Historical Events

Chaper 1

Native Philosophy of Education

The native philosophies of childrearing, education, and youth development that were practiced at the time of European colonization had been refined over 15,000 years of civilization and preserved via oral tradition. A central concept of Native American philosophy is that all things in nature are related to every other being (Arola, 2011). Learning in Native American educational thought and practice is demonstrated by coming to an understanding of how all things are related (Kristianto, 2006) and that the human being is comprised of a spirit, a mind, and a physical body.

Of these three components, the spirit is the most important: "[T]he first step that parents take towards the education of their children is to prepare them for future happiness, by impressing in their tender minds, that they are indebted for their existence on a great and benevolent Spirit" (Heckewelder, cited in DeJong, 1993, p. 12). Another core educational belief relates to health, which is seen as a spiritual as well as a physical condition.

Through the combined spirit, mind, and body, the individual achieves the ultimate goal of harmony. Likewise, the prevention of disharmony is an important educational goal.

One cannot be in a state of disharmony caused by suppressed anger, frustration, heartache, or fear without sooner or later developing unwellness in the physical body from that disharmony. Disharmony may be a vague feeling of things "not being right" in one's life, and a time of meditation may be needed in which to discover what is not right. (Locust, cited in Reagan, 2000, p. 87)

Self-worth or self-esteem is also a central concept in the native philosophy of education. Self-esteem is considered to have four basic elements: significance, competence, power, and virtue. These components collectively and individually contribute to a child's view of self-worth.

Significance is found through the acceptance, attention, and affection of others. Those who are rejected and ignored and do not feel that they belong lack significance. Competence evolves as one masters one's environment. Competence leads to success, satisfaction, and self-efficacy. In contrast, chronic failure extinguishes motivation.

Power suggests that the individual has control over his or her own behavior. It also assumes that he or she has gained the respect of others. Powerlessness leads to helplessness. Virtue includes worthiness and is demonstrated by the cultural values and the values of significant others. The lack of virtue leads to a life without spiritual fulfillment (Coppersmith, cited in Brendtro, Brokenleg, & Van Bockern, 1991).

Basic Courses of Native Education

The philosophy of education described above was shared by most Native American cultural groups and served as the basis for Native American education. This education was concerned with the mastery of certain skills by children prior to their being accepted as mature members of a native society. These skills, referred to as the "three basic courses" of native education, fell into the areas of (1) economic or survival skills; (2) knowledge of cultural heritage; and (3) spiritual awareness (Szasz, 2007b).

Economic or Survival Skills

Training for survival was central to Native American education. Even babies were taught not to cry so as not to reveal a band's location to their enemies (Reyhner & Eder, 2004). Survival also required knowledge of the physical world, including geography, temperature, and the location of water sources. The specific knowledge required varied by region. For example, those tribes that lived in the southwestern deserts needed a different type of survival training than those who lived in the subarctic.

For Your Reflection and Analysis

Many courses today carry the title "survival skills." How do they compare with the survival skills taught to Native American youth?

Regardless of the geographic differences, all native children were taught at an early age that survival was dependent on a harmonious relationship with nature. To achieve that harmony, respect for the Earth and all animate and inanimate life living on it was necessary (Szasz, 2007b). Last, training for survival included the development of physical skills; through games such as "the little brother of war," boys were taught weaponry skills and physical endurance (Reyhner & Eder, 2004).

Knowledge of Cultural Heritage

The heritage of the indigenous people of North America represented a wide range of cultural patterns, norms, social structures, and behaviors (Reagan, 2000). Native Americans passed on these traditions through song, dance, drama, and simple or complex symbols. The art of storytelling was seen as the most effective strategy for imparting the culture to children. "Storytelling was taught on many levels, with the tales reinforcing cultural ideals learned in more daily and mundane lessons, and moral instruction punctuating the lives of native youth" (Szasz, 2007b, p. 13).

For example, stories of a wily coyote trickster could be used to teach the perils of disobeying elders. Other stories explained how certain plants and animals came to be, such as why rabbits have such long ears (PBS, n.d.). Medicine men, ritual leaders, and members of the oldest living generation often bore the responsibility for transmitting the knowledge and culture to the next generation (Szasz, 2007b).

Spiritual Awareness

The need for spiritual awareness was not limited to medicine men, shamans, or priests, but was required of all youth. Some native groups worshipped a creator or Great Spirit. Others perceived a single and all-powerful supernatural power. Most acknowledged a creative force in all things on Earth, suggesting that one could not separate the spiritual and the material, the natural and the supernatural, or the human and the animal (Szasz, 2007b).

The search for spiritual awareness began early in development. Spiritual attitudes were shared by family and older members of the tribe, as well as through ritual and ceremony. Spiritual training intensified dramatically as the youth neared puberty. In some tribes a specific ceremony might last several days, whereas in others, such as at the Taos pueblo, boys left their homes and lived in a kiva, where they were trained by a spiritual leader, for a year and a half. Among some tribes, both boys and girls went on "vision quests" (solitary days of fasting and physical hardships) to obtain self-understanding and a vision of a guardian spirit in the form of an animal or any living creature who would guide them for the rest of their lives.

Core Values of Native Educational Practice

Embedded in the three basic courses of Native American education were the core values of native educational practices. These core values are (1) the spirit of belonging, (2) the spirit of mastery, (3) the spirit of independence, and (4) the spirit of generosity (Brendtro et al., 1991).

Spirit of Belonging

Like Nampeyo, whose education is described in the Primary Source Reading for this chapter, Native American children were nurtured and reared by a large circle of significant and caring others not limited to biological relatives. All adults had the duty to serve as the teachers and caregivers of the young, though their roles varied: The role of the father or mother was different from that of the grandfather or grandmother, whose role was different from that of an aunt or uncle, and so forth.

The father might teach hunting skills and the grandfather tool making; the mother might teach pottery while the grandmother cared for the young. This spirit of belonging transcended human relationships and extended to nature as well. Animals, plants, people, and streams were all considered interdependent (Brendtro et al., 1991).

Spirit of Mastery

Children and adults strove for competence, or mastery, of their environment. An important goal of native education was to develop cognitive, physical, social, and spiritual competence. Numerous techniques were used to teach the spirit of mastery. For example, children were taught wisdom through ceremonies and oral history.

Competence was also taught through games and creative play. One Cheyenne woman recalled:

In my girlhood days we played what we girls called "tiny play." This play imitated the customs and ways of grownup people. . . . After a time as I became a little older we played what we called "large play." The boys would go out hunting. . . . We girls would pitch our tipis and make ready everything as if it were a real camp life. . . . Some of the boys would go on the warpath, and always came home victorious. (cited in Szasz, 2007b, 1988, p. 23)

Perhaps the most important lesson in mastery was that success was to be shared by all:

The simple wisdom of Native culture was that since all need to feel competent, all must be encouraged in their competency. Striving was for attainment of personal goals, not being superior to one's opponent. Just as one felt ownership in the success of others, one also learned to share personal achievements with others. Success became a possession of the many, not the privileged few. (Brendtro et al., p. 8)

Spirit of Independence

Individual freedom was highly valued in the native culture. However, the native spirit of independence differed in several ways from White culture's emphasis on independence, assertiveness, and competition. For example, native people believed that the young must first experience dependency and learn to respect and value elders. Being taught through explanation and the modeling of appropriate behavior was equally important.

By approaching children with maturity and dignity, native people believed they would teach them responsibility. Children were never rewarded for their achievement. Rather, the achievement itself was viewed as the reward. Modeling, group influence, discussion, and positive expectations were used in lieu of rewards and punishment. Sanctions, such as not being included in a tribal ceremony, served a corrective role in the educational process (DeJong, 1993).

Spirit of Generosity

The highest virtue in most Native American cultures was to be generous and unselfish. Training in altruism began in early childhood and continued throughout life. The values of simplicity, generosity, and nonmaterialism were important. The capacity to care, to share, and to accept some responsibility for the welfare of all in the community was central to the spirit of generosity (Brendtro et al., 1991).

The European Challenge

For Your Reflection and Analysis

To what extent are the core values of Native American educational practice found in non-Native-American education today?

The arrival of Europeans posed a challenge to this system of education among native peoples, which had served them so well in teaching their children to become mature and responsible members of their tribes. The Europeans believed Native American children should have a more formal education and acquire a different view of spiritual awareness (Szasz, 2007b).

European educational principles and practices (particularly those of the English), as well as their efforts to compel Native Americans to adopt European culture and religion, are described in the chapters that follow. The educational background that the Europeans brought with them to the "New World" is briefly described below.

1.2 The Renaissance and Education

The Renaissance, which began in Europe in the 14th century and reached its high point in the 16th century, was so called because it represented a renaissance, or rebirth, of interest in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. It was a period of great change: the decline of the feudal system; the rise of nation-states and nationalism; the growth of cities; a revival of commerce; the introduction of gunpowder; new forms of art, literature, and architecture; and the exploration of new worlds.

The dominant philosophy of the Renaissance was humanism, which viewed human nature as its subject. It stressed the dignity of the individual, free will, and the value of the human spirit and all of nature. It focused on the exercise of reason and questioned religious authority. Rejecting scholasticism, or the model of the scholarly priest as the educated man, the humanists considered the educated man to be the secular man of learning described in the classics. They also looked to the classics, primarily the works of the Roman educator Quintilian (the noted first century educator who not only influenced Roman education, but through it, Western Europe as well), for commentary on education. Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria (Institutes of Oratory) had been found and brought to Italy by Byzantine scholars when Constantinople (Istanbul) fell to the Muslims in 1453.

Desiderius Erasmus

Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus.

Photos.com/© Getty Images/Thinsktock

Desiderius Erasmus is considered the foremost philosopher of the Renaissance.

The foremost humanist of the Renaissance and the one with the greatest impact on educational thought was Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) of the Netherlands. Erasmus studied at the University of Paris and Oxford University and was a professor at Cambridge in England.

Like other humanists, Erasmus believed in the importance of teaching Latin and Greek. His Colloquies used dialogues not only to teach Latin style but also to instruct students in religion and morals; they were among the most important textbooks of his time. The use of text to teach both language and Christian doctrine and morals provided a model for The New England Primer, which was to become the most important textbook in colonial America.

In The Education of Young Children, a portion of which is included as a Primary Source Reading at the end of this chapter, Erasmus advocated early childhood education. In Upon the Method of Right Instruction, he proposed the systematic training of teachers, who he believed should be broadly educated and experts in their subjects, be of gentle disposition, and have unimpeachable morals.

His views on pedagogy are found in his treatise Of the First Liberal Education of Children, in which he asserted that the needs and interests of the student, not those of the church or the medieval guilds, take precedence in the selection of materials and methods. In this treaty, Erasmus, like Quintilian, deplored the use of corporal punishment. Quintilian had claimed that "study depends on the good will of the student, a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion."

Erasmus believed in the potential of the individual to improve himself (he did not address the education of females, possibly because of the male orientation of the priesthood), as well as in the importance of education to the development of the intellect and morality. In his emphasis on individuality and inherent human rights, Erasmus was ahead of his time and pointed the way to the Enlightenment—the philosophical movement that emphasized the use of reason and the rejection of tradition—that was to follow (see the discussion in Chapter 2).

Court Schools and the Classical Humanist Curriculum

The first educational products of the Renaissance can be seen in the famous Italian schools connected to the courts of reigning families. Perhaps the best known were those operated by Vittorino da Feltre at Mantua (in northern Italy) from 1423 to 1446 and by Guarino da Verona at nearby Ferrara from 1429 to 1459. Like many modern preparatory boarding schools, they housed boys from ages 8 or 10 to age 20. They emphasized what Woodward (1906) called the "doctrine of courtesy"—the manners, grace, and dignity of the antique culture.

The court schools taught a humanist curriculum that included the so-called seven liberal arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music), as well as reading, writing, and speaking in Latin; study of the Greek classics; and, for the first time, the study of history. Following the teachings of Quintilian, the court schools emphasized games and play, recognized individual differences, and discouraged punishment. The goal was to produce well-rounded, liberally educated courtiers—the ideal personality of the Renaissance—to fill positions as statesmen, diplomats, and scholars.

The Latin grammar school, the dominant form of secondary education in colonial New England (discussed in Chapter 2) reflected the classical humanist curriculum, if not the humanist student-centeredness. Moreover, the educational writings of many of the Founding Fathers included the humanist belief that the human condition could be improved by education.

1.3 Education During the Reformation

The period of history known as the Reformation formally began in 1517 when an Augustinian monk and professor of religion named Martin Luther (1483–1546) nailed his Ninety-Five Theses questioning the authority and enumerating the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church to the door of the court church in Wittenberg, Germany. In the years that followed, a religious revolution swept the European continent, resulting in a century of war and the reformation of the Roman Catholic Church.

Those who protested the authority of the church came to be known as Protestants. The invention of the printing press enabled their doctrine and the Bible, translated into the vernacular (the native language), to spread rapidly. Although the Protestant reformers are generally not considered humanists, they shared the humanist belief in the importance of education, the responsibility of the individual in determining his destiny, and the role of the school in teaching moral principles. Whereas the Renaissance produced educational thought and practice that provided a foundation for secondary education in America, the Reformation did the same for elementary education.

Martin Luther

One of the major practices rejected by Martin Luther and other leaders of the Reformation was that priests read and interpreted the scriptures for the people, most of whom were illiterate. Luther objected to the power and authority this provided the church, and he believed that every individual was responsible for his or her own salvation. This came through faith, not works, and could best be obtained through prayer and by reading and studying the scriptures.

To do this, it was necessary that every child be provided a free and compulsory elementary education. Luther believed that education should be supported by the state, and that the state should have the authority and responsibility to control the curriculum, the textbooks, and the instruction.

Black and white illustration showing from left to right: Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Johann Bugenhagen, and Gaspard Creuziger. They are seated at a table working on Luther's translation of the Bible.

Photos.com/© Getty Images/Thinkstock

Philipp Melanchthon, Johann Bugenhagen, and Gaspard Creuziger, leaders of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, work with Martin Luther (second from left) to translate the Bible from Latin to German.

In his 1524 Letters to the Mayors and Aldermen of All Cities of Germany in Behalf of Christian Schools, Luther stressed the spiritual, economic, and political benefits of education. Not only does an education enable the individual to read the Bible, he argued, but an educated worker is more productive and an educated citizen is more responsible and better able to participate in civic life. The curriculum he recommended included classical languages, grammar, mathematics, science, history, physical education, music, and didactics (moral instruction). He also recommended instruction in theology, with the use of the catechism (a question-and-answer drill) to study Protestant doctrines.

Although Luther believed formal schooling for both boys and girls was important to the establishment of a "priesthood of believers," he thought it should occupy only part of the day. At least 1 or 2 hours a day should be spent at home in vocational training, preparing for an occupation through an apprenticeship.

He proposed that secondary schools, designed primarily as preparatory schools for the clergy (and therefore not open to girls) teach Hebrew as well as the classical languages, rhetoric, dialectic, history, mathematics, science, music, and gymnastics. A university education, whose purpose was seen as providing training for higher service in the government or the church, was available only to young men who demonstrated exceptional intellectual abilities.

John Calvin

One of the most influential theologians of the Protestant Reformation, and perhaps the one most important to American history, was John Calvin (1509–1564). Raised as a French Catholic, Calvin, like Luther, came to reject the authority of the Catholic Church and turned to the doctrine of salvation by faith through prayer and the study of the scriptures.

Calvin's views on education were also very similar to Luther's. He too stressed the necessity of a universal, compulsory, state-supported education that would not only enable all individuals to read the Bible themselves, and thereby attain salvation, but that would also profit the state through the contributions of an orderly and productive citizenry. He saw the school as a place for religious indoctrination through catechistic instruction.

Calvin also supported a two-track educational system consisting of common schools teaching the basics of the three Rs for the masses and secondary schools teaching the classical, humanist curriculum for the preparation of the leaders of church and state.

Calvin's influence was widespread, both in the Europe of his day and later in the colonies of the New World. His advocacy of a universal primary education provided by the vernacular schools (described in the next section) was adopted by Protestant theologians and educators throughout Europe. It was brought to the New World by the Puritans (English Calvinists who sought to purify or reform the Church of England) who settled in New England, as well as by members of the Dutch Reformed Church who settled in New York and Presbyterian Scotch Calvinists who settled in the middle and southern colonies.

The efforts of each of these groups reflected the Calvinist emphasis on the importance of education to the religious, social, and economic welfare of the individual and the state. The legal mandates adopted by Calvinist communities in Europe (such as holding parents responsible for the education of their children) became the models for similar laws in the New England colonies. The Calvinist proposal for state-supported education also had great appeal to the growing middle classes in Europe and the American colonies, who saw education as important to economic prosperity and social mobility.

Vernacular Schools

The initial product of the belief that each person should be able to read the scriptures was the establishment of vernacular schools—primary, or elementary, schools that offered instruction in the mother tongue, or "vernacular." Instruction in the language of the nation rather than Greek or Latin reflected and reinforced the spirit of nationalism (pride in and identification with one's nation) that had begun to emerge during the Renaissance. The vernacular schools provided a basic curriculum of reading, writing, mathematics, and religion.

Following Luther's teachings, Philipp Melanchthon and Johann Bugenhagen established vernacular schools throughout Germany in the 16th century. Elementary schools also began to appear in other Protestant strongholds, especially those in the Netherlands, Scotland, and Switzerland, which followed the teachings of Calvin. The vernacular school served as the model for the elementary schools that were established in colonial America.

The Reformation took place against the backdrop of many other sweeping changes that marked the Renaissance in Europe. The rise of nation-states and a growing and more prosperous middle class combined with a revival of commerce and a quest for new markets to encourage willing explorers to find new routes to reach the treasures of the Orient or to capitalize on the riches of the newly discovered Americas.

Pioneers in Education: Philipp Melanchthon

Schoolmaster of Germany

Illustration of Philipp Melanchthon.

Steve Campbell

Philipp Melanchthon

Philipp Melanchthon (born Philipp Schwarzerdt) was born in Bretten, Germany, in 1497. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Heidelberg at the age of 14 and master's degree from the University of Tubingen 3 years later. That same year, he accepted a position as Professor of Greek at the University of Wittenberg. Soon afterward he met Martin Luther and became his lifelong friend and collaborator.

From his position as a professor at Wittenberg, Melanchthon gained considerable fame as a writer and lecturer of theology. His lectures were reportedly more popular than Luther's and were copied and widely disseminated. He has been considered by many to be the intellectual leader of the Protestant Reformation. Of his many theological writings, he is best known for being the author of the Augsburg Confession, a statement of 28 articles of faith that articulated the Lutheran Doctrine and detailed the areas of agreement between it and the Catholic Church.

Melanchthon also gained fame for his work in education and is regarded as the German Reformation's most important educational protagonist in the 16th century. "Melanchthon's importance to the German Reformation movement as an educationalist and teacher is reflected in the honorary title of Praeceptor Germaniae [teacher of the Germans] that was bestowed upon him quite early on in his career" (Rupp, 1999, p. 2).

Melanchthon developed a theory of education that was based on religious principles and humanist philosophy. As a humanist he believed in the broadly educated man and the study of the ancient classical languages. To this end he wrote numerous texts beginning with Institutiones Grammaticae Graccae (1518) (basics of Greek grammar), which he wrote at age 21, and which was used for several generations thereafter. He also designed a number of courses in the basic disciplines.

Melanchthon was a major figure in the reform of the educational system in Germany. Where Luther was primarily concerned with elementary schools that would prepare people to read the Bible, Melanchthon was more concerned with the grammar schools and universities. His organizational plan for the grammar school, which divided students into three levels according to their level of knowledge, became a model for German grammar schools for several generations (Rupp, 1999). He wrote the constitution and helped organize reformed grammar schools in more than 50 towns. He also helped to establish or reorganize a dozen universities following the humanist philosophy and the liberal arts curriculum. For several centuries, the German educational system at both the secondary and university levels continued to operate much as Melanchthon had designed it.

Melanchthon died in 1560 and was buried beside Martin Luther at the church in Wittenberg.

1.4 Spanish and French Exploration and Education in the New World

Despite the notoriety given to Columbus's "Voyage of Discovery," the Spanish were not the first foreigners to reach the North American continent. In fact, the 10 Native Americans Columbus brought with him to Europe in 1493 were not the first to set foot on that continent.

Buddhist texts tell of five beggar monks sailing from China to the Western Hemisphere as early as 458, and Cherokee oral tradition tells of Black men coming by sea before Columbus but being driven away. It has also been well documented that the Vikings landed and traded with the natives of Greenland and Canada 500 years before Columbus. Native American captives were taken to Norway as early as 1009, and captured Inuits were displayed there in 1420 (American Journey, 1998).

Although many European, and possibly Asian and African, explorers came before the Spanish, these early explorers came and went without making any imprint. It was the Spanish first, then the French, English, Dutch, and other Europeans, who would transform the land and the peoples with whom they came in contact.

New Spain

Beginning with the first voyage of Columbus in 1492, the Spanish undertook a series of explorations to the Western Hemisphere. The primary purpose of the initial trips was to secure whatever wealth could be gleaned from the land and its inhabitants and return it to Spain. In the course of these voyages, Spain established an empire in the New World that eventually included parts of South America, all of Central America, the entire southwestern United States, Florida, and southern California.

The tale of the Spanish conquest and the process by which the Spanish deliberately and ruthlessly stamped out the cultures, and sometimes the people, they defeated has been told many times, as has the story of how thousands of Native Americans died from common European diseases, such as measles, for which they had no natural immunities. Less known is the history of Spanish educational ventures in the New World, which were extensive. The Spanish operated a system of mission and other church-sponsored schools throughout their vast empire. Their printing presses produced scores of books and, 85 years before the founding of Harvard College, the first of the English colonial colleges, the Spanish founded universities at Mexico City and Lima, Peru.

Spanish Missions of La Florida

In August of 1565 the Spanish established the first permanent European settlement in what was to become the United States. Unlike their previous excursions into Mexico, this expedition, commanded by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the newly appointed governor of La Florida, included not only 500 soldiers, but also farmers, craftsmen, and 26 families. Ten members of the Jesuit religious order, known for their work as missionaries and educators, were also among the 600 individuals who landed near present-day St. Augustine, Florida.

The missionaries soon attempted to convert the local natives to Christianity and to instruct them in the Spanish culture and language. However, they met with little success; indeed, several Jesuits were killed. In 1572 the Jesuits abandoned their conversion efforts in Florida and moved to Mexico.

Several members of the Franciscans, another Catholic religious order, came to La Florida the next year at the request of Mendez. They initially concentrated their efforts in and around St. Augustine, and in 1606 the first school in what was to become the United States was established to teach the children of the Spanish settlers. Not dissuaded by the experiences of the Jesuits, the Franciscans also moved out into the surrounding region. From their base in St. Augustine, they moved into the interior of Florida and along the Atlantic coast north into what would become Georgia and the Carolinas, establishing missions from which to undertake their conversion and educational work.

For Your Reflection and Analysis

What was the strategy behind locating the missions in the chief's village?

Usually a mission was established in a village where the chief lived and where the chiefdom's council house was located. The mission itself was only a small compound within a much larger Native American community, and typically included the church and a friary where the priest lived ("Georgia's Spanish Missions," 2003).

By 1650 there were 50 missions with approximately 25,000 Native American converts in what was called La Florida (White, cited in Vega, 1984). The success of the Franciscans can in large part be attributed to their approach to their potential converts; they lived among the Native Americans, did not try to change their villages, and did not try to take their lands. Unfortunately, such an approach was not common among most other groups that tried to convert or educate Native Americans.

Despite the Franciscans' successes, 50 years later dramatic declines in the native population had reduced the number of missions to two. Many Native Americans died from diseases, others died in wars with the Europeans, and still others were subjected to forced resettlement. By 1710 the only remaining mission was the one at St. Augustine.

Mission Schools in the Southwest

A quarter century after the founding of St. Augustine, and 2,000 miles to the west, the Spanish established the village of San Gabriel in northern New Mexico. The 1598 settlement was the first permanent Spanish presence in what is now the western United States. The Franciscan priests who accompanied Don Juan de Oñate's expedition from Mexico to the pueblo where San Gabriel was founded had a clear mission: to spread the holy Catholic faith and convert the natives.

Navajo pictographs at the Canyon de Muerto in Arizona.

© Tom Bean/CORBIS

Pictograph on wall of Canyon de Muerto (Arizona) depicts Spanish soldiers and a priest exploring the Southwest.

The Spanish expedition into New Mexico was one of a series of expeditions into the Southwest that followed the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez's 1519 conquest of Mexico. The mission established at San Gabriel became part of a vast network of missions established by Spanish priests and friars throughout Central America, as well as a territory that covered most of what are now the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California.

The operation of the mission system in New Spain was based on the Spanish concept of the appropriate division of duties and responsibilities between the cross and the crown. According to this theory,

the duty and privilege of the church was to teach, the obligation of the state was to provide the material means for the church to accomplish its spiritual task. This task was primarily to mold the minds of the people according to a set pattern of instruction in the Christian doctrine, and secondly, to enhance the knowledge of this religious faith by the teaching of academic subjects.

This approach to education was not unique. It was rather commonplace in both Europe and (later) in the thirteen American colonies. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries education was the patrimony of the clergymen and those who, one way or another, could assist the church in its task of salvation of human souls. (Vega, 1984, p. 551)

The relationship between church and state was made clear as early as 1503 by King Ferdinand of Spain. An order to the governor of New Spain specified that "in each town already built or to be built in the future, a house should be erected for the Indian children to come twice a day to be instructed in the arts of writing and reading, as well as other things pertaining to the Christian Faith" (Konetzke, cited in Vega, 1984, pp. 81–82). In addition, in 1542 Charles V of Spain transferred the responsibility that had been placed on landowners to look after the education of Native Americans on their lands to Catholic friars (Reyhner & Eder, 2004).

For Your Reflection and Analysis

Why would the Spanish have sought to build upon the Native Americans' existing industries? Why might other settlers, such as the English, have chosen not to do this?

In keeping with the Spanish concept of the role of the mission school, the friars taught both Christian doctrine and reading and writing. Catechisms, prepared by Franciscan friars in Mexico as early as 1540, used easily understood pictographs to do both. The friars also set up workshops in the schools where the Native Americans were taught trades and industrial arts, as well as the fine arts. And, unlike the later English settlers who tried to get the Native Americans to abandon their former industries, the Spanish tried to use the industry or mechanical knowledge the Native Americans already possessed as the basis for instruction (Shea, 1978).

By 1628 the friars had established 50 missions throughout the Rio Grande and Pecos valleys: A year later new missions were added in the Acoma, Zuni, and Hopi pueblos (Taylor, 2001). A 1630 report by the supervisor of the Franciscan missions in New Mexico included the following references to the educational work of the missions:

The Tompiras Nation . . . extends . . . more than fifteen leagues, and has fourteen or fifteen pueblos, with more than ten thousand inhabitants. It has six very good friaries and churches. All of the inhabitants have been converted. . . . In their schools all the trades are taught as elsewhere. . . .

The Pecos Nation. Continuing to the north four more leagues one reaches the pueblo of the Pecos. . . . These Indians are well trained . . . and, like the others, have their schools where reading, writing, singing, and instrumental music are taught. . . .

The Town of Sante Fe. Seven leagues west of the aforesaid pueblo is the town of Sante Fe, capital of the kingdom. . . . There the friars are already teaching the Spaniards and the Indians to read, write, play musical instruments, sing, and to practice all the arts of civilized society. (Lynch, cited in Vega, 1984, p. 121)

The missions educated not only the Native Americans, but as the above reference to the mission in Santa Fe indicates, in some cases the children of the Spaniards. By the time of the American Revolutionary War, 20,000 Spanish-speaking settlers had migrated north from Mexico into present-day New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. Some of the children of the Spanish settlers attended the mission schools, while children of the more affluent settlers were schooled at home by tutors or were sent to schools in Mexico or Spain.

For 200 years the missions played a central role in the conversion and education of Native Americans. By the 18th century, however, their influence began to decline. The missions became secularized. That is, they changed from being churches under the control and support of the central church or a particular religious order, notably the Franciscans, to parish churches supported by members of the community and served by Dominicans, nonorder priests. In the process of secularization the lands of the missions were divided, the resources of the parish churches were limited, efforts to convert and civilize the Native Americans were abandoned, and most of the mission schools fell by the wayside (Berger, 1947; Vega, 1984).

Tools of the Trade: The Catecismo Breve in the California Missions

Between 1769 and 1823, even as the missions in Florida and New Mexico experienced steep declines, Spanish Franciscan friars established 21 missions along the California Coast from San Diego to just north of San Francisco. The Franciscans ran the system until 1833, when Mexico, which had won its independence from Spain in 1821, secularized them.

At each of the missions, friars baptized local Native Americans, after which they began a process of intense religious indoctrination. The missionaries, who called members of their newly baptized flocks "neophytes" and saw them as children, translated basic prayers and catechisms into native languages.

Rather than relying on a catechism that had been developed centuries earlier specifically for Spanish children, however, the California missionaries based their translations on an even more simplified one, the Catecismo breve, written in 1644 for the missions in Sonora, Mexico, by the Jesuit Bartolomé Castaño. Composed of 24 questions and answers, Castaño's catechism affirmed the central beliefs of Catholicism, including that there is one all-powerful and all-knowing God who made heaven, Earth, and all things; that God is manifested in the Holy Trinity; and that God the Son, Jesus Christ, was made a man by God to cleanse the souls of man. The catechism also instructed neophytes in the practices of confession and Communion (Hackel, 2005, p. 144).

As friars at each of the missions translated the Catecismo breve, they simultaneously made modifications to it in response to local beliefs and practices. For instance, neophytes at Mission San Juan Bautista did not have to see the Holy Spirit as an agent in the immaculate conception of Christ, something their missionary, Arroyo de la Cuesta, likely felt they would not accept and could confuse or alienate them.

Whatever the version adopted for them, neophytes up and down the coast memorized and recited it regularly in both Spanish and in translation. Some, such as those at San Diego, also began to preach it to other Native Americans in surrounding villages. The centrality of the Catecismo breve to mission life demonstrates the friars' perceptions of Native Americans—namely, that whatever their age or experience, they were helpless children whose preexisting beliefs needed to be replaced with the truths of Catholic doctrine. At the same time, however, the modifications made to the catechism testify to the tenacity with which Native Americans held to their own spiritual understandings (Hackel, 2005).

New France

By the late 16th century, the French had also completed a number of voyages of exploration to the New World. Initial colonization attempts by the French in the Carolinas and Florida failed. In 1605, Port Royal, Nova Scotia, became the first permanent French settlement in North America, but the English destroyed it in 1614. In 1608 Samuel de Champlain, the governor of French Canada who had conducted much of the exploration of North America, founded the first enduring French colony at what is now Quebec. Eventually, the French empire spread from Canada down the Ohio and Mississippi valleys to the Gulf of Mexico (see Figure 1.2).

For Your Reflection and Analysis

Why might the French government want to forbid the emigration of dissidents rather than let them leave as most other nations did?

Unlike those of the Spanish, and later the English, French ventures in the New World were not directed at establishing permanent settlements but rather at creating commercial outposts for a vast fur-trading empire. The fur-trading Company of New France, a private company operating under a charter from the king of France, undertook most of the exploration and actually owned Canada until 1663; it "saw little purpose and no profit in the costly business of transporting people to a colony dedicated to the fur trade" (Taylor, 2001, p. 365).

Unlike New England, New France saw little immigration by religious dissidents. Although there were many such dissidents in 17th-century Catholic France who might have been anxious to emigrate to New France to escape persecution, French policy after 1632 forbade anyone who was not French or Catholic settling in their territories and thus prohibited their leaving. This policy deprived Canada of an especially promising set of colonists, the Protestant Huguenots, who were similar to the English Puritans in terms of their Calvinist faith and middle-class status as artisans, shopkeepers, and merchants (Taylor, 2001).

Figure 1.2: European powers in North America in 1770

In 1770, English control of North America was rather limited, with the French and Spanish claiming the majority of modern-day Canada, United States, and Mexico. Map showing European control of North America. The English controlled the eastern seaboard of the modern-day United States. The Spanish claimed the modern-day Southwest, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. The French claimed the rest of the United States and the majority of Canada. Unclaimed areas are modern-day Alaska, western Canada, and the pacific northwest.

Because there were few settlers in New France, there were no schools except in the largest towns. These schools were operated primarily for the children of the settlers, not the Native Americans. However, in a pattern that was similar to that of the Spanish, French priests, particularly the Franciscans and the Jesuits, followed the explorers and fur traders into the wilderness to convert and educate the Native Americans.

The Jesuits, who had been influential in establishing a number of secondary schools and universities in Europe, established the first elementary and secondary school in New France in Quebec in 1616. The Ursulines, an order of teaching sisters, opened the first girls' school in North American in Quebec in 1642, long before girls' schools were even being considered in the New England colonies. The school admitted both French and Native American students. Other Ursuline girls' schools were opened throughout New France, also educating Native American girls.

The Jesuits also established a number of missions in present-day Maine, New York, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Canada. They had limited success in converting the Native Americans, who called them the Black Robes because of the black clerical robes they wore. Their lack of success can be attributed in part to the fact that there were few French settlements to support their work with any converted or potentially converted Native Americans.

But as explorers, educators, and cartographers, the Jesuits accomplished a great deal. Catholic influence on education in the United States today can be traced to the Jesuits as well as to orders of teaching nuns, including not only the Ursulines but Augustinian sisters and sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame, both of which also opened girls' schools.

Of all the European settlers, the French were probably the most congenial to the Native Americans. Whereas the Spanish did not consider the Native Americans to be human until a papal decree in 1527 declared them to be capable of embracing the Catholic faith, the French "often became absorbed in Indian life, adopting Indian customs and dress, learning native languages and intermarrying" (Nabokov & Vine, 2000, p. 19).

By 1660 New France had fewer than 3,000 colonists, compared to 58,000 in New England. Concern that they were losing in the race to colonize North America led the French crown to attempt to stimulate immigration by paying the passage of immigrants to New France. However, most of the male immigrants were soldiers or indentured servants, over two thirds of whom returned to France after their terms of service were over.

When the government stopped subsidizing the migration in 1673, it ground to a halt (Taylor, 2001). In the absence of a population to demand or support them, schools in New France were scarce. In contrast, as described in Chapter 2, in the English colonies schools had sprung up in towns and villages all along the eastern seaboard.

Chapter 2

2.1 Education in the New England Colonies

The English exploration of North America began with the voyages of John Cabot along the coast between Chesapeake Bay (Virginia) and Newfoundland in 1497 and 1498. But it was not until almost a century later that the English attempted to colonize any of this territory. In 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert attempted, unsuccessfully, to establish a colony in Newfoundland. The next year his half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, established what became known as the Lost Colony of Roanoke (North Carolina), which was equally a failure.

However, in the first decade of the 17th century, economic prosperity in England, the Protestant Reformation, English naval supremacy following the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the newly achieved peace with Spain combined with a desire for the riches of the New World to create a renewed English interest in establishing a presence in North America.

In 1606 King James of England granted a charter for a settlement in the New World to a joint stock company known as the Virginia Company. The next year, 104 settlers recruited by the Virginia Company established the first permanent English settlement in the New World on the tidewater plains of Chesapeake Bay at Jamestown, Virginia.

Despite the perils of disease, hunger, and Native American attack, the colony survived. Tobacco from the West Indies was introduced in 1612, and its cultivation promoted the growth and economic prosperity of the colony as well as a demand for cheap labor. By 1619, when a Dutch ship captain sold the first African Americans as indentured servants, the colony was already experiencing a shortage of laborers for the tobacco fields. Attempts to enslave the native population proved unsuccessful and led to what seemed to be an inevitable demand for imported slave labor.

James I revoked the charter of the Virginia Company in 1624, making Virginia a royal colony under the direct control of a governor appointed by the crown. That same year, farther to the north, the Dutch established a colony, New Netherlands, at the lower end of Manhattan Island.

In 1620 a group of religious dissidents, the Pilgrims, separatist Puritans who wanted to purify and separate from the Church of England, set sail for northern Virginia but landed their ship, the Mayflower, 225 miles to the northeast at Plymouth (Massachusetts). Within 10 years, the population of the Plymouth Bay Colony was estimated to be 5,700.

In 1628 a group of nonseparatist Puritans led by John Winthrop founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony at Boston. This colony became a focal point of migration and the base from which the other New England colonies (Rhode Island, New Haven [Connecticut], and New Hampshire) developed (Cohen, 1974b). Over 20,000 settlers (mostly farmers, merchants, and artisans) came during the Great Migration from 1630 to 1642 (Milner, O'Conner, & Sandweiss, 1996).

Although immigration decreased significantly after that, high birthrates and low infant mortality rates contributed to a rapid growth of the New England colonies. By 1700 the descendants of these settlers constituted 40% of the colonial population of North America (Milner et al., 1996). According to Cubberley (1934), the Puritans "contributed most that was of value for our future educational development" (p. 14). The New England colonists sustained a vigorous emphasis on education even within a hostile new environment.

The Puritan interest in education stemmed from the fact that they were generally well educated themselves, and therefore valued schooling, and from the importance of education to the Puritan way of life. The Puritans shared many of the educational views of the Reformation—namely, that education was necessary for religious instruction and salvation, economic self-reliance, and the exercise of citizenship by a literate laity.

Initially the Puritans attempted to follow the English practice of establishing and supporting schools with private donations and limiting the role of the state. However, the lack of a pool of wealthy benefactors, as well as the fears that parents were neglecting the education of their children, soon led them to consider a more direct government role.

Massachusetts Education Laws of 1642 and 1647

The first major indication of the role that the state would eventually come to play in American education, indeed the first education law in the colonies, was the Massachusetts Education Law of 1642. It was aimed at not only promoting literacy but also strengthening the social order. The law ordered the representatives of each town, called selectmen, to ascertain whether parents and masters of apprentices were providing for the education of their wards.

The selectmen were to determine the ability of the child to "read and understand the principles of religion and the capitall lawes of this county." The parent or master of any child failing to meet this obligation could be fined, and the child could be apprenticed to a new master who would be required to fulfill the law. Although it required neither the establishment of schools nor compulsory attendance, only 22 years after stepping ashore in the New World, the colonists were enacting legislation that did, in fact, require compulsory education.

Five years later, the colony enacted the Education Law of 1647, also called the Old Deluder Satan Law because of its first line: "It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from knowledge of the Scriptures." This law actually required the establishment of schools: It ordered every township of 50 households to "appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and reade" and all townships of 100 or more households to "set up a grammaer schoole, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so farr as they may be fited for the university, provided that if any towne neglect the performance hereof above one year, that every such towne shall pay £five to the next school till they shall perform this order."

Importantly, neither the Education Law of 1642 nor the Education Law of 1647 made any mention of the church or a minister. Rather, education was made a direct responsibility of the people and their elected officials. This initial action laid the foundation for what was to become the cornerstone of the American educational system—local responsibility and the separation of church and state.

The laws also served as models for other colonies: Three years after the Massachusetts Old Deluder Satan Law, the colonists in Connecticut enacted similar legislation, and by the 1670s all the New England colonies but one had done so (Monaghan, 2005). Strict compliance with the Law of 1647 was rare, however. Most towns either could not afford or could not find a teacher who specialized in Latin. More often they hired a teacher who knew Latin but also taught the English curriculum (Perlman & Margo, 2001) at a "general" school that was a compromise response to laws that required them to provide both a reading/writing school and a grammar school that taught Latin grammar and mathematics (Monaghan, 2005).

Elementary Schooling

The New England colonists shared John Calvin's view of the aim of education, and they adopted the two-track system he and the other scholars of the Reformation advocated. Town schools were established by an official act of the town, acting as a corporate body, to provide an elementary education. The town schools are often referred to as common schools because they were open to children of all social classes. Rarely, however, were they tuition-free. Parents usually paid a head tax for each child in attendance, although the township often supplemented the fees.

In some towns girls were allowed to attend the town school. However, they were generally allowed to attend only when the boys were not present (before or after the regular school day) or during the summer when the older boys would be working on the farm. It was also during the summer session when women teachers were most likely to be employed to teach younger children of both sexes, as well as the older girls. The summer schools tended to concentrate on reading while the winter schools attended by the older boys offered more advanced subjects. Finally, because women teachers were paid only about one third as much as male teachers, summer schools were far less expensive to operate (Perlman & Margo, 2001).

The Dame School

Painting showing a group of children attending a dame school.

Christie's Images Ltd./SuperStock

The dame school provided the only education that many colonial children received.

The most common provider of elementary education, especially in the early colonial days and for the youngest children, was the dame school. This old English institution operated for children under 7 or 8 years of age was essentially a household school held in the kitchen or living room of a neighborhood woman (often a widow) with minimal education, like the "Marm" described in the Primary Source Readings for this chapter, who received a modest fee for her efforts.

Dame schools educated the children of the common folk in the basics of spelling and reading. Occasionally, if the dame knew any herself, she might teach basic writing and arithmetic. Girls were often taught cooking and needlework along with their letters. In Puritan New England the view was that a little reading, spelling, and needlework was all the education that was needed or appropriate for females.

Girls needed to be able to read so that they could study the Bible, but writing, arithmetic, grammar, and geography were considered unnecessary. There was no need for girls to learn to write because they had few if any acquaintances outside their own town to communicate with, and there was no need for them to learn anything but enough arithmetic to count their eggs or stitches because men conducted all business affairs (Littlefield, 1965).

Some towns designated the dame school mistress as the town teacher and thereby claimed to be in compliance with the Law of 1647. In the later colonial years some towns also began paying the dame school teachers directly rather than relying on parental payments. Thus, what had been a private institution gradually came to be viewed as a public enterprise. One reason for public support of the dame school was to subsidize education for the children of the poor (Perlman & Margo, 2001). Another reason was to provide inexpensive educational services to hamlets surrounding a town as it grew and its population dispersed.

Reading Schools and Writing Schools

Also operating at the elementary level were the so-called reading schools and writing schools, which were concerned with the teaching of these disciplines. These schools operated on a fee basis, although in the later colonial period some of them also received some public support. In colonial schools, reading was taught independent of, and prior to, writing. The reading school was the more basic of the two types of schools, concentrating on the learning of the alphabet with perhaps some religious instruction (Butts & Cremin, 1953).

The writing school focused on the skills that were needed in commerce—writing, arithmetic, double-entry bookkeeping—but not uncommonly gave some attention to reading as well. These schools were almost always taught by men because they were the ones who possessed these skills. Writing schools typically did admit girls. However, few parents were willing or able to pay the fees for their daughters, and most girls' educations ended with the dame school.

Charity Schools

Yet another provider of elementary education was the charity or pauper school. These were primarily operated by the various denominations, but sometimes by wealthy benefactors, for the children of the poor who could not afford to attend other schools. They operated mainly in the South and in the larger towns and cities throughout the colonies.

Even in the communities where they did operate, they did not serve all the needy children. The child might be needed to work, or the parents might be unwilling to go through the humiliating process of declaring themselves paupers. The pauper schools offered only a basic curriculum, "strongly laced with religious exercises and the memorization of scripture. The goal was to produce adults who would be minimally literate, who would have a chance at religious salvation, and who would act according to the morality the schools taught" (Kaestle, 1983, pp. 31–32).

The Apprenticeship System

An apprenticeship system whereby a child was entrusted to a master to learn a trade was also a means by which some children were educated. The apprenticeship system stemmed from the guild system of the Middle Ages. A child could be entered into an apprenticeship voluntarily by his or her parent or involuntarily under certain circumstances. The laws of some colonies mandated that all children whose parents were unable to provide for them were to be placed in apprenticeships. The apprenticeship was also used as a way to provide for the very poor or orphans..

Both boys and girls served as apprentices, as did some free African Americans. Females usually were given fewer educational opportunities than males and were most often apprenticed as cooks and bakers or domestic servants, or in weaving, spinning, or needlecraft. The need for skilled workers in the colonies served to strengthen the apprenticeship system and the attention given to the relationship between the master and the apprentice. For example, Benjamin Franklin's brother, to whom he had been apprenticed, beat him and as a result was jailed for a month.

The master was typically required by the terms of the indenture to ensure that the apprentice could at least minimally read and write (see the 1772 schoolmaster apprentice contract in the From the Archives feature box). Sometimes the master provided the instruction, but often, especially in the New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies where schools were more readily available, he paid for others to provide the instruction. The Education Laws of 1642 and 1647 strengthened the educational component of the apprenticeship system.

Instruction and Instructional Materials

Instruction in colonial schools was primarily religious and authoritarian. Its goal was preparation for eternity. The curriculum stressed the four Rs: readin', 'ritin', 'rithmetic, and religion. Memorization and recitation were the dominant instructional processes. The schoolmaster relied on fear to motivate children and to keep them in order. It was not uncommon for a gag to be put in the mouth of a child who talked too much or for a child who did not perform well to be made to stand in the corner, sometimes on a stool, wearing a dunce cap.

Classes often lasted from about 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a 2-hour break for lunch, for 8 months (March to October) and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for 4 months (November to February). In the early colonial period classes were held in the house of the schoolmaster or the town meeting house. Later, when schoolhouses were built, they were scarcely more than a narrow log box with a master's desk and crude wooden student benches. "Many schoolhouses did not have glass set in the small windows but newspaper or white paper greased with lard were fastened in the rude sashes, or in holes cut in the wall, and let in a little light" (Glubok, 1969, p. 120).

The Hornbook

Paper was expensive and was rarely used for practice in the schools. The white bark from birch trees was often used instead, and narrow pieces of actual lead (not graphite pencils) or quill pens made from goose feathers were used for writing. Books were rare and expensive. Most primary students learned their basic lessons from the hornbook, so called because the material was written on a sheet of parchment, placed on a wooden board shaped like a paddle, and covered with a thin sheath of transparent cow's horn for protection.

The New England Primer

Page from the New England Primer that has a picture and a small phrase for each letter of the alphabet.

MPI/Archive Photos/Getty Images

The New England Primer was used in colonial schools for almost two centuries.

Slightly older children used The New England Primer. It contained 88 pages, measured 3½ inches by 4½ inches (Watras, 2008), and was constructed along the same religious lines as the hornbook. It has been referred to as "the little Bible of New England" (Meriwether, 1978, p. 19). Although different editions of the primer varied somewhat in the 200 years of its publication (1690–1886), it usually began with an alphabet and spelling guide, followed by one of the things that made the primer famous—24 little pictures, mostly biblical incidents, with alphabetical rhymes.

After the alphabetic rhymes came "The Dutiful Child's Promise," which required the young student to promise as follows:

I will fear GOD, and honor the KING.

I will honor my Father and Mother.

I will Obey my Superiors.

I will Submit to my Elders.

The primer also included the Lord's Prayer, the Apostle's Creed, the Ten Commandments, a listing of the books of the Bible, and a list of numbers from 1 to 100, using both Arabic and Roman numerals. Another prominent feature was a poem, the exhortation of John Rogers to his children, from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, with a picture of the martyr burning at the stake as his wife and children look on. The primer ended with a shortened version of the Puritan catechism (Ford, 1962).

While the primer continued to reinforce religious concepts, by the time of the Revolution, patriotic rhymes were substituted for some religious themes. For example, "the letter W referred to George Washington brave who saved his country" and opposition to the monarch was expressed as "kings and queens are gaudy things" (Watras, 2008, p. 212).

Secondary Education: Latin Grammar Schools

After the primer the child was ready for the study of Latin grammar. This instruction was either provided by private tutors or, most often, at the Latin grammar school. This was the most common secondary school during the early colonial period. Public and private Latin grammar schools existed for the further education of the male children of the well-to-do and were intended to serve as preparatory schools for the university, where proficiency in Latin was required for admission. The school day was typically 8 hours long and was held 6 days a week.

Education at the grammar school was quite different from that of the dame or town schools. The emphasis was on Latin, with some Greek and occasionally Hebrew. Other disciplines included those necessary for the Renaissance concept of the educated man. The course of study in the grammar school lasted fairly intensively for 6 to 7 years. Students often withdrew and returned depending on family circumstances, but because school was conducted on a year-round basis and instruction was organized around particular texts, it was not difficult to resume study after an absence (Cremin, 1970).

The first Latin grammar school was established in Boston in 1635. The Boston Latin Grammar School became the model for similar schools throughout New England. Within a decade, and before the Law of 1647 required them to do so, 7 of the 22 towns in the Bay Colony had voluntarily established grammar schools (Kraushaar, 1976).

However, the public Latin grammar schools did not necessarily restrict themselves to the classical curriculum. In towns with only one or two Latin pupils, the schoolmaster spent most of his time teaching reading, writing, and spelling to both older and younger students (Herbst, 1996). Only in larger cities, with several Latin schools, could the master devote himself to teaching the classical languages and leave the task of teaching in the lower grades to his assistant, the usher (Herbst, 1996).

For Your Reflection and Analysis

Speculate on the reasons the private girls' schools did not seriously consider the academic training of females until the second half of the 18th century.

Girls did not attend Latin grammar schools. The only girls who received a secondary education were those from the more affluent families that could afford to hire a private tutor or to send them to one of the private schools or female seminaries that began to emerge in the 18th century. Most of these were boarding schools of the finishing school type. Initially these institutions were concerned with preparing girls for marriage and motherhood. Their training focused on the development of social and domestic skills. It was not until the second half of the 18th century that they began to seriously concern themselves with academic training.

Supervision and Support of the Schools

Schools in colonial New England and elsewhere in the colonies were supported by various means, including tuition, selected taxes and fees (such as marriage and liquor licenses), and endowments. Dorchester (Massachusetts) is credited with having made the first public provision for a school by direct taxation of its inhabitants. The Dorchester Town Records of May 20, 1639, read as follows:

there shall be a rent of £20 a year forever imposed upon Thompson's Island to be paid by every person that hath propriety in the said Island according to the proportion that any such person shall from time to time enjoy and possess there and this towards the maintenance of a school in Dorchester. This rent of £20 yearly to be paid to such a schoolmaster as shall undertake to teach English, Latin, and other tongues, and also writing. The said schoolmaster to be chosen from time to time by the freemen, and it is left to the discretion whether maids shall be taught with the boys or not. (Littlefield, 1965, p. 70)

As the town of Dorchester did in regard to Thompson's Island, it was common practice for a town to set aside a parcel of land—often referred to as "school fields" or "school meadows"—and use the rental income from the land for the support of the town school. However, this money was generally not enough and was supplemented by taxation or tuition.

Public funding led to public administration. Initially the schools in each town were managed directly by the general public at the town meeting. As the towns grew in size, they began to authorize the selectmen, or councilmen, to manage the schools. In time the selectmen formed special school committees, or, as in Dorchester beginning in 1645, they were elected by the town as a whole. In fact, Dorchester was the first town to appoint a special committee to oversee the school (Littlefield, 1965).

According to the Dorchester Town Records, three "able and efficient" men were to be chosen wardens or overseers of the grammar school and were given the following responsibilities: (1) to ensure that the school is "supplied with an able and sufficient schoolmaster"; (2) to ensure that the school is kept in good repair (the selectmen were given the power to "tax the town with such sums as shall be requested for the repairing of the school-house"); (3) to ensure that before the end of September "there be brought to the school-house twelve sufficient cart loads of wood for fuel" (the wardens were given the authority to tax the students for the cost of the wood); and (4) to ensure that the schoolmaster faithfully performs his duties (Littlefield, 1965).

Higher Education in Early New England

The major function of the Latin grammar school was to prepare young men for college. As previously noted, despite their location and circumstances, the colonists had a great interest in higher education. This might be because, by some accounts, 1 out of every 30 of the first settlers of Massachusetts was a graduate of Cambridge University in England (Meriwether, 1978). Still others had graduated from Oxford or other English universities.

Harvard College

The first college in the American colonies, Harvard College, was established in 1636 when the General Court of Massachusetts supplemented the bequest of the Reverend John Harvard of his library and half his estate with an appropriation of £400 for a "schoale or college." Harvard also received twelve pence a year and a peck of corn from every family in the colony, as well as the revenue from the ferry between Newtown (Charlestown) and Boston (Tunis, 1957).

A 1767 engraving showing the buildings at Harvard University.

Everett Collection/SuperStock

Harvard was established to train future ministers, but it was never intended to be a seminary.

The primary motivation for the founding of Harvard College was religious. Fearful that there would be no replacements for the ministers who first came with them, the colonists dreaded "to leave an illiterate Ministry to the churches, when our present Ministers should lie in the Dust." However, despite their concern for the training of ministers, neither Harvard nor the other colonial colleges were intended to be seminaries. According to its charter of 1650, Harvard was established for "[t]he advancement and education of youth in all manner of good literature, Artes and Sciences." The 1701 charter of Yale College (originally the Collegiate School) stated its purpose to be to prepare youth to be "fitted for Publick employment both in Church and Civil State."

Attendance at Harvard and the other colonial colleges was limited almost exclusively to the children of the well-to-do. Even within this group a well-defined class system operated. As late as 1769, the roster of students at Harvard was not listed alphabetically, but according to social status (Hakim, 1999). Because of the size of the eligible population, as well as their tuition and exclusivity, the enrollment at the colonial colleges was small. Beginning with its first graduating class of nine in 1642, Harvard graduated fewer than 10 students per year for the next 50 years.

The College Curriculum

Until near the end of the 18th century, the faculty of the typical colonial college consisted of a president (usually a minister) and a few tutors (seldom more than three) who were themselves often young men studying for the ministry. Few instructors could be considered "professors"—mature men with command of their subject matter (Boorstin, 1958).

Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the curriculum of the university in the early colonial period was based on the classically oriented pattern of the English university from which the ministers and tutors, as well as the Puritan leaders, had matriculated. As Cohen (1974b) described it:

The undergraduate courses revolved around the traditional Trivium and Quadrivium but without musical studies, the Three Philosophies (Metaphysics, Ethics, Natural Science), and Greek, Hebrew, and a chronological study of ancient history. As in English universities logic and rhetoric were the basic subjects in the curriculum. . . . Compositions, orations, and disputations were given the same careful scrutiny as at English universities. (p. 66)

Latin dominated the curriculum. Most of the textbooks were in Latin, and the president gave his lectures in Latin. Logic and rhetoric required that the student use the Latin language correctly and effectively (Herbst, 1996). The epitome of efforts to apply the language were the recitations, declamations, and deputations (debates):

Students recited and declaimed to break the monotony of listening to lectures and of outlining systems. These oral exercises also served as examinations and as demonstrations of the students' acquired verbal skills . . . [this training] increased the students' nimbleness of mind and taught them to think quickly on their feet, to express themselves accurately and with precision, and to speak effectively, compellingly, and elegantly—all skills of inestimable value to a future lawyer, minister, physician, statesman, or politician." (Herbst, 1996, p. 16)

Although their curriculum resembled that of the English universities, colonial colleges differed in one very important respect from their English ancestors. English universities operated under a form of academic self-government that reflected their origins as medieval guilds of learned men. Because no such guilds existed in the colonies, for the simple reason that there was no sizable body of learned men, control of the colonial colleges fell to representatives of the community (Boorstin, 1958).

Another important way colonial colleges differed from English colleges was that, unlike Oxford and Cambridge, which were removed from major commercial and political centers, the early colonial colleges tended to be located at the center of each colony's affairs, thereby symbolically connecting learning and public life (Boorstin, 1958).

2.2 Education in the Mid-Atlantic Colonies

Whereas the New England colonies were settled primarily by English colonists who shared the same language, traditions, and religion, the settlers of the Mid-Atlantic colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) came from a variety of national and religious backgrounds. Many had fled Europe because of religious persecution and were generally more distrusting of secular authority than were the New England colonists. Thus, although the schools in the Mid-Atlantic colonies were as religious in character as those in New England, because of the diverse religious backgrounds of the settlers, it was not possible for the government in any colony to agree on the establishment of any one system of state-supported schools.

Instead, it fell to each denomination to establish its own schools. Perhaps the most active of these denominational groups was the Anglican Missionary Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), which supported mission clergymen and schoolmasters in every colony except Virginia and Maryland, where Anglicanism was already established. Sixty-five of the society's schoolmasters taught in the American colonies between 1714 and 1763 (Monaghan, 2005). This pattern of pluralistic, parochial schooling discouraged the establishment of a system of public schools or state support or regulation of the schools. As a result, many young people, especially those in rural areas, had no access to education beyond what might be provided in the home.

New York

The Dutch established the colony of New Netherlands in 1621. Earlier exploration of the region had been undertaken by Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the employ of the Dutch East India Company. Although profits from the fur trade, more than a quest for religious freedom, motivated the early immigrants to New Netherlands, the relationship between church and state that characterized the New England colonies was also found in New Netherlands. That is, the close ties between learning and the established faith that existed in Holland were recreated in New Netherlands, and the state was expected to promote the official church (Cohen, 1974b).

The Dutch West India Company established schools in 11 communities, some at the insistence of the Dutch settlers who, like those in New England, were concerned lest their children grow up without the education necessary for the practice of their religion. Organizers of new settlements were instructed to include both a minister and a schoolmaster in their plans (Kraushaar, 1976). Although the Dutch West India Company paid the schoolmasters, the Dutch Calvinist Church operated the schools and saw to the licensing and supervision of the masters.

After the British seized New Netherlands and made it the royal colony of New York in 1764, state responsibility and support for schooling was withdrawn. Except for a few town schools and a limited number of charity schools, formal schooling became a private concern. Education at the elementary level was provided by private tutors for the upper class, private venture schools for the middle class, and denominational schools such as those operated by the SPG for the lower class.

Dame schools rarely operated in New York, but the apprenticeship system was very strong and provided the means by which some children gained a basic education. Overall, however, because only a few towns established schools, and because the provision of education was principally left to the will or ability of parents to send their children to private or denominational schools, the illiteracy rate in New York was high (Cohen, 1974b).

Education at the secondary level was even more exclusively private or parochial. Most schools had a religious or ethnic affiliation. By 1762 New Amsterdam (New York City) could boast that it had 10 English, 2 Dutch, 1 French, and 1 Hebrew tuition schools (Kraushaar, 1976).

Higher education was unavailable for any but the few who could afford to leave the colony. Not until 1754 did the first institution of higher education, Kings College, now Columbia University, open in the colony. In its initial advertisements Kings College said that it would offer a practical curriculum, but once it began operation, its curriculum differed little from the classical curriculum of the other colonial colleges (Butts & Cremin, 1953). Kings College was the first of the colonial American universities to open a law school, in 1755.

New Jersey

New Jersey began as part of New Netherlands. Once taken over by the English, it became first a proprietorship (a tract of land granted to one or more proprietors to govern) and then a royal colony. As in New York, education in New Jersey was primarily private and denominational. Religious affiliations were diverse, and each of the sects—Dutch Reformed, Puritan, Quaker, German Lutheran, Baptist, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterian—established its own schools. The SPG also operated schools for the poor.

A few towns, mainly those in the eastern region settled by the Puritans, established town schools. Secondary education was limited. Because of the primarily rural, agrarian economy, the private venture secondary schools found in other Mid-Atlantic colonies were absent. However, proximity to New York and Philadelphia did provide access to their secondary institutions for those who could afford them (Cohen, 1974b).

The colony of New Jersey most distinguished itself in the realm of higher education. Prior to the Revolutionary War, it had founded more colleges than any other colony: the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, in 1746, and Queens College, now Rutgers University, in 1766.

Pennsylvania

A Quaker, William Penn, founded the Pennsylvania colony in 1681 as a refuge for his fellow believers. The Quakers, or Society of Friends, were very tolerant of other religions; consequently, a number of different religious groups and sects, including the Dunkards, Lutherans, Moravians, Mennonites, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, settled in Pennsylvania. Each of these groups tended to segregate itself and operate its own schools.

Although William Penn advocated free public education "so that youth may be trained up in virtue and useful knowledge and arts," and despite the fact that the Pennsylvania Assembly enacted a law in 1683 providing that all children be instructed in reading and writing and be taught "some useful trade or skill," largely as a result of the great diversity among the settlers, Pennsylvania did not develop a system of free public education.

The apprenticeship system did operate in Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania apprenticeship law, like the Massachusetts law, placed obligations on the master to ensure that the apprentice could read and write. A few community-supported schools were established, but as in the other Mid-Atlantic colonies, formal education was primarily a private or denominational affair.

The Quakers

The major difference between Pennsylvania and the other Mid-Atlantic colonies was that the various denominations did, in fact, establish a fairly widespread system of schools there. The Quakers were the most significant in terms of educational endeavors. More than any other denominational group, they were responsible for the spread of a liberal philosophy of schooling that envisioned public and private schools open to girls as well as boys with both English and classical curricula and cultural and practical orientations (Kraushaar, 1976).

The Quaker belief that all were created equal under God led not only to the education of both sexes and to the free admission of the poor, but also to the education of African Americans and Native Americans. A school for African American children was established in Philadelphia by the Quaker schoolmaster Anthony Benezet as early as 1770. Benezet, who had earlier (1754) opened a school for girls, operated the school until his death in 1784 and then endowed it with all his possessions.

Because Quakers do not have ministers, they were not interested in the establishment of secondary schools leading to that vocation. In their secondary schools they emphasized practical knowledge rather than the classical curriculum studied at most secondary schools at that time.

Other Denominations

Other denominations also worked in Pennsylvania to provide education and advance their religious doctrines. The SPG founded a number of charity schools, including a school for African American children in Philadelphia in 1758. The Moravians also established a number of elementary schools, including the first nursery school in the colonies. They were also active in efforts to Christianize and educate the Native Americans. They devised a written script for several Native American languages and translated the Bible and other religious materials into these languages.

In 1746 the Moravians established a boarding school for girls at Bethlehem, one of the first in the colonies. In their pedagogical practices they were influenced by the educational philosophy of the Moravian bishop Jan Amos Comenius, who stressed sensory experiences as the basis for learning, respect for the individual, freedom, creative activity, instruction in the vernacular, and universal education.

The various denominations also operated schools at the secondary level. In addition, a number of private secondary schools were opened in Pennsylvania during the later colonial period, many offering such practical subjects as navigation, gauging, accounting, geometry, trigonometry, surveying, French, and Spanish. Practical did not mean that the arts were neglected, though. Notwithstanding the rumblings of the more stern Quakers, private schools offering drawing, painting, music, and dance for both sexes prospered (Kraushaar, 1976). Among the private secondary schools operating in Philadelphia was Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia Academy, opened in 1751, which is discussed further in Section 2.4.

Franklin was also instrumental in the founding of the College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania, in 1753. Unlike its sister institutions, the College of Philadelphia was nonsectarian in origin (although it later came under Anglican control). The curriculum of the college was more progressive than that of other institutions. Students were allowed a voice in the selection of courses, and the curriculum emphasized not only the classics but also mathematics, philosophy, and the natural and social sciences. A medical school was established in connection with the college, the first such college in the colonies.

Delaware

Delaware, founded in 1638 as a Swedish colony, New Sweden, fell under Dutch control in 1655, then under the rule of the English with their conquest of New Netherlands in 1664. It was later incorporated into the province of Pennsylvania, but in 1703 organized its own separate government. Education in Delaware was greatly influenced by Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania's general abandonment of the responsibility for the public provision of education after 1683 was followed in Delaware. Although a number of elementary schools were established in the colony, the level of literacy remained low. During the colonial period, formal secondary education was available on a very limited basis, and no institution of higher education was established in the colony (Cohen, 1974b).

2.3 Education in the Southern Colonies

The Southern colonies (Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia) differed in significant ways from the New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies. They were royal colonies administered by governors responsible directly to the king, and unlike the New England Puritans, who sought to reform the Church of England, the Southern colonists accepted the Church of England as the established state church. (The exception was Maryland, which was founded by Lord Baltimore as a refuge for English Catholics.)

The Church of England asserted that parents, not the government or the church, were responsible for educating their children. In fact, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia in the 17th century and a Royalist (a supporter of the English king), thanked God that there were no free schools or printing presses in Virginia saying that learning would bring disobedience and heresy and sects into the world and printing libels against the government. As a result of such sentiments, no legislation was enacted requiring local governments to support schools.

Another factor influencing the educational development of the Southern colonies was the economic system operating there. Compared to the New England economy, which was based on small farms and commerce, the economy of the Southern colonies was based on large plantations where slaves cultivated tobacco, rice, indigo, and, later, cotton.

Many of the original settlers in the Southern colonies had been granted large tracts of land known as "hundreds." As tobacco and cotton became profitable crops, they expanded their holdings into even larger tracts, which became plantations. As a result of the plantation system, the relatively small population of the Southern colonies was widely dispersed. This factor mitigated the development of towns or the concentrations of population necessary to support public schools.

Elementary and Secondary Education

As a result of the social and economic structure of the Southern colonies, educational opportunities were determined largely by social class. Although class distinctions existed in all the colonies (see Table 2.1), they were most pronounced in the South, which had an aristocratic upper class made up of the plantation owners, small middle and lower classes of Whites, and a large lower class of slaves.

Table 2.1: Class system in colonial America

Upper Classes of Free Men

In Towns In Rural Regions

Merchants Landed gentry (planters, country gentlemen, patrons)

Magistrates and officials Magistrates

Established clergy Established clergy

Middle Class of Free Men

In Towns In Rural Regions

Substantial shopkeepers Substantial farmers

Master craftsmen Dissenting clergy

Lawyers and college teachers

Lower Classes of Free Men

In Towns In Rural Regions

Mechanics, artisans Small freehold farmers

Clerks in business Renters and tenants

Fisherman and sailors

Teachers

Servile Classes of Unfree Men

In Towns In Rural Regions

Indentured White servants Indentured White servants and workers

African American servants African American slaves

Education of the Plantation Aristocracy

The children of the plantation owners and the wealthy commercial classes in the Tidewater, or coastal, cities received their education from private tutors or at private Latin grammar schools before being sent to universities. Sometimes one wealthy plantation owner would hire a tutor who would teach not only his children but also those of relatives or neighbors at what was, in effect, a plantation boarding school. The tutors typically taught both the sons and the daughters of the planters. However, the majority of females in the Southern colonies were totally uneducated and illiterate (Spruell, cited in Szasz, 2007b).

In the early colonial period, the plantation aristocracy often sent their male children to New England or, more commonly, to Britain to receive their secondary or their university educations; to the Scottish universities for medicine; to the Inns of Court in London for law; or to Oxford or Cambridge for mathematics, rhetoric, or philosophy (Bobrick, 1997). In fact, schoolmasters in England looked for clients in the colonies, and some placed advertisements in colonial newspapers (Meriwether, 1978). One such advertisement, which appeared in 1769 in the Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg, reads as follows:

At the Academy in Leeds, which is pleasantly situated in the county of York in England, Young Gentlemen are genteely boarded, and diligently instructed in English, the Classicks, Modern Languages, Penmanship, Arithmetick, Merchants Accounts, Mathematicks, Modern Geography, Experimental Philosophy, and Astronomy, for twenty guineas per annum, if under twelve years of age, by Mr. Aaron Grimshaw, and able masters. Drawing, Musick, and Dancing, are extra charges. Due regard is paid to the young Gentlemens health, morals and behavior. (Cohen, 1974a, p. 473)

By the later colonial period, as the number of colonial colleges grew in number and stature, the practice of going abroad to receive a university education declined.

Providers of Elementary Education

With the exception of the children of the plantation aristocracy or the wealthy Tidewater merchants, most other free children in the Southern colonies received at best only an elementary education. New England's two-tier pattern of schooling did not develop in the South. And while there appears to be no relationship between the absence of the two-tier system and the gender of teachers, it is a fact that fewer females taught in the antebellum South than in the North (Perlman & Margo, 2001).

Elementary education in the South was provided informally through the apprenticeship system or formally at privately endowed free schools, denominational schools, "old field schools," or private venture schools. Virginia was the most active of the Southern colonies in attempting to ensure the education of apprenticed children, especially orphans.

The endowed free schools were few in number and never educated more than a small number of poor children. The charity schools were operated by the various denominations: The Catholics operated schools in Maryland; the Presbyterians and Moravians opened schools for their followers in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia; and the Anglican SPG was active in all the colonies. The SPG helped supply teachers, books, and financial support to operate schools for the most disadvantaged and provided the closest thing to a public school system found in the South before the Revolutionary War (Cohen, 1974b). The SPG was also almost the only group attempting to provide education to the slaves.

A common form of schooling in some rural areas where other schooling was not available was the "old field school." In this arrangement several small planters or farmers used old tobacco sheds or built rough schoolhouses on abandoned tobacco fields. These old field schools generally charged a fee and offered only the most basic education. Often the teacher was a local clergyman supplementing his salary. According to one historian, the majority of children who received an education in 17th-century Virginia received their schooling at old field schools (Bracey, cited in Szasz, 2007b). Even George Washington received a significant portion of his education at an old field school.

Private venture elementary schools could be found in many of the larger cities of the South. Private venture schools also operated at the secondary level, as did public grammar schools, in the larger towns or cities. However, because there were few towns of any size, the private venture schools were the primary providers of education at the secondary level in the Southern colonies. Even these were few. As a result of the public neglect of education, the overall educational level of the Southern colonies was below that of most of the other colonies, especially those in New England.

Higher Education: The College of William and Mary

The only institution of higher education established in the South prior to the Revolutionary War was the College of William and Mary, established in Virginia in 1693 under a charter from King William III and Queen Mary II of England. An earlier attempt by the Church of England to establish a college for Native Americans at Henrico, Virginia, had been unsuccessful. The charter of William and Mary charged it with training ministers and bringing Christianity to the Native Americans.

Like Harvard, its sister institution in New England and the only older institution of higher education in the colonies, William and Mary also originally offered the traditional curriculum. However, by the second quarter of the 18th century, it began to broaden its program. It was the first college to offer an elective system in which students chose their own course of study. And, perhaps foreshadowing Virginia's supremacy in the public affairs of the country, William and Mary emphasized law and politics earlier than any other college in the country and encouraged the study of history, mathematics, and modern languages (Meriwether, 1978). One educational historian argues that by 1779 its curriculum was probably the most advanced in the United States (Cohen, 1974b).

Figure 2.1: Education in colonial America

The New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Southern colonies let government, religion, and social class dictate educational opportunities to varying degrees. Map of the original colonies with text describing education in those colonies. In New England, there is a tradition of government and religious involvement and support whereas in the mid-Atlantic colonies there is a pattern of parochial schools with no government support and in the Southern colonies, educational opportunity is determined by social class.

Source: Webb, L. D., Metha, A., & Jordan, K. F. (2003). Foundations of American education. (4th ed., p. 99). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.

2.4 Education During the Later Colonial Period: The Impact of the Enlightenment

The Age of the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason, swept the Western world in the 17th century. In the American colonies, as in Europe, it brought greater concern for independent rationality, an examination of all beliefs, repudiation of supernatural explanations of phenomena, and a greater questioning of traditional religious dogma. Philosophers, scientists, and scholars of the period believed that observation and scientific inquiry were the avenues to the discovery of the "natural laws" that dictated the orderly operation of the universe.

The Enlightenment was a period of rapid expansion of the knowledge base in the natural and physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering: Newton proposed his theory of gravity, Leeuwenhoek identified bacteria, the first inoculation against smallpox was given, and the first suspension and iron bridges were built. It also saw the invention of the first steam engine, water turbine, power loom, cotton gin, and many other machines and processes that made the Industrial Revolution possible.

Enlightenment philosophers argued that the natural laws that governed nature also imbued man with certain rights that existed in nature before men entered civil society. Their rational examination of all beliefs led them to reject the authority of the church and the absolute rights of monarchs. They believed not only in the right of the people to govern themselves but also in their ability to do so. They thus considered education to be an instrument of social reform and improvement—a belief shared by not only the Founding Fathers, but by all generations of Americans since.

John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau

One of the most important thinkers of the Enlightenment was the English philosopher John Locke. Though best known for his political theories, which served as the basis for the American and French constitutions, Locke also had a profound influence on education. He is associated with the school of thought called sense realism, which asserts that man learns best through sensory experiences. The senses gather and transmit data to the mind to be sorted, classified, and categorized. Locke thus favored the inductive reasoning and the scientific method for their focus on the gathering and analysis of evidence.

Portrait of John Locke painted by Sir Gotfrey Kneller.

Fine Art Images/SuperStock

The English philosopher John Locke influenced not only the political views of the Founding Fathers but also the curriculum of colonial schools.

In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke recommended a curriculum that included, beyond the three Rs, history, geography, ethics, philosophy, science, and conversational foreign languages, especially French. He also emphasized mathematics, not to make the scholar a mathematician, but to make him a reasonable man. The curriculum Locke recommended anticipated that of the academy described in the next section. As evidenced in the writings of the Founding Fathers, which he influenced deeply, Locke believed the goal of education was to create the moral, practical individual who could participate effectively in the governing process.

Locke's political philosophy, in keeping with his respect for the lessons of science, proposed that there were inherent laws of nature and that associated with these natural laws man had certain natural rights. These natural rights came from God or nature, not from rulers or governments. Among these rights, according to Locke, were those espoused in the Declaration of Independence—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

A century later, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, another philosopher who is also best remembered for his political theories, continued to advance the natural law argument. Rousseau was associated with an educational movement called naturalism. Its emphasis on freedom and the individual has had a significant influence on educational theory and practice. His book, Social Contract, which argued against the divine right of kings to rule and for the right of the people to self-govern, had a major influence on the thinking of those involved in both the French and American revolutions.

The Impact of Social and Economic Changes on Education

At the same time that the philosophy of the Enlightenment was sweeping the colonies, their population and economy grew rapidly. The population of 18th-century New England increased at a rate of 28% per decade, so that by 1760 the population had reached 450,000 (Watras, 2008). In many cases the economy outgrew its localized base of farming and fishing. Transportation and communication improved, trade and commerce increased, and cities and towns flourished and spread throughout the region. The application of the concept of natural laws to economics and capitalism (for example, the ownership of property and the profit motive) was associated with the emergence of a new mercantile gentry and a growing middle class.

The growth in trade and commerce placed new demands on education. For example, the ship owners of New England needed navigators to chart courses for their journeys, surveyors were needed to lay out the lands of the expanding frontier, and bookkeepers and scribes were needed to keep the accounts and records of ever larger businesses and agricultural enterprises. At the same time, the budding city life supported by increased affluence and leisure time created demands for the "arts of polite society" (Cohen, 1974a, p. xvii).

The classical curriculum of the Latin grammar school was not prepared to meet these needs. As a result, during the first half of the 18th century, numerous private venture schools, the so-called English schools, sprang up in the larger towns, teaching subjects useful in trade and commerce (as well as the classical languages for those who wanted them). The newspapers of the time were filled with advertisements for these schools. One such advertisement, appearing in 1723, read as follows:

There is a school in New York, in the Broad Street, near the Exchange, where Mr. John Walton, late of Yale College, Teacheth Reading, Writing, Arethmatick, whole Numbers and Fractions, Vulgar and Decimal, The Mariners Art, Plain and Mercators Way; Also Geometry, Surveying, the Latin Tongue, the Greek and Hebrew Grammers, Ethicks, Rhetorick, Logick, Natural Philosophy and Metaphysicks, all or any of them for a Reasonable Price. The School from the first of October till the first of March will be tended in the Evening. If any Gentlemen in the Country are disposed to send their Sons to the said School, if they apply themselves to the Master he will immediately procure suitable Entertainment for them, very Cheap. Also if any Young Gentlemen of the City will please to come in the Evening and make some Tryal of the Liberal Arts, they may have the opportunity of Learning the same things which are commonly Taught in Colledges. (American Weekly Mercury, cited in Cubberley, 1934, p. 83)

These schools were operated by ministers, teachers, enterprising tradesmen or craftsmen, or dames who set up their own shops and charged what the traffic would bear to whomever could afford to pay for it (Kraushaar, 1976). Day schools, evening schools, early morning schools, even correspondence schools offered group or tutorial instruction (Cohen, 1974a). Girls were allowed to attend the English schools but often had to attend in separate classes. The private venture or English schools served an important role in the transfer of vocational education from the family and apprenticeships to the school (Cohen, 1974a).

The Rise of the Academy

The private venture or English schools were not permanent, however. Rather, they served as a transition between the grammar school, which offered a classical education, and the academy, which offered a more practical education including English, accounting, modern languages, and the natural sciences. Academies as educational institutions in the colonies began to emerge in the mid-18th century. One of the earliest and strongest supporters of the academy was Benjamin Franklin. He believed that "the rigid classical curriculum had degenerated into a shibboleth of the learned class and that the grammar school, whose chief beneficiaries were the ministry, the scholar, and the gentleman, was an anachronism" (Kraushaar, 1976, p. 19).

Franklin was strongly influenced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, particularly John Locke, and was a proponent of a practical education to prepare the skilled craftsmen, businessmen, and farmers needed in the colonies. In his 1747 Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, Franklin laid out the plan for an academy in which English rather than Latin was to be the medium of instruction.

This break with tradition was important because it proposed, in effect, that vernacular English could be the language of the educated person. Also breaking with tradition, Franklin made no provision for religious instruction other than for a course in the history of religion. He proposed that students be taught "those Things that are likely to be most useful and most ornamental. Regard being had to the several Professions which they are intended."

In 1751, with the support of several wealthy Philadelphians, Franklin's academy opened. Very soon it became clear that Franklin's vision for the school was not to be realized. Although he had believed that Latin and Greek were useless for all but a very limited number of pursuits, he had included them in the curriculum for those who might want them. However, the person hired to head the academy, the Anglican minister, Reverend William Smith, was an avowed classist who favored the classical masters over the English masters. For example, the Latin master was paid £200 per year to teach 20 students, whereas the English master was paid £100 to teach 40 students. And, while the Latin master was given £100 to spend on books and maps, the English master was given nothing (Blinderman, 1976).

As time passed, under pressure from some of the trustees, Franklin's academy gave less emphasis to the practical studies and came to more closely resemble the Latin grammar school (Durham, 1997). In 1753 it was rechartered as the College, Academy, and Charitable School of Philadelphia, and in 1779 was renamed the University of Pennsylvania.

Although Franklin's academy did not survive as he intended, others, such as Phillips Andover Academy, founded in 1778, did. As will be discussed in Chapter 4, from its beginnings in New England, the academy movement spread west and south and became the primary provider of secondary education prior to the Civil War.

Expansion of Higher Education

Until 1747 there were only three colleges in the colonies—Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary. Then, the Great Awakening of Protestant evangelical religious fervor and renewal that swept the colonies in the mid-18th century brought with it an increased sectarianism that resulted in every religious sect wanting to establish its own college. By the beginning of the Revolutionary War, nearly every major Christian sect had established its own institution of higher education: the New-Side Presbyterians founded Princeton; Dutch Reformed revivalists founded Rutgers; Baptist revivalists founded Brown; and the Anglicans and Presbyterians cooperated in the founding of Kings College (Columbia) and the College of Pennsylvania (Boorstin, 1958).

In 1769 a Congregational minister, Eleazer Wheelock, established Dartmouth College as a college for Native Americans. According to its charter, Dartmouth was to educate the "youth of the Indian tribes in this land in reading, writing, and all parts of learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing and Christianizing the Children of gajens, as well as in all liberal arts and sciences." On a per capita basis, the nine colonial colleges represented a much greater dispersion of higher education than was to be found in England, where access was reserved for the privileged few (Cohen, 1974a).

In the period from 1717 to 1747, about 1,400 students (all men) graduated from the colonial colleges; in the next 30 years more than twice that number graduated. About half of these matriculated from the newly founded colleges. However, even though each new college had been founded by a particular denomination, and the president was a member of that denomination, few places had enough college-bound youth of a particular denomination to compose an entire student body. The student bodies of these colleges, therefore, were interdenominational (Boorstin, 1958).

The curriculum of many of the colleges of this era began to reflect the growing secularism of the society. In 1722 Harvard established its first professorship in the secular subjects of mathematics and natural philosophy. By 1760 the scientific subjects accounted for 20% of the curriculum. Another sign of the growing secularism was the change in graduates' careers. Although theology remained the most popular, an increasing number of graduates turned to law, medicine, trade, and commerce as the New England colleges became centers of independence, stimulation, and social usefulness (Cohen, 1974b).

2.5 The Colonial Schoolmaster

In colonial America teachers ranged from the widows or housewives in dame schools to college-educated masters in the grammar schools. Most teachers were men who did not intend to make teaching a career. Often they were young men who taught for only a short time before studying for the ministry or were established clergymen needing to supplement their income. Then as now, some individuals taught because they either were not admitted to or had failed at their chosen professions.

Given the strong relationship between church and education, more often than not teachers were chosen more for their religious orthodoxy than their educational qualifications. The criteria for the licensing of teachers outlined in the Massachusetts Act of 1654 clearly demonstrate that religious, not professional, qualification was the primary consideration in the hiring of a teacher:

Forasmuch as it greatly concernes the welfare of this countrje that the youth thereof be educated, not only in good literature, but sound doctrjne, this Court doth therefore commend it to the serious consideratjon and special care of the Overseers of the colledge and the selectmen in the severall tounes, not to admitt or suffer any such to be contjnewed in the office or place of teaching, educating, or instructing of youth or child in the colledge or schooles that have manifested themselves vnsound in the faith or scandalous in theire lives, and not giving due satisfaction according to the rules of Christ.

Colonial teachers at the secondary level were often viewed as assistant pastors and in addition to their teaching duties were expected to perform various duties related to the functioning of the church, including such things as ringing the bell for worship, leading the choir, leading prayers, or filling in for the pastor in his absence. Typical of the teaching duties expected of the grammar schoolmaster were those detailed by the town of Dorchester in 1645 and presented in the From the Archives feature box.

It was not uncommon in colonial America to find teachers who were indentured servants—persons who had sold their services for a period of years in exchange for passage to the New World. Many of these indentured servant teachers, especially during the 18th century, were Irish schoolmasters. Indeed, a large number of nonindentured Irish schoolmasters also came to the colonies after the passage in Ireland of the Laws for the Suppression of Popery, commonly known as the Penal Laws. The Penal Laws of 1695 forbade any Catholic from teaching school upon penalty of fine or imprisonment.

Many of the Irish teachers were graduates of prestigious Trinity College in Dublin. They were generally the younger sons of well-to-do families who, unable to obtain suitable employment at home, "sought the congenial employment of teaching for which there was a demand in the various American communities" (Houston, cited in O'Brien, 1917, p. 54). In some colonies, especially Pennsylvania and New York, the provision of education was almost totally dependent on the immigrant Irish schoolmasters (O'Brien, 1917).

Teacher Training

Colonial teachers received no formal training. Perhaps the closest to any teacher preparation was that received by those individuals who entered teaching after serving as apprentices to schoolmasters. The first book on pedagogy printed in America was written by Christopher Dock, an 18th-century German Mennonite schoolmaster in Pennsylvania.

In School-Management/Schulordnung, a selection from which serves as a Primary Source Readings for this chapter, Dock admonished schoolmasters to use corporal punishment only as a last resort and asserted that it was better to bring a child to do something out of love than the fear of punishment. He advised the use of group praise or rebuke to motivate or punish. He also advised that teachers recognize pupils' individual differences, including religious differences.

Teacher Licensing and Pay

The hiring and licensing of teachers in New England was deemed to be the responsibility of the selectmen of a town, often with the assistance of the minister. The role of the minister was made clearer and stronger in 1701 by an act of the Massachusetts General Court (the colonial legislature), which required that every grammar schoolmaster "be approved by the ministers of the town, and the ministers of the two next adjacent towns, or any two of them, by certificate under their hand" (Acts and Resolution, 1701, p. 470).

The law sought not only to ensure that those most able to judge the qualifications of the grammar schoolmaster to teach Latin and Greek were involved in the selection of the master, but also to prevent favoritism by requiring the signature of at least one out-of-town minister (Cole, 1956).

The act of 1701 applied only to the licensing of grammar schoolmasters. Less than a dozen years later, in 1712, the Massachusetts General Court gave the selectmen of each town the authority to license elementary teachers:

[N]o person or persons shall or may presume to set up or keep a school for the teaching or instructing of children or youth in reading, writing, or any other science, but such as are of sober and good conversation, and have the allowance and approbation of the selectmen of the town in which any school is to be kept. (Acts and Resolutions, 1712, pp. 681–682)

Typically, the selectmen would involve the minister in the selection of the schoolmaster. Thus, by 1712 the system of licensing schoolmasters had been established: The legislature established general qualifications that were applied at the local level. This was in keeping with the general philosophy of local control that characterized the educational systems of the New England colonies (Cole, 1956) and that ultimately came to characterize education in all 50 states.

In the Mid-Atlantic colonies teachers were certified by the royal proprietor, the royal governor, or the religious group who employed them (such as the SPG). In New Netherlands the governor, acting under the authority of the Dutch West India Company, certified teachers. In the South, where the Church of England was the established church, as in England, teachers were certified by the Bishop of London.

The pay given the colonial schoolmaster was often not in hard currency, but in room and board. Schoolmasters often moved from the home of the parents of one student to that of another, a practice referred to as "boarding "round." Teachers were also paid in whatever kind of product or produce might be available to parents. According to some accounts, in one school in Salem, "one scholar was always seated at the windows to study and also to hail passers-by and endeavor to sell to them the accumulations of corn, vegetables, etc., which had been given in payment to the teacher" (Glubok, 1969, p. 18).

2.6 Education of Minorities in Colonial America

As previously noted, the first African Americans came to the American colonies in 1619, not as slaves, but as indentured servants. However, the demand for cheap labor for the Southern plantations soon brought an extension of the African slave trade to the colonies. For the same price that an English or Irish servant could be bought for 7 years, an African slave could be bought for life (Bennett, 1976). Acting in a way that would change American history, in the 1660s Virginia and Maryland enacted legislation that made all bonded slaves, as well as the children of all female slaves, slaves for life. By the beginning of the Revolutionary War, half a million African Americans lived in the colonies, most as slaves in the South.

What education was provided to most African Americans, free or slave, was provided by missionary or charitable organizations, although a limited number of slave owners did provide minimal literacy training to their slaves so they could read the Bible or better attend to their owners' affairs. The missionary group that showed the greatest interest in the education of both African Americas and Native Americans was the SPG.

Schooling for African Americans

The SPG was active in establishing schools for African American children in larger towns such as New York and Philadelphia, where concentrations of slaves could be found. They also ventured into Puritan New England and were, in fact, encouraged by such prominent Puritans as Cotton Mather, who for a short period himself operated a charity school for African Americans and Native Americans.

The SPG was also very active in the Southern colonies, where it sought to assure the slave owners that they could allow slaves to become Christians and literate without letting them be free. In one unique endeavor the SPG purchased two slaves and trained them to serve as teachers in a school in Charleston, South Carolina. The school was apparently well attended, although probably more by free African Americans than slaves as had been originally intended. However, the Negro Act of 1740, enacted in South Carolina following the 1739 Stono slave rebellion, when 22 Whites were killed, made teaching a slave to write a crime. Georgia followed suit in 1755. Because of the necessity of reading to Christian instruction, reading was not prohibited (Monaghan, 2005).

In 1800 South Carolina expanded the prohibition against educating slaves to slave meetings "for purposes of mental instruction." The fear that education contributed to slave unrest led slave owners in other states to curtail any educational activities for or by slaves. Nevertheless, some religious groups as well as slave owners and slaves continued in their efforts to provide reading instruction. Although there is no real way to determine how many slaves were literate, it has been estimated that despite the obstacles, 5% of the slave population was literate in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War (King, 1995).

Deculturation and the "Civilizing" of Native Americans

Many of the denominational and philanthropic groups that were involved in the education of African Americans were also involved in efforts to bring education to Native Americans. As noted previously, the SPG, Quakers, Moravians, and other denominations established schools in the larger towns. Yet their activities were undertaken in near total ignorance of and disregard for tribal methods of education. The schools engaged in both

deculturation and enculturation of an absolute kind. They generally accepted Indian potential for "uplift,' but sought the utter extirpation of the tribal culture and the inculcation of English ideas of religion and "civility,' down to the smallest details of appearance and behavior. (Coleman, 1993, p. 37)

Portrait of John Locke painted by Sir Gotfrey Kneller.

Universal Images Group/SuperStock

John Eliot, "Apostle to the Indians," published the first Bible printed in the American colonies.

Another approach, one that continued into the 20th century, was to separate the "civilized" or would-be civilized Native Americans from the tribe. In 1651 John Eliot, the "Apostle to the Indians," established the first of the so-called praying towns, where converted Native Americans dressed, ate, and lived like the English, were subject to English laws, attended church and school, and were discouraged from the practice of traditional Native American customs and habits.

Eliot learned the Algonquian language from a Native American servant and translated the New Testament into Algonquian. In 1664 he published the complete Bible in Algonquian—the first Bible printed in the American colonies. Most of the praying towns were disbanded by the Massachusetts General Court following King Philip's War (1675–1676), which caught the Praying Indians in the middle between the warring tribes and the English, and created distrust among the English colonists.

An approach similar in theory to the praying towns was used a century later by Eleazar Wheelock, the founder of Dartmouth College, when he opened Moor's Indian Charity School in Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1754. Wheelock's educational regime sought to Christianize and "civilize" Native American students "in isolation from the savage and pernicious influence of their families and villages" (Rice, 2010, p. 49).

Although some Native Americans did settle in the praying towns, attend denominational schools, and even attend such colleges as Harvard and Dartmouth, many did so because they saw it as a way of survival. Most Native Americans were not convinced of the superiority or even equality of the education offered by the colonial schools and were unwilling to pay the price to receive it—that is, to convert to Christianity and give up their Native American customs and traditions.

Nonetheless, and despite its limited success, the colonial approach to Native American education continued in modified form into the 20th century. Missionaries, subsidized by private and public funds, continued to carry both Christianity and "civilization" to the Native Americans. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and religious catechism remained at the heart of their efforts, and parents continued to be asked to give their children over to boarding schools to be educated and civilized. To the English colonists, and later to the Anglo Americans, the school became the tool for assimilation of the Native American.