy of education, for which he possessed a peculiar aptitude. Being encouraged by the other principals to work out his ideas into permanent shape for the general good, he became the author of several books on arithmetic; he also became the author and inventor of various important devices to illustrate, objectively, principles of arithmetic, geography and astronomy. Meanwhile there arose a degree of friction between the academies and Normal schools of the state, which made itself felt in the legislative session of 1876, in a threat to cut off the appropriations from the Normal schools, unless the academies were treated more liberally. At the next meeting of the Normal school principals, the matter was discussed, and the cause of the difficulty was found to be the double-headed management of their educational system. It was agreed that the remedy for the existing difficulties was found in uniting the management of all the schools of the state under one head. Dr. MacVicar and Dr. Sheldon, of the Oswego Normal school, were appointed to urge this view on the State Legislature at its next session. They conferred with a deputation of academy principals, and won their approval of the plan prepared. It was then embodied in a bill, and brought before the legislature in 1877. Although much time was spent in bringing the matter before the committees of the assembly and the senate, and many of the prominent men of both houses, who generally approved of the measure, yet the private interests of aspirants to the office of state superintendents conflicted with it, and it was thrown out when it came up for a hearing. In the autumn of 1880, Dr. MacVicar was invited to take the principalship of the Michigan State Normal school, at Ypsilanti, and finding it the only school of the kind in that state, and there being no diversity of interest in the educational management of the state, it seemed to offer an opportunity for something like ideal Normal school work, so he accepted the position. He remained there, however, but one year, when, being thoroughly worn out with hard work, and being urgently pressed to join the faculty of the Toronto Baptist College, just then opened, he resigned his position in Michigan and came to Canada. Dr. MacVicar excels as a mathematician and metaphysician, having read extensively in both directions, as well as in the natural sciences. He has also made the relation of science and religion a special study, and is now investigating the wide field of Christian Apologetics. As a writer and in the classroom, he is characterized by the utmost clearness and force, and his career as an educator has been eminently successful. It has fallen to his lot to perform a vast amount of hard work in all of which he has shown a spirit of self-sacrifice in a remarkable degree, through which he has been the means of advancing many others to positions of high trust and usefulness. His investigations in the science of education are critical and original, being based upon extensive observation and a large induction of facts. Having for twenty-five years taught a wide range of subjects, and being naturally possessed of strong and well trained logical powers, he is well qualified to analyze the human mind and all that is concerned in its proper education and harmonious development. To this work he now devotes such time as can be spared from strictly professional duties. As a theologian his views are definite and comprehensive, thoroughly evangelical and uncompromisingly opposed to the materialistic pantheism, and philosophical and scientific scepticism of the present day. On the 1st of January, 1865, Dr. MacVicar was married to Isabella McKay, of Chatham, and has a family consisting of three sons and one daughter.