Education in the Colonies

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Education in the Colonies

• The School System in America
• 1607-Present

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Colonial Schools

• Modeled on British system
• Stressed religious education
• Reading was vital and literacy important
• WHY?

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New England Mass Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut

• Church, State, schools interrelated
• Establish system of town schools
• Learning focused on curbing idleness and growing
  up

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The Middle Colonies NY, NJ, Penn, Del

• Wider variety of students
• Swedes, Germans, Irish, English, Dutch, Scot,
  etc.
• Mostly parochial schools
• Appealed to the various Protestant and Catholic
  Faiths of area
• Similar curriculum to New England School

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The Southern Colonies Virginia, Maryland,
Georgia, NC, SC

• Mostly limited to large landowners
• Promote religion
• Civil Society
• Gentleman and ladies of breeding
• Few schools for lower class
• know your place
• Education for slaves forbidden

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Types of Schools

• 3 major types
• Dame Schools
• Reading and Writing Schools
• Latin Grammar Schools

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Dame Schools

• Run by widows or housewives
• Supported by modest fees
• Provided basic schooling for both genders
• Reading, writing, arithmetic at elementary level
• Sewing, homemaking lessons included for girls

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Reading and Writing Schools

• Boys Only
• Lessons based on Bible, New England Primer
• New England Primer
• Used woodcuts, rhymed couplets to teach letters
  of the alphabet
• Couplets and images derived from Bible

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Latin Grammar School

• Upper level education
• Students enrolled about 7 or 8
• Boys only
• Intend as preparation for Harvard University
• Ultimate goal would be position in church and
  government

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Life in a Colonial School

• Students sometimes began school as young as 2 and
  half!
• All ages shared a classroom
• Used hornbooks to learn alphabet
• Textbooks were whatever books students brought to
  school
• Most schools were poorly located and quite
  cramped
• Discipline was harsh and quite violent

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New Schooling Ideas Pre-Revolutionary Era to
Early Republic

• Compulsory Education
• Broader Learning
• Free and public schools
• Female schools
• Americanization

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Compulsory Education

• Massachusetts Act of 1642
• Required compulsory education
• Parents with illiterate children could lose
  custody!
• Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647
• Required establishment of town supported schools
• Depended on size of town
• Salary of teacher paid by town
• Why the name?

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Broader Education

• Benjamin Franklin
• Created Philadelphia Academy (1751)
• Intended to replace Latin Grammar School
• Lessons in English instead of Latin
• Broader, practical knowledge
• Secular and open to public (for small tuition)
• Less emphasis on religion
• Peaked about 1855 (6,185 total in US)

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Philadelphia Academy Curriculum

• Grammar
• Composition
• Literature
• Classical and Modern Languages
• Science
• Writing and Drawing

• Rhetoric and Oratory
• Geography
• History
• Agriculture and Gardening
• Arithmetic and Accounting
• Mechanics

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Education for Women

• Little formal schooling for girls
• Education was intended to create better wives and
  mothers, not scholars
• Our object has been, not to make learned ladies,
  or skilled metaphysical reasoners, or deep read
  scholars in physical science there is a more
  useful, tho less exalted and less brilliant
  station that woman must occupy, there are duties
  of incalculable importance that she must perform
  that station is home these duties are the
  alleviation of the trials of her parents the
  soothing of the labours and fatigues of her
  partner and the education for time and eternity
  of the next generation of immortal
  beings----MISSION STATEMENT OF SARAH PIERCES
  FEMALE ACADEMY (early 19th century)

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More schooling for Women?

• Female seminaries
• Established in early nineteenth century to train
  women for higher education and public service
  outside the home
• Troy Seminary
• Founded by Emma Willard in 1821
• First college for women in the country!

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Jeffersonian Education

• Thomas Jefferson
• Bill for the More General Diffusion of
  Knowledge(1779)
• Virginia
• State run schools providing free education to all
  white children
• Failed to pass
• Opens University of Virginia in 1824
• Considered it his greatest achievement

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Americanization

• Noah Webster
• American writer and publisher
• Sought to remove British influence and
  Americanize education and English
• colour vs color, labour vs labor
• Creates Elementary Spelling Book (1783) and The
  American Dictionary
• Patriotic, moralistic virtues
• Know your place
• Work hard
• Respect property of others

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Free Public Education

• 1820-1865
• Common Schools
• Primarily in northeast, midwest
• Open to all students and supported by the state
• Not always popular
• Loss of local control

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Horace Mann

• First State Secretary of Education
• Traveled throughout Massachusetts writing reports
  on schooling
• Argued that common schools could maintain
  republic and capitalistic economy
• Told business it created obedient skilled workers
• Told workers it improved opportunity to succeed
  and protect rights!