I. The Colonial Period.
The founding of Harvard
Since Harvard College, the American Cambridge, “accomplished,” as Boone says, “a much needed work, with manifold wholesome reactions upon society and government, so that it has been affirmed, with show of truth, that ‘the founding of Harvard College hastened the Revolution half a century,’”[159] our study of the schools of the colonial period will center around this institution. It can be stated with safety that the history of Harvard, its leading men, and its varying attitude toward different Colonial problems, throws light on the development of the question of education at the time when the foundations of our national government were laid.
When Boston was but six years old, plans were laid for America’s first college. “Among the early educational leaders,” says Boone, “were such men as the Rev. Thomas Shepherd, John Cotton, and John Wilson, Jr.; all clergymen and all college-bred; Stoughton; Dudley, the deputy-governor, and, above all, ‘Winthrop, the governor, the guide and good genius of the colony.’ Such were the men ... of the infant colony.... Here were learning and character; world-wisdom and refinements of heart; breadth and wholeness of culture, such as could alone justify the boldness of their attempt.”[160] The institution was started in poverty, four hundred pounds being voted by the people. The high motive which prompted the enterprise was “an unbounded zeal for an education, that to them seemed not so much desirable as necessary, that ‘the light of learning might not go out, nor the study of God’s Word perish.’”
Object of Harvard to train ministers
The object of the school, as held by the founders, is well described by a Boston citizen, who writes thus in 1643 to some of his friends: “After we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and to perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust. And as we were thinking and consulting how to effect this great work, it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Howard (a godly gentleman and a lover of learning, then living among us) to give the one half of his estate ... toward the erecting of a College, and all his library.”
In the contemplation of a college by those noble men, the uppermost thought was how to gain an educated ministry. This object was lost sight of.
“It must be remembered,” writes Boone, “that for sixty years the institution was little more than a training-school for ministers, managed as a theological seminary, having religion, of a more or less well-defined type, as its basis and chief object. Yet, as Professor Emerson has put it, ‘It is one of the most remarkable things in the history of Harvard, that, in all the constitutions of the college there is nothing illiberal or sectarian; nothing to check the freest pursuit of truth in theological opinions, and in everything else; and this, too, while the founders of the college were severely and strictly orthodox, often exclusive in their own opinions, and while their object was unquestionably to provide for the thorough education of ministers of the gospel in like views with themselves.’” “The very foundation idea of the college,” says Boone, in another paragraph, “was the theological want.”
“The presidents and members of the corporation were generally the prominent scholars, the theologians, and the political leaders of the community and time. The college easily came to be the arena upon which, or the interest about which, were fought those terrible logomachies of dogma and doctrine. These required, as they had, the best learning, the shrewdest insight, the most politic minds of the day.”
This perhaps explains that former statement, that the education of ministers by Harvard had more than anything else to do with the overthrow of the theocracy established about Boston.
A manifest spirit of democracy
It is interesting, also, to note the spirit of democracy which this institution fostered. In speaking of the raising of the fund for erecting the building, Boone says: “The colony caught his [Mr. Harvard’s] spirit, ... and all did something, even the indigent. One subscribed a number of sheep; another, nine shillings’ worth of cloth; one, a ten-shilling pewter flagon; others, a fruit-dish, a sugar-spoon, a silver-tipped jug, etc.... No rank, no class of men, is unrepresented. The school was of the people.”[161] “It was nursed by democracy,” and it in turn nursed democracy. Surely the Spirit of God was pleading with men so to arrange their leading educational institution that the principles of the Reformation might be perpetuated.
Early course of study in Harvard
The course of study for this ministers’ school, as described by Emerson, was remarkably free from sectarianism, and liberal in thought. “The Bible was systematically studied for the entire three years, Ezra, Daniel, and the New Testament being specified. A year was given to catechetical divinity.”[162] Students were required to attend worship twice daily, when the Scriptures were read in Hebrew or Greek, and they were required to translate the selection. History received some attention, but the sciences were practically unknown, and “all profane literature was excluded.”
Through all this is discernible the attempt to educate for the cause of Christ. With this beginning, what might have been accomplished had the plan, with truth unadulterated, been followed! The work done in later days by the schools, under the direction of the State, is but an indication of the broad field which lay ahead of Harvard and similar institutions, had the church remained in her province as the educator of her own children.
Indications of papal principles
From the very foundation of Harvard may be seen indications that there was alongside of these principles of Christian education somewhat of medieval teaching, which, unless discovered and banished would act as leaven, permeating the whole loaf. For instance, when the college was less than twenty years old, we find this requirement for admission announced: “When any scholar is able to read Tully or any like classical Latin author, ex tempore, and make and speak true Latin in verse and prose, and define perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue, then may he be admitted to the College; nor shall any claim admission before such qualifications.” This, of course, was patterning after the European universities, and theirs was a papal system.
This was the Harvard of colonial times. As we enter the Revolutionary period, we may look for changes as the result of both the correct and the incorrect principles harbored. Is Harvard, with all her wonderful facilities, training as many for gospel service to-day as she did of old? Yale, the second Congregational school, followed closely the plans and object of Harvard.
Education in Virginia monarchical
William and Mary, the second college in the United States, was founded under different circumstances. It was born in the midst of wealth, and was befriended by cavaliers and courtiers. “The roots,” says Boone, “were deep in the great English ecclesiastical system,” and yet the avowed object was “that the college, when established, should be a ‘seminary for the breeding of good ministers.’” Notwithstanding good intentions, it mixed scholastic teachings; for it stood for “the Oxford order of humanities; the abstract as the foundation of the concrete; everything for discipline; the ancient languages before the modern.” Jefferson was a graduate of this school, and later it will be seen how this man, whose mind comprehended so clearly the principles of religious liberty, strove to break away from this mixture in education, and advocated a decidedly secular education in schools which were supported by the State, thereby avoiding in such institutions the mixture of secular and religious training.
So far, we see the Episcopal school, William and Mary, deeply rooted in the English ecclesiastical system, and unable to receive the Reformation principles of education pure and simple. The two Congregational schools, Harvard and Yale, approached more nearly the Protestant ideal, but being unable to break wholly the bond of scholasticism, they made much of preparatory work in the classics.
Education problems of Colonial days
Some or the educational problems with which our Colonial Fathers had to wrestle were “parental responsibility, the general viciousness of indolence, the educative office of labor, the State’s relation to individual need, compulsory employment and schooling, the state ownership of child-life,” and above all, and including all, the relation the church sustained to the schools, how far secular education could be offered in Christian schools, and how far the church could ask aid of the state in the conduct of church schools. They were weighty questions upon which hung, and still hangs, the destiny of a nation.
No sharp dividing line can be drawn between the Colonial and the Revolutionary periods. The work begun in the Colonial period prepared men to act a noble part in the Revolutionary period. The truth of the educational system would bear fruit, but the error which we have already noticed was in great danger of gaining strength enough to choke the pure principles. Mere accusations amount to but little. Let it suffice to follow the history of educational progress through the next century. Results speak for themselves.