The first American schools
in the thirteen original colonies opened in the 17th century. Boston Latin School was founded in 1635 and is both the first public school and oldest existing
school in the United States.
The first free
taxpayer-supported public school in North America, the Mather School, was
opened in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1639. Cremin (1970)
stresses that colonists tried at first to educate by the traditional English
methods of family, church, community, and apprenticeship, with schools later
becoming the key agent in "socialization."
At first, the rudiments of
literacy and arithmetic were taught inside the family, assuming the parents had
those skills. Literacy rates were much higher in New England because much of
the population had been deeply involved in the Protestant Reformation and
learned to read in order to read the Scriptures. Literacy was much lower in the
South, where the Anglican Church was the established church. Single
working-class people formed a large part of the population in the early years,
arriving as indentured servants. The planter class did not support public education but arranged for
private tutors for their children, and sent some to England at appropriate ages
for further education.
By the mid-19th century,
the role of the schools in New England had expanded to such an extent that they
took over many of the educational tasks traditionally handled by parents.
All the New England
colonies required towns to set up schools, and many did so. In 1642 the Massachusetts Bay Colony made "proper" education
compulsory; other New England colonies followed this example. Similar statutes
were adopted in other colonies in the 1640s and 1650s. The schools were all
male and all white, with few facilities for girls.
In the 18th century,
"common schools" were established; students of all ages were under
the control of one teacher in one room. Although they were publicly supplied at
the local (town) level, they were not free. Students' families were charged
tuition or "rate bills."
The larger towns in New
England opened grammar schools, the forerunner of the modern high
school. The most famous was the Boston Latin School, which is still in operation as a public high school. Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut, was another. By the 1780s, most had been replaced by private
academies.
By the early 19th century
New England operated a network of private high schools, now called
"prep schools," typified by Phillips Andover Academy (1778), Phillips Exeter Academy (1781), and Deerfield Academy (1797). They became
the major feeders for Ivy League colleges in the
mid-19th century. These prep schools became coeducational in the 1970s,
and remain highly prestigious in the 21st century.
Residents of the Upper South, centered on the Chesapeake Bay, created some basic
schools early in the colonial period. In late 17th century Maryland, the
Catholic Jesuits operated some schools for Catholic students. Generally
the planter class hired tutors for the education of their children or sent them
to private schools. During the colonial years, some sent their sons to England
or Scotland for schooling.
In March 1620, George Thorpe sailed from Bristol for Virginia. He became a deputy in
charge of 10,000 acres (4,000 ha) of land to be set aside for a university
and Indian school. The plans for the school for Native Americans ended when
George Thorpe was killed in the Indian Massacre of 1622. In Virginia, rudimentary schooling for the poor and paupers
was provided by the local parish. Most elite parents either home schooled their
children using peripatetic tutors or sent them to small local private schools.
In the deep south (Georgia
and South Carolina), schooling was carried on by primarily by private venture
teachers and a hodgepodge of publicly funded projects. In the colony of
Georgia, at least ten grammar schools were in operation by 1770, many taught by
ministers. The Bethesda Orphan House educated children. Dozens of private
tutors and teachers advertised their service in newspapers. A study of women's
signatures indicates a high degree of literacy in areas with schools. In
South Carolina, scores of school projects were advertised in the South Carolina Gazette beginning in 1732.
Although it is difficult to know how many ads yielded successful schools, many
of the ventures advertised repeatedly over years, suggesting continuity.
After the American
Revolution, Georgia and South Carolina tried to start small public
universities. Wealthy families sent their sons north to college. In Georgia
public county academies for white students became more common, and after 1811
South Carolina opened a few free "common schools" to teach reading,
writing and arithmetic to whites.
Republican governments
during the Reconstruction era established the first public school systems to be
supported by general taxes. Both whites and blacks would be admitted, but
legislators agreed on racially segregated schools. (The few integrated schools
were located in New
Orleans).
Particularly after
white Democrats regained control of the state legislatures in former
Confederate states, they consistently underfunded public schools for blacks
which continued until 1954 when the United States Supreme Court declared state laws establishing
separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.
Generally public schooling
in rural areas did not extend beyond the elementary grades for either whites or
blacks. This was known as "eighth grade school"
After 1900, some cities
began to establish high schools, primarily for middle class whites. In the
1930s roughly one fourth of the US population still lived and worked on farms
and few rural Southerners of either race went beyond the 8th grade until after
1945.
The earliest continually
operating school for girls in the United States is the Catholic Ursuline Academy in New Orleans. It was founded in 1727
by the Sisters
of the Order of Saint Ursula. The Academy graduated the first female pharmacist, and the
first woman to write a book of literary merit. The first convent established in
the United States supported the Academy. This was the first free school and
first retreat center for young women. It was the first school to teach free women of color, Native Americans, and female African-American slaves. In the
region, Ursuline provided the first center of social welfare in the Mississippi
Valley; and it was the first boarding school for girls in Louisiana, and the
first school of music in New Orleans.
Tax-supported schooling
for girls began as early as 1767 in New England. It was optional and some towns
proved reluctant to support this innovation. Northampton, Massachusetts, for example, was a late adopter because it
had many rich families who dominated the political and social structures. They
did not want to pay taxes to aid poor families. Northampton assessed taxes on
all households, rather than only on those with children, and used the funds to
support a grammar school to prepare boys for college. Not until after 1800 did
Northampton educate girls with public money. In contrast, the town of Sutton, Massachusetts, was diverse in terms of social leadership and religion at an
early point in its history. Sutton paid for its schools by means of taxes on
households with children only, thereby creating an active constituency in favor
of universal education for both boys and girls.
Historians note that
reading and writing were different skills in the colonial era. Schools taught
both, but in places without schools, writing was taught mainly to boys and a
few privileged girls. Men handled worldly affairs and needed to both read and
write. It was believed that girls needed only to read (especially religious
materials). This educational disparity between reading and writing explains why
the colonial women often could read, but could not write and could not sign
their names—they used an "X".
The education of elite
women in Philadelphia after 1740 followed the British model developed by the Gentry
classes during the early 18th century. Rather than emphasizing ornamental
aspects of women's roles, this new model encouraged women to engage in more
substantive education, reaching into the classical arts and sciences to improve
their reasoning skills. Education had the capacity to help colonial women
secure their elite status by giving them traits that their 'inferiors' could
not easily mimic. Fatherly (2004) examines British and American writings that
influenced Philadelphia during the 1740s–1770s and the ways in which
Philadelphia women gained education and demonstrated their status.
By 1664, when the
territory was taken over by the English, most towns in the New Netherland colony had already
set up elementary schools. The schools were closely related to the Dutch
Reformed Church, and emphasized reading for religious instruction and prayer.
The English closed the Dutch-language public schools; in some cases these were
converted into private academies. The new English government showed little
interest in public schools.
German settlements from
New York through Pennsylvania, Maryland and down to the Carolinas sponsored
elementary schools closely tied to their churches, with each denomination or
sect sponsoring its own schools. In the early colonial years, German immigrants
were Protestant and the drive for education was related to teaching students to
read Scripture.
Following waves of German
Catholic immigration after the 1848 revolutions, and after the end of the Civil
War, both Catholics and Missouri Synod Lutherans began to set up their own
German-language parochial schools, especially in cities of heavy German
immigration: such as Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago and Milwaukee, as well as
rural areas heavily settled by Germans. The Amish, a small religious sect speaking German, are opposed to
schooling past the elementary level. They see it as unnecessary, as dangerous
to preservation of their faith, and as beyond the purview of government. Spain
had small settlements in Florida, the Southwest, and also controlled Louisiana.
There is little evidence that they schooled any girls. Parish schools were
administered by Jesuits or Franciscans and were limited to male students.
In the 17th century,
colonists imported schoolbooks from England. By 1690, Boston publishers were
reprinting the English Protestant
Tutor under the title of The New England Primer. The Primer was built on rote
memorization. By simplifying Calvinist theology, the Primer enabled the Puritan child
to define the limits of the self by relating his life to the authority of God
and his parents. The Primer included
additional material that made it widely popular in colonial schools until it
was supplanted by Webster's work. The "blue backed speller" of Noah Webster was by far the most
common textbook from the 1790s until 1836, when the McGuffey Readers appeared. Both
series emphasized civic duty and morality, and sold tens of millions of copies
nationwide.
Webster's Speller was the pedagogical
blueprint for American textbooks; it was so arranged that it could be easily
taught to students and it progressed by age. Webster believed students learned
most readily when complex problems were broken into its component parts. Each
pupil could master one part before moving to the next. Ellis argues that
Webster anticipated some of the insights associated in the 20th century
with Jean
Piaget's theory
of cognitive development.
Webster said that children
pass through distinctive learning phases in which they master increasingly
complex or abstract tasks. He stressed that teachers should not try to teach a
three-year-old how to read—wait until they are ready at age five. He planned
the Speller accordingly,
starting with the alphabet, then covering the different sounds of vowels and
consonants, then syllables; simple words came next, followed by more complex
words, then sentences.
Webster's Speller was entirely secular. It
ended with two pages of important dates in American history, beginning with
Columbus' "discovery" in 1492 and ending with the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, by which
the United States achieved independence. There was no mention of God, the
Bible, or sacred events. As Ellis explains, "Webster began to construct a
secular catechism to the nation-state. Here was the first appearance of
'civics' in American schoolbooks. In this sense, Webster's speller was the
secular successor to The New
England Primer with its explicitly biblical
injunctions." Bynack (1984) examines Webster in relation to his
commitment to the idea of a unified American national culture that would prevent
the decline of republican virtues and national solidarity. Webster acquired his perspective
on language from such German theorists as Johann David Michaelis and Johann Gottfried Herder. He believed with them that a nation's linguistic forms and the
thoughts correlated with them shaped individuals' behavior. He intended the
etymological clarification and reform of American English to improve citizens'
manners and thereby preserve republican purity and social stability. Webster
animated his Speller and Grammar by following these
principles.
Higher education was
largely oriented toward training men as ministers before 1800. Doctors and
lawyers were trained in local apprentice systems.
Religious denominations
established most early colleges in order to train ministers. New England had a
long emphasis on literacy in order that individuals could read the Bible. Harvard College was founded by the colonial legislature in 1636, and named
after an early benefactor.
Most of the funding came
from the colony, but the college began to build an endowment from its early
years. Harvard at first focused on training young men for the ministry,
but many alumni went into law, medicine, government or business. The college
was a leader in bringing Newtonian science to the colonies.
The College of William & Mary was founded by Virginia government in
1693, with 20,000 acres (8,100 ha) of land for an endowment, and a penny
tax on every pound of tobacco, together with an annual appropriation. It was closely
associated with the established Anglican Church. James Blair, the leading Anglican minister in the colony, was president for
50 years. The college won the broad support of the Virginia planter class, most
of whom were Anglicans. It hired the first law professor and trained many of
the lawyers, politicians, and leading planters. Students headed for the
ministry were given free tuition.
The first history of Yale was written by President Thomas Clap
in 1766. Yale
College was
founded by Puritans in 1701, and in 1716 was relocated to New Haven, Connecticut. The conservative Puritan ministers of Connecticut had grown
dissatisfied with the more liberal theology of Harvard, and wanted their own
school to train orthodox ministers. However President Thomas Clap (1740–1766)
strengthened the curriculum in the natural sciences and made Yale a stronghold
of revivalist New Light theology.
New Side Presbyterians in
1747 set up the College of New Jersey, in the town of Princeton; much later it
was renamed as Princeton University. Baptists established Rhode
Island College in 1764, and in 1804 it was renamed Brown University in honor of a
benefactor. Brown was especially liberal in welcoming young men from other
denominations.
In New York City, the
Anglicans set up Kings College in 1746, with its president Samuel Johnson the only teacher. It closed during the American
Revolution, and reopened in 1784 as an independent institution under the name
of Columbia College; it is now Columbia University.
The Academy of
Philadelphia was created in 1749 by Benjamin Franklin and other civic
minded leaders in Philadelphia. Unlike colleges in other cities, it was not
oriented toward the training of ministers. It was renamed the University of Pennsylvania in 1791.
The Dutch Reform Church in 1766 set up Queens College in New Jersey, which later
became known as Rutgers University and gained state support. Dartmouth College, chartered in 1769 as a
school for Native Americans, relocated to its present site in Hanover, New
Hampshire, in 1770.
All of the schools were
small, with a limited undergraduate curriculum oriented on the classical
liberal arts. Students were drilled in Greek, Latin, geometry, ancient history,
logic, ethics and rhetoric, with few discussions, little homework and no lab
sessions. The college president typically tried to enforce strict discipline.
The upperclassmen enjoyed hazing the freshmen. Many students were younger than
17, and most of the colleges also operated a preparatory school. There were no
organized sports, or Greek-letter fraternities, but many of the schools had
active literary societies. Tuition was very low and scholarships were few.
The colonies had no
schools of law. A few young American students studied at the prestigious Inns of Court in London. The
majority of aspiring lawyers served apprenticeships with established American
lawyers, or "read the law" to qualify for bar exams. Law became
very well established in the colonies, compared to medicine, which was in
rudimentary condition. In the 18th century, 117 Americans had graduated in
medicine in Edinburgh, Scotland, but most physicians learned as apprentices in the colonies.
The trustees of the
Academy of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania) established the
first medical school in the colonies in 1765. In New York, the medical department of
King's College was established in 1767, and in 1770 it awarded the first
American M.D. degree.
Comments
From 1620 to 1800,
families read the Bible, so everybody who could get a Bible learned to
read. Most families homeschooled, worked
from childhood and hired tutors.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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