The History of Education Part 36

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 111. WHERE YALE COLLEGE WAS FOUNDED]

Plymouth Colony, in 1658 and again in 1663, proposed to the towns that they "sett vp" a schoolmaster "to traine vp children to reading and writing" (R. 194 a). In 1672 the towns were asked to aid Harvard College by gifts (R. 194 b). In 1673-74 the income from the Cape Cod fisheries was set aside for the support of a (grammar) school (R. 194 c). Finally, in 1677, all towns having over fifty families and maintaining a grammar school were ordered aided from the fishery proceeds (R. 194 d).

The Ma.s.sachusetts laws also applied to Maine, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and Vermont, as these were then a part of Ma.s.sachusetts Colony. After New Hamps.h.i.+re separated, in 1680, the Ma.s.sachusetts Law of 1647 was virtually readopted in 1719-21. In Maine and Vermont there were so few settlers, until near the beginning of our national life, that the influence of the Ma.s.sachusetts legislation on these States was negligible until a later period.

Only in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, of all the New England colonies, did the Ma.s.sachusetts legislation fail to exert a deep influence. Settled as these two had been by refugees from New England, and organized on a basis of hospitality to all who suffered from religious oppression elsewhere, the religious stimulus to the founding of schools naturally was lacking. As the religious basis for education was as yet the only basis, the first development of schools in Rhode Island awaited the humanitarian and economic influences which did not become operative until early in the nineteenth century.

Outside of the New England colonies, the appeal to the State as the servant of the Church was seldom made during the early colonial period, the churches handling the educational problem in their own way. As a result the beginnings of State oversight and control were left to New England. In the central colonies a series of parochial-school systems came to prevail, while in Episcopalian Virginia and the other colonies to the south the no-business-of-the-State att.i.tude a.s.sumed toward education by the mother country was copied.

THE CHURCH SCHOOLS OF NEW YORK. New Netherland, as New York Colony was called before the English occupation, was settled by the Dutch West India Company, and some dozen villages about New York and up the Hudson had been founded by the time it pa.s.sed to the control of the English, in 1664. In these the Dutch established typical home-land public parochial schools, under the control of the Reformed Dutch Church. The schoolmaster was usually the reader and precentor in the church as well (R. 195), and often acted, as in Holland, as s.e.xton besides. Girls attended on equal terms with boys, but sat apart and recited in separate cla.s.ses. The instruction consisted of reading and writing Dutch, sometimes a little arithmetic, the Dutch Catechism, the reading of a few religious books, and certain prayers. The rules (1661) for a schoolmaster in New Amsterdam (R. 196), and the contract with a Dutch schoolmaster in Flatbush (R. 195), dating from 1682, reveal the type of schools and school conditions provided. All except the children of the poor paid fees to the schoolmaster. [10] He was licensed by the Dutch church authorities. As the Dutch had not come to America because of persecution, and were in no way out of sympathy with religious conditions in the home-land, the schools they developed here were typical of the Dutch European parochial schools of the time (R. 178).

A _trivial_ (Latin) school was also established in New York, in 1652.

After the English occupation the English principle of private and church control of education, with schooling on a tuition or a charitable basis, came to prevail, and this continued up to the beginning of our national period. [11] Of the English colonial schools of New York Draper has written: [12]

All the English schools in the province from 1700 down to the time of the Declaration of Independence were maintained by a great religious society organized under the auspices of the Church of England--and, of course, with the favor of the government--called "The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." The law governing this Society provided that no teacher should be employed until he had proved "his affection for the present government" and his "conformity to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England." Schools maintained under such auspices were in no sense free schools. Indeed, humiliating as it is, no student of history can fail to discern the fact that the government of Great Britain, during its supremacy in this territory, did nothing to facilitate the extension or promote the efficiency of free elementary schools among the people.

THE PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS OF PENNSYLVANIA. Pennsylvania was settled by Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, German Lutherans, Moravians, Mennonites, and members of the German Reformed Church, all of whom came to America to secure greater religious liberty and had been attracted to this colony by the freedom of religious wors.h.i.+p which Penn had provided for there. All these were Protestant sects, all believed in the necessity of learning to read the Bible as a means to personal salvation, and all made efforts looking toward the establishment of schools as a part of their church organization. Unlike New England, though, no sect was in a majority; church control for each denomination was considered as most satisfactory; and no appeal was made to the State to have it a.s.sist the churches in the enforcement of their religious purposes. The clergymen were usually the teachers in the parochial schools established, [13] while private pay schools were opened in the villages and towns. These were taught in English, German, or the Moravian tongue (Czech), according to the original language of the different immigrants. The Quakers seem to have taken particular interest in schools (R. 199), a Quaker school in Philadelphia (R. 198) having been established the year the city was founded. Girls were educated as well as boys, and the emphasis was placed on reading, writing, counting, and religion, rather than upon any higher form of training.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 112. AN OLD QUAKER MEETING-HOUSE AND SCHOOL AT LAMPETER, PENNSYLVANIA (From an old drawing)]

The result was the development in this colony of a policy of depending on church and private effort, and the provision of education, aside from certain rudimentary and religious instruction, was left largely for those who could afford to pay for the privilege. Charitable education was extended to but a few, for a short time, while, under the freedom allowed, many communities made but indifferent provisions or suffered their schools to lapse. Under the primitive conditions of the time the interest even in religious education often declined almost to the vanis.h.i.+ng point. So lax in the matter of providing schooling had many communities become that the second Provincial a.s.sembly, sitting in Philadelphia, in 1683, pa.s.sed an ordinance requiring (R. 197) that all persons having children must cause them to be taught to read and write, so that they might be able to read the Scriptures by the time they were twelve years old, and also that all children be taught some useful trade. A fine of 5 was to be a.s.sessed for failure to comply with the law. So much in advance of English ideas as to what was fitting and proper was this compulsory law that it was vetoed by William and Mary, when submitted to their majesties for approval. Ten years later it was reenacted by the Governor and a.s.sembly of the colony, but proved so difficult of enforcement that it was soon dropped, and the chance of starting education in Pennsylvania somewhat after the New England model was lost. The colony now settled down to a policy of non state action, and this in time became so firmly established that the do- as-you-please idea persisted in this State up to the establishment of the first free state school system, in 1834.

MIXED CONDITIONS IN NEW JERSEY. In New Jersey, situated as it was near the center of the different colonies, the early development of education there was the product of a number of different influences. The Dutch crossed from New Amsterdam, the English came from Connecticut and later from New York, Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians came from the mother country, Swedish Lutherans settled along the Delaware, and Quakers and German Lutherans came over from Pennsylvania. The educational practice of the colony or land from which each group of settlers came was reproduced in the colony. After the English succeeded the Dutch in New Amsterdam (1664), English methods and practice in education gradually came into control throughout most of New Jersey, and as a result here, as in New York, but little was accomplished in providing schools for other than a select few until well after the beginning of the nineteenth century. Neither New Jersey, New York, nor Pennsylvania may be said to have developed any colonial educational policy aside from that of allowing private and parochial effort to provide such schools as seemed desirable.

VIRGINIA AND THE SOUTHERN TYPE. Almost all the conditions attending the settlement of Virginia were in contrast to those of the New England colonies. The early settlers were from the same cla.s.s of English yeomen and country squires, but with the important difference that whereas the New England settlers were Dissenters from the Church of England and had come to America to obtain freedom in religious wors.h.i.+p, the settlers in Virginia were adherents of the National Church and had come to America for gain. The marked differences in climate and possible crops led to the large plantation type of settlement, instead of the compact little New England town; the introduction of large numbers of "indentured white servants," and later negro slaves, led to the development of cla.s.ses in society instead of to the New England type of democracy; and the lack of a strong religious motive for education naturally led to the adoption of the customary English practices instead of to the development of colonial schools. The tutor in the home, education in small private pay schools, or education in the mother country were the prevailing methods adopted among the well-to-do planters, while the poorer cla.s.ses were left with only such advantages as apprentices.h.i.+p training or charity schools might provide.

Throughout the entire colonial period Virginia remained most like the mother country in spirit and practice, and stands among the colonies as the clearest example of the English att.i.tude toward school support and control. As in the mother country, education was considered to be no business of the State. Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and the Carolinas followed the English att.i.tude, much after the fas.h.i.+on of Virginia.

Practically all the Virginia colonial legislation relating to education refers either to William and Mary College (founded in 1693), or to the education of orphans and the children of the poor. Both these interests, as we have previously seen, were typically English. All the seventeenth- century legislation relating to education is based on the English Poor-Law legislation, [14] previously described (p. 325), and included the compulsory apprentices.h.i.+p of the children of the poor, training in a trade, the requirement that the public authorities must provide opportunities for this type of education, and the use of both local and colony funds for the purpose (R. 200 a), all, as the Statutes state, "according to the aforesaid laudable custom in the Kingdom of England." It was not until 1705 that Virginia reached the point, reached by Ma.s.sachusetts in 1642, of requiring that "the master of the [apprenticed]

orphan shall be obliged to teach him to read and write." In all the Anglican colonies the apprenticing of the children of the poor (see R. 200 b for some interesting North Carolina records) was a characteristic feature. During the entire colonial period the indifference of the mother country to general education was steadily reflected in Virginia and in the colonies which were essentially Anglican in religion, and followed the English example.

TYPE PLANS REPRESENTED BY 1750. The seventeenth century thus witnessed the transplanting of European ideas as to government, religion, and education to the new American colonies, and by the eighteenth century we find three clearly marked types of educational practice or conception as to educational responsibility established on American soil.

The first was the strong Calvinistic conception of a religious State, supporting a system of common vernacular schools, higher Latin schools, and a college, for both religious and civic ends. This type dominated New England, and is best represented by Ma.s.sachusetts. From New England this att.i.tude was carried westward by the migrations of New England people, and deeply influenced the educational development of all States to which the New Englander went in any large numbers. This was the educational contribution of Calvinism to America. [15] Out of it our state school systems of to-day, by the separation of Church and State, have been evolved.

The second was the parochial-school conception of the Dutch, Moravians, Mennonites, German Lutherans, German Reformed Church, Quakers, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Catholics. This type is best represented by Protestant Pennsylvania and Catholic Maryland. It stood for church control of all educational efforts, resented state interference, was dominated only by church purposes, and in time came to be a serious obstacle in the way of rational state school organization and control.

The third type, into which the second type tended to fuse, conceived of public education, aside from collegiate education, as intended chiefly for orphans and the children of the poor, and as a charity which the State was under little or no obligation to a.s.sist in supporting. All children of the upper and middle cla.s.ses in society attended private or church schools, or were taught by tutors in their homes, and for such instruction paid a proper tuition fee. Paupers and orphans, in limited numbers and for a limited time, might be provided with some form of useful education at the expense of either Church or State. This type is best represented by Anglican Virginia, which typified well the _laissez-faire_ policy which dominated England from the time of the Protestant Reformation until the latter half of the nineteenth century.

These three types of att.i.tude toward the provision of education became fixed American types, and each deeply influenced subsequent American educational development, as we shall point out in a later chapter.

DOMINANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS MOTIVE. The seventeenth century was essentially a period of the transplanting, almost unchanged in form, of the characteristic European inst.i.tutions, manners, religious att.i.tudes, and forms of government to American sh.o.r.es. Each sect or nationality on arriving set up in the new land the characteristic forms of church and school and social observances known in the old home-land. Dutch, Germans, English, Scotch, Calvinists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians-- reproduced in the American colonies the main type of schools existing at the time of their migration in the mother land from which they came. They were also dominated by the same deep religious purpose.

The dominance of this religious purpose in all instruction is well ill.u.s.trated by the great beginning-school book of the time, _The New England Primer_. A digest of the contents of this, with a few pages reproduced, is given in R. 202. This book, from which all children learned to read, was used by Dissenters and Lutherans alike in the American colonies. This book Ford well characterizes in the following words:

As one glances over what may truly be called "The Little Bible of New England," and reads its stern lessons, the Puritan mood is caught with absolute faithfulness. Here was no easy road to knowledge and salvation; but with prose as bare of beauty as the whitewash of their churches, with poetry as rough and stern as their storm-torn coast, with pictures as crude and unfinished as their own glacial-smoothed boulders, between stiff oak covers which symbolized the contents, the children were tutored, until, from being unregenerate, and as Jonathan Edwards said, "young vipers, and infinitely more hateful than vipers" to G.o.d, they attained that happy state when, as expressed by Judge Sewell's child, they were afraid that they "should goe to h.e.l.l," and were "stirred up dreadfully to seek G.o.d." G.o.d was made sterner and more cruel than any living judge, that all might be brought to realize how slight a chance even the least erring had of escaping eternal d.a.m.nation.

One learned to read chiefly that one might be able to read the Catechism and the Bible, and to know the will of the Heavenly Father. There was scarcely any other purpose in the maintenance of elementary schools. In the grammar schools and the colleges students were "instructed to consider well the main end of life and studies." These inst.i.tutions existed mainly to insure a supply of learned ministers for service in Church and State.

Such studies as history, geography, science, music, drawing, secular literature, and organized play were unknown. Children were constantly surrounded, week days and Sundays, by the somber Calvinistic religious atmosphere in New England, [16] and by the careful religious oversight of the pastors and elders in the colonies where the parochial-school system was the ruling plan for education. Schoolmasters were required to "catechise their scholars in the principles of the Christian religion,"

and it was made "a chief part of the schoolmaster's religious care to commend his scholars and his labors amongst them unto G.o.d by prayer morning and evening, taking care that his scholars do reverently attend during the same." Religious matter const.i.tuted the only reading matter, outside the instruction in Latin in the grammar schools. The Catechism was taught, and the Bible was read and expounded. Church attendance was required, and grammar-school pupils were obliged to report each week on the Sunday sermon. This insistence on the religious element was more prominent in Calvinistic New England than in the colonies to the south, but everywhere the religious purpose was dominant. The church parochial and charity schools were essentially schools for instilling the church practices and beliefs of the church maintaining them. This state of affairs continued until well toward the beginning of the nineteenth century.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Compare the conservative and radical groups in the English purification movement with the conservative and radical groups, as typified by Erasmus and Luther, at the time of the Reformation.

2. Show how, for each group, the schools established were merely homeland foreign-type religious schools, with nothing distinctively American about them.

3. Show why such copying of home-land types, even to the Latin grammar school, was perfectly natural.

4. The provision of the Law of 1642 requiring instruction in "the capital laws of the country" was new. How do you explain this addition to mother- land practices?

5. Show why the Law of 1642 was Calvinistic rather than Anglican in its origin.

6. Explain the meaning of the preamble to the Law of 1647.

7. Show how the Law of 1647 must go back for precedents to German, Dutch, and Scotch sources.

8. Apply the six principles stated by Mr. Martin, as embodied in the legislation of 1647, to modern state school practice, and show how we have adopted each in our laws.

9. Show also that the Law of 1647, as well as modern state school laws, is neither paternalistic nor socialistic in essential purpose.

10. Show that, though the mixture of religious sects in Pennsylvania made colonial legislation difficult, still it would have been possible to have enforced the Ma.s.sachusetts Law of 1642, or the Pennsylvania laws of 1683 or 1693, in the colony. How do you explain the opposition and failure to do so?

11. Show how the charity schools for the poor, and church missionary- society schools, were the natural outcome of the English att.i.tude toward elementary education.

12. Which of the three type plans in the American colonies by 1750 most influenced educational development in your State?

13. State the important contribution of Calvinism to our new-world life.

14. Explain the indifference of the Anglican Church to general education during the whole of our colonial period.

15. Explain what is meant by "The Puritan Church applied to its servant, the State," etc.

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are reproduced:

183. Nichols: The Puritan Att.i.tude.

184. Gov. Bradford: The Puritans leave England.

185. First Fruits: The Founding of Harvard College.

186. First Fruits: The First Rules for Harvard College.

(a) Entrance Requirements.

(b) Rules and Precepts.

(c) Time and Order of Studies.

(d) Requirements for Degrees.

187. College Charters: Extracts from, showing Privileges.

(a) Harvard College, 1650.

(b) Brown College, 1764.