THE PUBLIC SCHOOL
One of the first claims made to the credit of New England was the early attention paid to public education. It is strictly true that, next to building a meeting house in a new settlement, a school was put up. But thorough investigation of this subject furnishes evidence that the chief purpose, at least, of these schools was to fit young men for the ministry and that they were not based, either in scope or object, upon the plan of the public school of the present day. The evidence of this lies in the fact that Latin, Greek and Hebrew were chiefly taught, as though to aid the study of the Scriptures in the original texts, and although boys and girls were doubtless also taught at these schools, to a limited number, previous to the Revolution, the salary of the schoolmaster was as a rule, if indeed the rule were not without exception, paid by division among the pupils themselves and not by the town. The famous Latin School of Boston, which is often held up to our admiration as the beginning of the public school system, was chiefly noted for its Latin course, and each scholar paid about five dollars a term.
Granting, however, full measure of praise to New England and with no desire to minimize the credit due her for her work in this cause, it is still in order for us to ask when has credit ever been given by any writer to South Carolina for the establishment in Charleston, about twenty years before the founding of the Latin School in Boston, of the first school approaching in character the public schools of to-day? The accompanying illustration is taken from a volume of the Charleston Gazette for the year 1743, once owned by the author but now in the possession of the Lenox Library of this city, showing the fac-simile of an account for building a negro free school house. Some years ago the author had in his possession a memorandum which stated that this school house, built in 1742–3, was the second which had been erected by the city of Charleston for the education of negro children, whose parents indeed represented the only portion of the community unable to educate itself. In these schools the pupils received gratuitous instruction and were obliged to attend regularly until the age of twelve years. If the difference in money value, then and now, be considered, it will be found that the cost of this building could not have fallen much below five thousand dollars.
It is evident, therefore, that the first public school, in the accepted sense, existed in Charleston, at least as early as 1743, and not in New England.