"... and all girls be excluded as improper and inconsistent with such a grammar school as ye law injoines and as is the Designe of this settlement."[400]
But it must not be considered that the education of the girls was wholly neglected among the colonists, for, though they were scarcely ever admitted to boys' schools, yet they did go to the dame-schools and also they received training at home. The girls were all taught household duties and the fancy needlework that went with it. Reading, writing, a little arithmetic, dancing, needlework, music, deportment, and elegance of carriage composed the curriculum for girls. Sometimes a girl would get some help from a brother and thus gain an education beyond that ordinarily obtained by girls. Occasionally an educated father would teach his daughter, one such case being that of President Colman of Harvard College, who gave what was called a profound education to his daughter Jane. Withal this meager education, nevertheless we are not at all ashamed of the bearing of our foremothers of the colonial and Revolutionary times.
As academies grew up during the latter half of the eighteenth century, most of which were for boys, a few were made co-educational and a few others were established for girls:
"For a hundred years the Penn Charter School, Philadelphia, had admitted both sexes on equal terms. The Moravians had established a school for girls at Bethlehem, Pa., as early as 1745, while the Philadelphia Female Academy dates from the Revolution. Among the earliest in New England were Dr. Dwight's Young Ladies' Academy, at Greenfield, Conn. (1785), and the Medford School, near Boston (1789)."[401]
Of the colleges in the United States today, two of them were founded during the first century of the colonial period, the seventeenth century, ten others in the next century before the Revolution, and by the close of the eighteenth century the list had increased to twenty-six, eleven of the original colonies being represented in the list and also Kentucky and Tennessee. Arranging the twelve colleges of the colonial period in the order of the year of first opening and with the names and locations as now, they run as follows:[402]
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1636; College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1693; Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1701; Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland, 1723; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1740; Moravian Seminary and College for Women, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1742; Princeton University, Princetown, New Jersey, 1746; Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, 1749; Columbia University, New York City, New York, 1754; Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 1765; Rutgers College, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1766; Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1769.
With dame-schools for the younger children, district schools for the older ones, academies for the yet more advanced, and colleges for completing the education, the early period of the United States gave such an education to its young people as well to prepare them to become the noble men and women, who, by books, papers, addresses, and general bearing, were able to stand alongside the people of the world in the great period of the American Revolution, and furnished thinkers and doers such as have not been surpassed by our own time.
LITERATURE
- Boone, Richard G., Education in the United States.
- Calhoun, Arthur W., A social history of the American family.
- Claxton, Philander Priestley, Report of the Commissioner of Education of the United States, 1914.
- Dexter, Edwin Grant, History of education in the United States.
- Earle, Alice Morse, Child life in Colonial days.
- Earle, Alice Morse, Colonial days in old New York.
- Earle, Alice Morse, Costume of colonial times.
- Earle, Alice Morse, Curious punishments of bygone days.
- Earle, Alice Morse, Customs and fashions in old New England.
- Earle, Alice Morse, Diary of Anna Green Winslow, a Boston school-girl of 1771.
- Earle, Alice Morse, Home life in colonial days.
- Earle, Alice Morse, The Sabbath in Puritan New England.
- Eggleston, Edward, Social conditions in the colonies, The Century Magazine, VI., 853.
- Eggleston, Edward, The colonists at home, The Century Magazine, VII., 873.
- Eggleston, Edward, Social life in the colonies, The Century Magazine, VIII., 387.
- Fisher, Sydney George, Men, women and manners in colonial times.
- Haddon, Kathleen, Cat's cradles from many lands.
- Howard, George Elliott, A history of matrimonial institutions.
- Low, A. Maurice, The American people.
- Mather, Frederic G., Early New England choirs and singing-schools, The American Magazine, VIII., 310.
- McMaster, John Bach, A history of the people of the United States.
- Salmon, Lucy Maynard, Domestic service.
- Stiles, Henry Reed, Bundling: Its origin, progress and decline in the United States.
- Welsh, Charles, The early history of children's books in New England, New England Magazine, XX., 147.