The History Of Education, Ellwood P. Cubberley [motivational novels .TXT] 📗

on equal terms with boys, but sat apart and recited in separate classes. 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 homeland, 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 worship 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 assist 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.

 

[Illustration: 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 vanishing point. So lax in the matter of providing schooling had many communities become that the second Provincial Assembly, sitting in Philadelphia, in 1683, passed 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 assessed 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 re�nacted by the Governor and Assembly 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 class 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 worship, 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 classes 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 classes were left with only such advantages as apprenticeship 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 attitude 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 attitude, much after the fashion 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 apprenticeship 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 Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts. From New England this attitude 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 assist in supporting. All children of the upper and middle classes 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 attitude 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 institutions, manners, religious attitudes, and forms of government to