Benjamin Franklin And The University Of Pennsylvania

The center from which Franklin's practical influence in education extends in Philadelphia. Connected, as he was, for many years with the management of what is now the University of Pennsylvania, that institution is in some sense a development of his ideas as to higher education. But his benefactions and his counsel originated many other streams of educational influence. These lines of educational influence have been carefully investigated by Francis Newton Thorpe, who at the time or original publication in 1893 was Professor of American Constitutional History at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Volume 3 of the acclaimed biography narrates Franklin's growth from printer to public-spirited politician, soldier, and patriot.

A Pocket-Sized Collection of Benjamin Franklin's Thirteen Virtues in an Elegant Hardcover Edition

Printer and publisher, author and educator, scientist and inventor, statesman and philanthropist, Benjamin Franklin was the very embodiment of the American type of self-made man. In 1771, at the age of 65, he sat down to write his autobiography, "having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity." The result is a classic of American literature. On the eve of the tercentenary of Franklin's birth, the university he founded has selected the Autobiography for the Penn Reading Project. Each year, for the past fifteen years, the University of Pennsylvania has chosen a single work that the entire incoming class, and a large segment of the faculty and staff, read and discuss together. For this occasion the University of Pennsylvania Press will publish a special edition of Franklin's Autobiography, including a new preface by University president Amy Gutmann and an introduction by distinguished scholar Peter Conn. The volume will also include four short essays by noted Penn professors as well as a chronology of Franklin's life and the text of Franklin's Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, a document resulting in the establishment of an institution of higher education that ultimately became the University of Pennsylvania. No area of human endeavor escaped Franklin's keen attentions. His ideas and values, as Amy Gutmann notes in her remarks, have shaped the modern University of Pennsylvania profoundly, "more profoundly than have the founders of any other major university of college in the United States." Franklin believed that he had been born too soon. Readers will recognize that his spirit lives on at Penn today. Essay contributors: Richard R. Beeman, Paul Guyer, Michael Weisberg, and Michael Zuckerman.

Excerpt from The University of Pennsylvania Franklin's College: Being Some Account of Its Beginnings and Development, Its Customs and Traditions, and Its Gifts to the Nation The history of our venerable University has never been written. During the 178 years since its origin its career has been full of a romance and usefulness that has touched every part of our country's progress. It has been more varied and distinguished, perhaps, than the history of any of our Colonial Colleges. To describe this in intimate detail would fill many volumes, but the story has been set down in this book in what is hoped will prove a convenient and readable form. Our University had its origin among a number of plain citizens of Philadelphia who organized themselves in 1740 to found and build a Charity School upon broad, catholic lines. The greatest of all Americans, Benjamin Franklin, put it into proper form and gave it being. In his plan for the school he urged useful things and he secured the active interest of the most useful, influential and trusted citizens to serve upon its Board of Trustees. So, as our motto indicates, character building has been the chief aim of the institution from its origin. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Carl Van Doren has said of Franklin: "He was more curious than ordinary men and followed up what they only looked at. . . . To warm his house, he thought of the lightning rod. Out of sympathy for his ailing brother he devised the catheter. . . . He had a vision . . . of an enormous universe of order and law." This book presents Franklin's most important works together with art and artifacts relating to areas of knowledge that are his brainchildren.