The Origins of Education in America
Colonial Times
America has always been seen as a land of opportunity; a land that allowed a new way of life and a freedom from the institutions and restrictions of England and Europe. This is proven by the fact that Harvard, the first American college, founded in 1636, granted its first degree in 1642 without receiving authority of any kind! This might pass unnoticed except for the fact that in England the Bachelor of Arts degree could be awarded only by Oxford and Cambridge and only for law, medicine, theology and the traditional seven liberal Arts. Thus, Harvard granting degrees was as Samuel Elliot Morrison explains, “almost a declaration of independence from King Charles.”1
America never had any distinction between college and university as Europe did, where a college was a place to receive instruction, was largely self-governing and had no power to grant degrees, and where a university was a degree-granting institution having received this special authority in the form of a papal bull or a Royal or Parliamentary charter. With Harvard granting its first degree independently of any authority, the precedent had been set and by the time of the American Revolution there were at least nine institutions granting degrees.
The universities of Europe date back to medieval times, and so received a medieval heritage of being run by clerics. They were largely independent of government control and consequently removed from politics. They possessed rich tracts of lands, large endowments, and buildings for support. Free from government control, they were given to free academic pursuits and learning.
In America the college or university depended directly upon the support of the local government and people around them. Lay boards oversaw their welfare and ensured they remained in touch with the community upon whom they were directly dependent. Nor did the American college have any pool of well-educated men to draw from in forming the staff for the colleges and universities. Thus, the staff was often young and inexperienced and could not expect the deference and respect that would protect them from lay control. This is why the President and faculty ruling the institution but subject to veto by an outside body became the pattern for the American college and university and continues to this day. This meant that the American colleges and universities were not going to be self-governing institutions for the learned, but rather centers for the diffusion of learning.
It is not hard to see that this outside control of the American university made it prone to ideology, pressure, and politics. The American educational system was more concerned with the diffusion of learning to all rather than the advancement and perpetuation of learning. University education for all practical purposes became “under-graduate learning.” The purpose of education was to supply each region with knowledgeable ministers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, etc., and so the American College was at the center of each colony’s affairs.
The early universities were run by religious sects and as each religious sect opened a college, it was a good reason for other opposing sects to open their own college to save the youth from the untruths of their competitors. This largely religious nature of the college necessarily caused the secularists to open their own institutions free from any religious affiliation. The competition among institutions caused the number of institutions to increase exponentially. From 1746-1769, twice as many colleges were founded than in the previous 100 years, and from 1769-1789 twice as many again than in the previous 20 years!
This competition among institutions, coupled with the sparse population, necessarily led to the faculty of these institutions being composed of rivaling sects with often only the president being from the sect of the institution. However, such competitiveness also led to the recruitment of students, and no religious institution imposed a religious test as a condition for entry. All of this had a liberalizing effect and practically “unity in diversity” was the spirit of the American university.
By the end of the colonial era, nearly every type of recruitment of students other than the sports scholarship was used. Fancy brochures and alumni, acting as recruiting agents, were common. This recruiting necessarily led to the lowering of standards for admission and graduation and the adding of popular courses. John Trumbull complained in 1773, “Except in one neighboring province, ignorance wanders unmolested at our colleges, examinations are dwindled to mere form and ceremony, and after four years dozing there, no one is ever refused the honors of a degree, on account of dullness and insufficiency.”2 America was not just offering education to all—it was offering an inflated intellectual currency! The purpose of American education had been set, and it was to make good citizens. American education was concerned with diffusing, not deepening, learning, and so education was becoming more and more subservient to economics.
Another factor in education was the need for men to perform a variety of tasks which in Europe were reserved to specialists. The shortage of personnel and the frontier character of America, as well as poorly defined roles, caused citizens to be jacks-of-all-trades. A successful New England clergyman was likely to be something of physician, politician, teacher and other roles as well. An American businessman’s skills needed to be broad and fluid rather than specialized.
This blurring of roles also included women. For example, in frontier America the need for women’s help in trade and on the plantation was crucial. Scarcity of help removed social prejudices. Thomas Jefferson admitted that with his own daughter, Patsy, her education needed to be “considerably different from what I think would be most proper for her sex in any other country other than America.”3
The Democracy of America needed lawyers, since every colony needed law, and most especially while the colonies were being founded and established. However, the need and the looseness of education in America did not lend itself to specialized lawyers as in England. A lawyer in America could even be handicapped if he was “too systematized,” and so American legal knowledge became simplified and popular.
The same need also led to a certain simplicity and lack of refinement in medicine, farming, and science. Men were not specialized in their craft and so practicality, and often crudeness, in craft was the norm in early colonial America. There was more emphasis on “popular science” or things that could be understood by everyone rather than refinement of craft.
When Abbé Raynal said in 1774, “America has not yet produced one good poet, one able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or science,”4 Thomas Jefferson was annoyed but could only say that the colonies had not had time yet to produce a Homer or Shakespeare, but then pointed to George Washington as a great military leader.
Post-Colonial Years
In the years after the Revolution, America was lost in the struggle to establish a national identity. Having broken from England, she wanted to throw off her English habits and develop a culture of her own. This is what drove Noah Webster to publish his “American Spelling Book” in 1789 and his first dictionary in 1806. He wanted to establish the “purity of the English language” which he thought had been destroyed in England by writers of the 18th century.
With his spelling book and use of the spelling bee, Webster sought to change the spelling and pronunciation of the English Language to an American language. The American pronunciation of the language became what the word “ought to sound like” rather than by custom. This is clear when he says in the preface to his dictionary “those people spell the best, who do not know how to spell.”5
With the influx of people to America, the great melting pot, there were in the 19th century many words from other language which became part of daily speech. Slang became so commonplace that truly the American language is one of slanging.
The opportunity for the common person to own land was arguably the single most important factor in drawing people to America. This was impossible in England as the land was owned by a few. America was seen as a land of opportunity, and following the Revolution the American businessman was born. Often coming from lowly roots, men in the 19th century had an irresistible urge to “improve themselves.” This improving, though, most often meant making money and lots of it. Thus, Alexander de Toqueville says of Americans that they were taken with the pursuit of money. This desire for money led to the over-emphasis on the practical and useful in America. Even education suffered more and more from this.
In the 19th century the expansion of America grew at an exponential rate. With the founding of each town, county, territory, and state there was an overwhelming need for politicians. Thus, there was a great emphasis on politicians in America; this need even began to affect the primary schools. American politicians were not men of great learning but practical men who often possessed little education; they became self-taught orators as politicians. Thus, even in the primary schools, increasing importance was placed on rhetoric and debating.
The McGuffey Readers, published in 1836, made reading a “rhetorical exercise” and listed twelve rules regarding articulation, inflection, accent emphasis, modulation and poetic pauses. Children in primary school were often promoted by grade according to their ability to read aloud, while in secondary schools there were public ceremonies held to demonstrate this ability. In the university, rhetoric, elocution and oratory were essential subjects.
The McGuffey Readers presented the great speeches, often of politicians, which were memorized until history became almost just a series of great speeches for children. From the Revolution to the Civil War, history seems almost to have been enacted by great speeches. John Adams in 1816 wished to collect the great orations and “then write the history of the last forty-five years in commentaries upon them.”6 Indeed the history of many a politician such as Daniel Webster or Abraham Lincoln could be followed by his great speeches.
America was seized by the spoken word and a religious leader not uncommonly held his post purely because of his ability to preach captivating sermons. Davy Crockett was largely uneducated and had contempt for book learning. Yet, by his speeches which were uncouth and full of slang, he appealed to the common man and was elected to Congress.
The use of the McGuffey Reader directly led to a decline in the reading of the great classic works and was replaced by short phrases, speeches, and anecdotes of great literature. The same began to be true of history, which became the study of the exploits of the great men of history, especially American history, rather than a uniform study of events.
America following the Revolution was in need of heroes. Popular literature used both information and disinformation to form legends around popular figures such as Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Mike Fink, Kit Carson… This literature combined humor with fantasy and was crude and lowbrow, but popular. True literature requires an audience with sufficient education and free time that was often absent in early America.
By the time of the Civil War, the Federal Government possessed vast tracts of land and used these lands to finance the expansion of the railroad. Justin S. Morrill succeeded in getting the Morrill Act passed in 1862, which gave the state federal lands—30,000 acres for every senator and representative—to be used in establishing a college or university. This gave rise to the state-sponsored college and university and reinvigorated many an institution with land to use for farming and the teaching of other mechanical improvements; so began the “agricultural and mechanical colleges.” However, many an institution began to change its curriculum and offer popular degrees and subjects in an effort to gain some of this public land.
Uniting the Nation
By the beginning of the 20th century, the expansion of America was largely complete. Now came an age of uniting America and establishing her firmly in the democratic tradition. This is reflected in the reform of education at the beginning of the 20th century.
By the end of the 19th century, it became firmly established that every man and woman had a “right” to receive an education. It was then clear that to prepare the majority of minds for this education in the college and university, a new free public school must be available to all and especially new secondary schools. Thus, the public high school was born. There was debate about whether the high school should be for a few privileged individuals who would make up an aristocracy and so help the majority by their privilege, or if it should be completely free and available to all.
Samuel T. Eliot, one of the most influential proponents of a public high school, saw it as allowing the poor child the chance to have the same education as the rich. John Dewey was also a big proponent of the free public high school that would be available to all. Dewey had a natural abhorrence to an aristocracy, but sought to change the entire educational system. Indeed his ideas are responsible for the making of the public school system which we have today.
Dewey is widely considered to be the American philosopher. Although one may deny that he is truly a philosopher, his ideas had far-reaching consequences in education. The underlying theme of Dewey’s philosophy of education is that the teacher must be sure to respect and prepare the educational experience of the child. He saw that children learn in a variety of ways, and so rather than inflicting a traditional classroom of learning on the child, the teacher should prepare an environment and various activities where the child is able to participate and learn as he chooses. The teacher’s role is to guide the child’s education by providing these activities and ensuring that there is a healthy educational experience.
Through this emphasis on activity as the essential means for the educational experience, Dewey dissolved not only the old discipline of education but also subject matter and even curricula. “Growth” became the end of education and “activity” the means, yet growth for growth’s sake as Dewey proposed is not a satisfactory end. As this New Education was applied, Americans became increasingly confused about the ends and goals of education.
So the American Public High School was born, and it became the institution which was to embody the new ideas of education. It is here more than in the public primary schools that children were given the new education and prepared for college and university. The high school became the largest and best building in town; really, it became the heart of every town and so also the heart of America. In 1918 the National Education Association reported and adopted the Seven Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, which became the credo of the New American High School. These objectives are listed (without priority) as: (1) Health, (2) Command of Fundamental Processes, (3) Worthy home-membership, (4) Vocation, (5) Citizenship, (6) Worthy uses of leisure, (7) Ethical character.
America set out to form a land of opportunity free from the constraints of the Old World and indeed she liberated herself from them. In liberating herself in education, she liberated herself from the traditional values of a liberal arts education, which led to a system of education serving democracy. It became increasingly a tool forming public ideology rather than a place of pure academic pursuit.
Endnotes
1. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans, The Colonial Experience (New York: Vintage Books, 1958) p. 175.
2. Boorstin. p. 182
3. Boorstin, p. 187
4. Boorstin, p. 244.
5. Boorstin, p. 288.
6. Boorstin, p. 310.