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.