James Oliver Van de Velde - Education

Education

In 1815, Van de Velde began attending the famous Archiepiscopal Seminary at Mechlin. Two years later, he was one of the students selected by Father Charles Nerinckx, a missionary headed to the Americas on May 16, 1817. The initial plan was for Van de Velde to complete his theological studies in a seminary in Bardstown, Kentucky. However, while crossing the Atlantic in the brig Mars, Van de Velde fell during a storm and "burst a blood vessel," which caused such loss of blood that, upon arrival in America, he was left too weak to make the overland journey to Kentucky. Instead, he retired to St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore to recuperate. The storm had been so violent that the ship was adrift for three days without sails or a helm until repairs could be made. In addition, Van de Velde suffered from seasickness for a full month of the crossing.

Father Nerinckx advised Van de Velde to enter Georgetown College and the novitiate of the Society of Jesus rather than the seminary at Bardstown. After he completed his two-year Jesuit novitiate at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Van de Velde continued his academic and theological studies for eight more years.

Read more about this topic:  James Oliver Van De Velde

Famous quotes containing the word education:

    One of the greatest faults of the women of the present time is a silly fear of things, and one object of the education of girls should be to give them knowledge of what things are really dangerous.
    Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)

    Every day care center, whether it knows it or not, is a school. The choice is never between custodial care and education. The choice is between unplanned and planned education, between conscious and unconscious education, between bad education and good education.
    James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)

    To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
    Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)