The History Of Education by Ellwood P. Cubberley (epub e reader .txt) 📖

both show that the instruction was true to the European type. In the charter for the college, granted by the colonial legislature in 1650 (R. 187 a), we find exemptions and conditions which remind one strongly of the older European foundations. A century later Brown College, in Rhode Island, was granted even more extensive exemptions (R. 187 b).

 

THE FIRST COLONIAL LEGISLATION: THE LAW OF 1642. We thus see manifested early in New England the deep Puritan-Calvinistic zeal for learning as a bulwark of Church and State. We also see the establishment in the wilderness of New England of a typical English educational system—that is, private instruction in reading and religion by the parents in the home and by the masters of apprentices, and later by a town schoolmaster; the Latin grammar school in the larger towns, to prepare boys for the college of the colony; and an English-type college to prepare them for the ministry. As in England, too, all was clearly subordinate to the Church.

Still further, as in England also, the system was voluntary, the deep religious interest which had brought the congregations to America being depended upon to insure for all the necessary education and religious training.

 

It early became evident, though, that these voluntary efforts on the part of the people and the towns would not be sufficient to insure that general education which was required by the Puritan religious theory. Under the hard pioneer conditions, and the suffering which ensued, many parents and masters of apprentices evidently proved neglectful of their educational duties. Accordingly the Church appealed to its servant, the State, as represented in the colonial legislature (General Court) to assist it in compelling parents and masters to observe their religious obligations. The result was the famous Massachusetts Law of 1642 (R. 190), which directed “the chosen men” (Selectmen; Councilmen) of each town to ascertain, from time to time, if the parents and masters were attending to their educational duties; if the children were being trained “in learning and labor and other employments … profitable to the Commonwealth”; and if children were being taught “to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country,” and empowered them to impose fines on “those who refuse to render such accounts to them when required.” In 1645 the General Court further ordered that all youth between ten and sixteen years of age should also receive instruction “in ye exercise of arms, as small guns, halfe pikes, bowes & arrows, &c.”

 

[Illustration: PLATE 9. Two TABLETS ON THE WEST GATEWAY AT HARVARD

UNIVERSITY

Reproducing colonial records relating to the founding of Harvard College.]

 

The Law of 1642 is remarkable in that, for the first time in the English-speaking world, a legislative body representing the State ordered that all children should be taught to read. The law shows clearly not only the influence of the Reformation theory as to personal salvation and the Calvinistic conception of the connection between learning and religion, but also the influence of the English Poor-Law legislation which had developed rapidly during the half-century immediately preceding the coming of the Puritans to America (R. 173). On the foundations of the English Poor Law of 1601 (R. 174) our New England settlers moulded the first American law relating to education, adding to the principles there established (p. 326) a distinct Calvinistic contribution to our new-world life that, the authorities of the civil town should see that all children were taught “to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country.” This law the Selectmen, or the courts if they failed to do so, were ordered to enforce, and the courts usually looked after their duties in the matter (R. 192).

 

The Law of 1647. The Law of 1642, while ordering “the chosen men” of each town to see that the education and training of children was not neglected, and providing for fines on parents and masters who failed to render accounts when required, did not, however, establish schools, or direct the employment of schoolmasters. The provision of education, after the English fashion, was still left with the homes. After a trial of five years, the results of which were not satisfactory, the General Court enacted another law by means of which it has been asserted that “the Puritan government of Massachusetts rendered probably its greatest service to the future.”

 

After recounting in a preamble (R. 191) that it had in the past been “one cheife proiect of y’t ould deluder, Satan, to keepe men from the knowledge of y’e Scriptures, … by keeping y’m in an unknowne tongue,” so now “by pswading from y’e use of tongues,” and “obscuring y’e true sence & meaning of y’e originall” by “false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers,” learning was in danger of being “buried in y’e grave of o’r fath’rs in y’e church and comonwealth”; the Court ordered:

 

1. That every town having fifty householders should at once appoint a teacher of reading and writing, and provide for his wages in such manner as the town might determine; and 2. That every town having one hundred householders must provide a grammar school to fit youths for the university, under a penalty of �5 (afterwards increased to �20) for failure to do so.

 

This law represents a distinct step in advance over the Law of 1642, and for this there are no English precedents. It was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century that England took such a step. The precedents for the compulsory establishment of schools lie rather in the practices of the different German States (p. 318), the actions of the Dutch synods (R.

176) and provinces (p. 335), the Acts of the Scottish parliament of 1633

and 1646 (p. 334; R. 179), and the general Calvinistic principle that education was an important function of a religious State.

 

PRINCIPLES ESTABLISHED. The State here, acting again as the servant of the Church, enacted a law and fixed a tradition which prevailed and grew in strength and effectiveness after State and Church had parted company. Not only was a school system ordered established—elementary for all towns and children, and secondary for youths in the larger towns—but, for the first time among English-speaking people, there was an assertion of the right of the State to require communities to establish and maintain schools, under penalty if they refused to do so. It can be safely asserted, in the light of later developments, that the two laws of 1642 and 1647 represent the foundations upon which our American state public-school systems have been built. Mr. Martin, the historian of the Massachusetts public-school system, states the fundamental principles which underlay this legislation, as follows: [9]

 

1. The universal education of youth is essential to the well-being of the State.

 

2. The obligation to furnish this education rests primarily upon the parent.

 

3. The State has a right to enforce this obligation.

 

4. The State may fix a standard which shall determine the kind of education, and the minimum amount.

 

5. Public money, raised by general tax, may be used to provide such education as the State requires. The tax may be general, though the school attendance is not.

 

6. Education higher than the rudiments may be supplied by the State.

Opportunity must be provided, at public expense, for youths who wish to be fitted for the university.

 

“It is important to note here,” adds Mr. Martin, “that the idea underlying all this legislation is neither paternalistic nor socialistic. The child is to be educated, not to advance his personal interests, but because the State will suffer if he is not educated. The State does not provide schools to relieve the parent, nor because it can educate better than the parent can, but because it can thereby better enforce the obligation which it imposes.” To prevent a return to the former state of religious ignorance it was important that education be provided. To assure this the colonial legislature enacted a law requiring the maintenance and support of schools by the towns. This law became the corner-stone of our American state school systems.

 

Influence on other New England colonies. Connecticut Colony, in its Law of 1650 establishing a school system, combined the spirit of the Massachusetts Law of 1642, though stated in different words (R. 193), and the Law of 1647, stated word for word. New Haven Colony, in 1655, ordered that children and apprentices should be taught to read, as had been done in Massachusetts, in 1642, but on the union of New Haven and Connecticut Colonies, in 1665, the Connecticut Code became the law for the united colonies. In 1702 a college was founded (Yale) and finally located at New Haven, to offer preparation for the ministry in the Connecticut colony, as had been done earlier in Massachusetts, and Latin grammar schools were founded in the Connecticut towns to prepare for the new college, as also had been done earlier in Massachusetts. The rules and regulations for the grammar school at New Haven (R. 189) reveal the purpose and describe the instruction provided in one of the earliest and best of these.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 111. WHERE YALE COLLEGE WAS FOUNDED]

 

Plymouth Colony, in 1658 and again in 1663, proposed to the towns that they “sett vp” a schoolmaster “to traine vp children to reading and writing” (R. 194 a). In 1672 the towns were asked to aid Harvard College by gifts (R. 194 b). In 1673-74 the income from the Cape Cod fisheries was set aside for the support of a (grammar) school (R. 194 c). Finally, in 1677, all towns having over fifty families and maintaining a grammar school were ordered aided from the fishery proceeds (R. 194 d).

 

The Massachusetts laws also applied to Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, as these were then a part of Massachusetts Colony. After New Hampshire separated, in 1680, the Massachusetts Law of 1647 was virtually readopted in 1719-21. In Maine and Vermont there were so few settlers, until near the beginning of our national life, that the influence of the Massachusetts legislation on these States was negligible until a later period.

 

Only in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, of all the New England colonies, did the Massachusetts legislation fail to exert a deep influence. Settled as these two had been by refugees from New England, and organized on a basis of hospitality to all who suffered from religious oppression elsewhere, the religious stimulus to the founding of schools naturally was lacking. As the religious basis for education was as yet the only basis, the first development of schools in Rhode Island awaited the humanitarian and economic influences which did not become operative until early in the nineteenth century.

 

Outside of the New England colonies, the appeal to the State as the servant of the Church was seldom made during the early colonial period, the churches handling the educational problem in their own way. As a result the beginnings of State oversight and control were left to New England. In the central colonies a series of parochial-school systems came to prevail, while in Episcopalian Virginia and the other colonies to the south the no-business-of-the-State attitude assumed toward education by the mother country was copied.

 

THE CHURCH SCHOOLS OF NEW YORK. New Netherland, as New York Colony was called before the English occupation, was settled by the Dutch West India Company, and some dozen villages about New York and up the Hudson had been founded by the time it passed to the control of the English, in 1664. In these the Dutch established typical homeland public parochial schools, under the control of the Reformed Dutch Church. The schoolmaster was usually the reader and precentor in the church as well (R. 195), and often acted, as in Holland, as sexton besides. Girls attended