II. The Revolutionary Period.
Founding preparatory schools
In addition to the instruction given by pious Puritan parents to the flock in their own homes, a limited number of common or church schools was established in the Colonial period. The position of academies, as they develop in the Revolutionary period, is significant. We find that “alongside each of the first colleges, frequently antedating them, sometimes forming part of the organization, was a grammar-school.”
Such schools, attached to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, William and Mary’s, and others, prepared for the universities, and supplemented the work of the elementary or common schools. Herein lay a vital point. They had home schools, elementary schools, and colleges. It was impossible for these elementary schools to fit students for university life when such schools required for entrance that the student should “read Tully or any like classical Latin author ex tempore, and make and speak true Latin in verse and prose, and decline perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue,” as has already been quoted from an early Harvard announcement.
The universities demanded classics
The universities founded by the church were, then, forming a course of study for these grammar schools, or academies, as they were soon called; and since the demand was for a classical preparatory school, naturally their courses were “fitted to the time-sanctioned curriculum of the college. They taught much Latin and Greek, an extended course in mathematics, and were strong generally on the side of the humanities.” This was a modeling after Rugby, Eton, and other noted English schools, or the classical drill-schools of Germany, which, as we have before seen, were schools bearing decided marks of Jesuit teaching.
Should a young man care to pursue his studies beyond the elementary school, his only opportunity to do so was in one of the academies, where the classics formed the sum and substance of the instruction. The tendency to revert to the established forms of European education, or the papal system, is plainly visible.
Footprints of the papal education
The first colleges had been planted to give a Christian training, and doubtless had a start which might have resulted in the greatest strength to the church, and to the nation in a secondary way; but the introduction of these grammar schools or academies, with a course of study in the classics made necessary by the universities, threw the majority of the young people into a classical instead of a practical line of instruction. Looking at it from one standpoint, no wiser move could have been made to turn the tide of educational reform again toward papal education. Can we here trace the footprints of the Jesuits, whose policy since the days of Loyola had been to overthrow Protestantism by a false system of education?
Protestantism and republicanism weakened
The effect of the mixture of the pure and the impure methods, traceable in indistinct lines at the very beginning, now assumed more definite proportions. The growth of academies was remarkably rapid, and when attention is called to such men as Franklin, the Adamses, John Hancock, and the generation of “’76,” who received most of their education in these schools, it may seem like sheer presumption to condemn their work. The results, however, as seen in later years, warrant the charge that at that time was taken a long step from the principles of the Reformation, which meant to this country a weakening both in Protestantism and republicanism.
Union of Christian and papal systems
These academies were denominational, it is true; still they offered this prescribed course of instruction. Almost immediately appear signs of the result of this union of Christian education with scholasticism. For instance, we read that “Brown University, though founded as a Baptist institution, was nevertheless one of the first schools of the period to emphasize the growing sentiment for a thoroughly undenominational collegiate training.” Why should a denominational college give an undenominational course of instruction, and why, above all denominations, should the Baptists do so, to whom such a flood of light had come, and who always with pride pointed back to Roger Williams and the State of Rhode Island as the ancestors and embodiment of all that is Protestant and republican? But this is not the only indication of this decline from early principles.
Harvard loses sight of original object
About 1793 Harvard assumed the name of university. Boone says, “Signs of Catholicity also appear, in that students were no longer required to attend the divinity lectures, except they were preparing for the ministry.... Literary societies, voluntary associations for social and general culture, were multiplied.”
Decline in other schools
“The first Greek fraternity,—the Phi Beta Kappa,—the parent of both secret and open college fraternity organizations of America,” was formed at William and Mary in 1776. This is another indication of the stealthy introduction of principles opposed to democracy, and which tend to break existing prejudice against the secret organizations of the papacy.
Again, “Yale, also, though nominally on a Congregational foundation, received aid (1792) from the state, and gave place in her corporation to state representatives.” Educational apostasy was beginning; religious decline must follow.
Schools ask state support
Boone gives another paragraph, which, in a few words, tells a story of much significance, more, perhaps, than the author realized; for he was merely chronicling the history of education, not searching for the philosophy thereof. He says, “The college, once an appendage to the church, was seen, in view of imminent state dangers, to have an equal value to the Commonwealth.” This, of course, is true, because the Commonwealth depended for support, for very existence, upon the educational ideas propagated in its schools. But the writer continues: “First encouraged because it provided an educated ministry, there was coming to be recognized an opinion, despite the deficiencies in culture, that education is something more—that it has a value in itself; that schools might well be maintained apart from the church as an organization, and in no way lessen their usefulness.”[163] Here was the challenge.
Education belongs to the church
God has placed in the hands of his church the right and privilege to educate the young. In doing this, he has done more; for in educating the youth, the church stands at God’s right hand to guide the nation into paths of rectitude. Not by joining hands can this be done, for church and state must, in order each to be free, be forever separate. Still the pillar upon which the nation must stand, the only one upon which it can stand, is a true system of education, and this is a divine gift to the church, which was born of the Reformation.
Church fails in educational work
To the Lutheran Church the message of education was preached by Luther. The Episcopal Church received this “word and grace of God,” as Luther expresses it; but it passed from them, and they returned to scholasticism. Oxford, Cambridge, Eton, Rugby, all English schools testify to this. The message passed on to the Congregational Church, and Harvard, Yale, and others started on the right road, but through the glories of the world lost sight of their original object. Harvard, founded to educate ministers, sent forth in the year 1896, out of a class of four hundred graduates only six ministers. The Presbyterian Church had its opportunity, and likewise the Baptist and the Methodist. Rapidly education, the scepter with which America was to be ruled, was slipping from the churches. “Of the four colleges established during the war, two were non-sectarian, as were three fourths of the sixteen colleges founded in the twenty years after 1776.”
A momentous time was reached. Not only were the colonies to organize a government which would astonish the world, but the people of these colonies were on the verge of an educational precipice, and mighty interests were hanging in the balance.
Fruit of the classics
We have seen that from the classical academies came forth the minds which, for a generation or two, bore sway while the nation passed its critical period. There were the Adamses and Jefferson, Franklin, Webster, De Witt Clinton, Horace Mann, Joseph Henry, Everett, and Story; Guilford, of Ohio; Grime, of South Carolina; Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey; Wayland, in Rhode Island; and Shaw, in Virginia; besides Kent, Clay, Marshall, and Randolph, who were, many of them, not only solving political problems, but exerting an influence in the school systems planned for their several States.
Many of these were classical academy men, and we can but see that the education received in these schools must affect the systems they would father in their several States. Had the colleges remained true to their trust with Christian education, the academies would have been preparatory schools for Christian colleges, and men sent forth from their walls would have been firmly grounded in the principles of Christian education, going forth into every State of the Union to found Christian schools which would in their turn make earnest and valiant youth, true to Protestantism and true to republicanism.
When the church fails to educate, men turn to the state. These men “differed in their views about the Constitution, and wrangled over the dangers of centralization; the best men were fearful of the inroads of slavery and the dangers to commerce,” says Boone, “but all agreed that intelligence was necessary to citizenship.” Washington said, “In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is necessary that public opinion should be enlightened,” and Jefferson urged that “the diffusion of light and education are the resources most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue, and advancing the happiness of man.”
There is a demand for the highest and most practical kind of education. Statesmen see that statesmen, citizens, are needed. The denominational colleges ceased to educate Christians, and citizens must be educated elsewhere. “In 1805 the Public School Society, of New York City, was formed; the claims of public primary education were urged in Boston in 1818; and New York provided for the county supervision of schools. Early in the nineteenth century were either introduced or else discussed the first high schools, manual training schools, and mechanics’ institutes, teachers’ associations, teachers’ publications, professional schools, and free public libraries.”
We have entered the third period.