5. That the scope of education was not limited to Quakers alone, nor even to the Whites, but should include also Negroes, Indians and the poorer classes of society as well as the rich. The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to a brief consideration of the foregoing statements.
First, in regard to moral and religious instruction, it seems hardly necessary to do more than state simply that he did urge moral education at all times. His whole life being permeated with the desire to propagate his newly founded society, it certainly is to be expected that he would recommend and insist on instruction of that nature. If proof be desired, however, it may be found in statements made from time to time, which are quoted below. The system of moral education based on the utterances of Fox was chiefly a prohibitory one, and it might well be questioned whether the result would not be passive rather than active virtues.
Prohibitions, moral, social and educational
... in warning such as kept public houses for entertainment, that they should not let people have more drink than would do them good; and in testifying against their wakes and feasts, May games, sports, plays and shows, which trained up people to vanity and looseness and led them from the fear of God: ... in fairs also, and in markets I was made to declare against their deceitful merchandise, cheating and cozening; warning all to deal justly, to speak the truth, to let their yea be yea and their nay be nay: ... I was moved also to cry against all sorts of music, and against the mountebanks playing tricks on their stages, for they burdened the pure life and stained the people’s mind to vanity. I was much exercised, too, with schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, warning them to teach their children sobriety in the fear of the Lord, that they might not be nursed and trained up in lightness, vanity and wantonness. Likewise I was made to warn masters and mistresses, fathers and mothers in private families, to take care that their children and servants might be trained up in the fear of the Lord; and that they themselves should be therein examples and patterns of sobriety and virtue to them.[26]
I was to bring them off from all the world’s fellowship and prayings and singings, which stood in forms without power: ...[27]
Kept prominent place in the church
These prohibitions and many others that were enunciated from time to time in his speaking and writing, were to be in time a part of the discipline of the organization, and were as religiously imposed on all members as the ardor of the meeting and the difficulty of the task would permit. The cases coming up before the monthly meetings for discipline are largely composed of infringements of the regulations, which grew out of Fox’s recommendations. These are, without question, of very ascetic nature. One instance which illustrates the incorporation of these ideals in the discipline of the organization may be cited in this connection.
All Friends, train up your children in the fear of God; and as they are capable, they may be instructed and kept employed in some lawful calling; that they may be diligent, serving the Lord in the things that are good; that none may live idle and be destroyers of the creation, and thereby become burdensome to others, and to the just witness in themselves.[28]
Apprenticeship education recommended
Second, the emphasis placed on the values to be derived from a practical education, to be gotten, to a large degree, through a careful system of apprenticing the children of members to people, members if possible, who would also be careful in regard to their moral instruction, is unmistakable. The practice as recommended, indicated below, became the general rule in Quaker communities, as is adequately evidenced in the meeting records. In this connection, however, it should be kept in mind that apprenticeship education could be legally enforced.