Colonial
America 1607-1783
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All American
Educational Theorists of the Colonial Period
Events1630: Puritans settle near Boston 1635: Boston Latin School established 1642: First compulsory education law 1690: The New England Primer begins
publication ResourcesAmerican Education The Colonial Experience 1607-1783 contains a history of how the field of education developed during Colonial times. It includes such topics as Church, School, College, and Community, as well as a variety of other topics providing background information on laws, people, places and the Colonial Period in general as pertaining to education. Introduction to the Foundations of American Education is a textbook that not only talks about education in colonial times but up until the present as well. It also discusses philosophies of teaching, dealing with diversity, employment, interactions between school and society, as well as the legal foundations of the education system. The book is meant to give a well-rounded study or survey of the field of education. Updated February, 11, 2002
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Education as an Extension of the ChurchBy Nicholas
A. Marshall The purpose of education is to transfer knowledge and culture from one generation to the next. Education in the American colonies developed mainly as an extension of the Church that wanted to keep itself at the forefront of society. The criteria to support such a statement would include who ran the schools, the purpose for the schools, who was teaching the schools, and what was being taught. Religion permeated every aspect of the education system originally set up by the Puritans. The teachers usually came from the clergy, and textbooks contained scripture and moral lessons deemed important by the church. All of this helped the Church to maintain influence over the people. A common practice was to head a school, if not with a minister, than with a man with close ties to the church. The first schools were set up before 1650 by wealthy benefactors, such as Benjamin Syms, who donated land and money (Cremin, 182). Even though the Church didn’t set the school up, Syms made sure that the board was made up of commissioners and more importantly ministers and churchwardens from the area local to the school (Cremin, 183). A school in Maryland was headed by a layman named Ralph Crouch of Newtown yet even he was tightly linked to the Jesuit mission (Cremin, 182). With church officials on the board, the church was free to implement what ever it saw fit to have taught. This virtually guaranteed a curriculum dripping with religious content. Unlike the current system where church and state institutions such as education are kept separate, during Colonial times, schools were set up to perpetuate religion and protect citizens from Satan. Early colonists such as the Puritans believed that education was necessary to win the “incessant struggle against the satanic barbarism of the wilderness” (Cremin,176-177).This is most clearly shown in the Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647 which actually begins by saying the deluder Satan’s chief project was to “keepe men from the knowledge of y Scriptures…” and went on to decree that every town with fifty families was to hire a teacher and a town with a least one hundred families would set up a grammar school to prepare students to enter Harvard (Johnson, 297, Webb, 153). Harvard as well as the other institutions of higher education, such as Yale, Princeton, and Queens to name a few were set up to train new ministers (Johnson, 298). In addition to having clergy on the school boards, and on many occasions teaching, the main textbook in use, contained mostly religious content. When children first began to read, they used contraptions called hornbooks. According to the Blackwell Museum, these were paddle shaped boards that had the alphabet and the Lord’s Prayer (Hornbook). It was a common belief that young children should start learning to read with something familiar, and since the church enjoyed such a strong presence, the prayer was used (Hornbook). The New England Primer, which began publication in 1690, was the most used book in the colonies for basic instruction in reading and writing. Over its 150 years of publication, each new addition was a little bit different from the one before, yet it always contained the same elements (Webb, 153). It contained the Alphabet complete with rhymes to teach moral lessons such as the rhyme for A, “In Adam’s fall we sinned all” (New England Primer). Also found in the book were “the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments.” There was even a poem about being a martyr with pictures of people burning at the stake with the family watching, as well as an abridged Puritan catechism (New England Primer). The colonial system of education was not solely for the benefit of the people. It was organized in such a way as to keep religion an important and influential part of society. The Church basically controlled who taught and what was taught. Most of the active men in politics were religious men and they used their influence to create and pass laws to perpetuate the influence of the Church. When all of this is combined, it is shown that the education system of the colonial era was set up as an extension of the Church. Works Cited
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