IV. Schooling
As soon as Europeans reached American shores they turned their attention to the needs of the natives' souls. Each nation defended its imperialism with the claim that it sought to carry the good news of the gospel to the far comers of the earth and to assist the Indians in acquiring the learning they would need to receive the message. Immense effort and self-sacrifice testified to the sincerity of the Europeans' evangelical zeal. Although a far more elaborate and effective organization was perfected by the Spanish colonists to the south, the English were by no means backward in launching missionary experiments. In both Virginia and Massachusetts large sums were donated for both secular and Christian instruction. Dedicated men such as John Eliot, the Puritan missionary and translator of the Bible, gave years to the task of converting the Indians to Christianity. These efforts, however, produced few tangible results. Harvard College, for example, collected funds and constructed a building for the education of likely Indian lads but graduated only one, Caleb Cheeshahteamauk, and he died shortly after leaving college. Much the same thing happened in Virginia: substantial effort, but little to show for it.
This failure owed something to the Indian's lack of interest in the white men's ways and to his justified suspicion of their intentions. The missionary purpose was often in conflict with the designs of other colonists on the Indians. Missionaries found, for example, that traders, soldiers, and even some colonial officials resented and undermined missionary endeavors. In 1712 Rev. Francis Le Jau, a missionary in South Carolina, reported that the Yamasees were eager to welcome a gospel messenger but "the Indian traders have always discouraged me by raising a world of Difficultyes when I proposed anything to them relating to the Conversion of the Indians. It appears they do not care to have Clergymen so near them who doubtless would never approve those perpetual warrs they promote amongst the Indians for the onely reason of making slaves to pay for their trading goods."[1] Missionaries could rarely bridge the chasm of mistrust and hostility that resulted from wars, massacres, and broken promises. With so many colonists regarding the Indians as the chief threat to their security and the Indians looking upon the colonists as hypocrites, it is little wonder that attempts to win converts and to educate should fail.
Far more successful were the transplanted Englishmen's efforts to educate their own children. Their cultural inheritance included an educational structure in which parents, masters of trades, clergymen, grammar schoolmasters, and college fellows participated. Parents, masters, and clergymen were responsible for the earliest training of the young. Grammar schools, supported by endowments and fees, carried a few students on to mastery of ancient languages in preparation for the learned professions. The universities took in an even smaller number, perfected their classical education, and trained them for the clergy, medicine, law, teaching, or public service. With many important variations, this structure was brought to America.
Ordinarily education began in the home. Parents taught their children the alphabet and the rudiments of reading and writing; in similar fashion masters were expected to instruct servants and apprentices. Lack of time, inclination, or ability in teaching prompted many parents to send their children to a neighbor, usually a poor widow, for this earliest instruction. Such was the origin of the "dame schools" attended by the very young, common throughout New England and present elsewhere. Although the earliest plans for grammar schools were formulated in Virginia, the first schools were actually established in the compact and homogeneous towns of Massachusetts. In the Puritan settlements the migration of families and the exhortation of the clergy led to the immediate founding of schools. Formal instruction was supplemented by participation in ordinary household activities--chores, care of the livestock, and assistance to parents engaged in their daily tasks.
The children of the poor mainly relied upon the apprenticeship system for whatever training they received outside the home. Colonial laws required masters to instruct apprentices in their trade and to teach them to read and write, sometimes with the addition of elementary arithmetic. Masters might give this instruction themselves but they often preferred to send their apprentices to a private teacher during a part of the day or in the evening.
Training in the home or in the master's household did not always work out according to the theory. From an early date, especially in Massachusetts, concern was expressed that parents and masters were neglecting their duty and that illiteracy, infidelity, and barbarism were overtaking the younger generation. In 1642, within a few years of the colony's foundation, Massachusetts resorted to legal coercion to enforce educational responsibilities with a law that affirmed parents' and masters' responsibilities and provided penalties should they fail to meet them.
The General Court of Massachusetts, going beyond reliance upon the household, took the first step in establishing a system of public education. In 1647 the Court required towns of fifty households to maintain a schoolmaster for elementary skills and required larger towns of one hundred households to maintain a grammar schoolmaster capable of preparing boys in Latin and Greek for entrance to college. Fines were to be exacted from the selectmen for failure to comply. It was left to the town to choose the means of supporting the school: either by all of the inhabitants or only by the parents of the children who attended. In practice, both methods were used, sometimes in combination. Connecticut and New Hampshire followed Massachusetts' example. The laws, impressive on the statute book, were imperfectly applied. Numerous complaints and repeated prosecutions show that many towns, particularly in the interior, refused to obey the school law, managing either to evade the fines or finding it cheaper to pay them than to hire a schoolmaster. Nevertheless, the result was the closest approach to a system of free public education that had yet been made in Europe or America. The children of New England enjoyed a far greater opportunity for education, defective though it may have been, than the children of any other American colony. The role of government was strictly limited. Although the legislature required towns to maintain schools, it did not require attendance and it left the choice of means of support to the local community.
Outside of New England little was done by government to encourage education or impose educational standards. In the middle-Atlantic colonies the churches with other private assistance helped to maintain some elementary schools, but by and large they were confined to poor children. If parents could afford to pay, they were expected to do so. Secondary education in the middle colonies was entirely private.
The southern colonies fell behind those to the north in offering opportunities for formal education. For the most part the only elementary schools were charity schools for poor children supported by local authorities or a private endowment. Secondary education in the South was even more poorly provided, being almost entirely confined to a few expensive private schools in southern towns. Not until the very end of the century when the College of William and Mary was founded did it become possible for young southerners to obtain collegiate instruction on their native soil. Wealthy southerners hired tutors either from the northern colonies or England or they might secure an indentured servant who could act as a schoolmaster. A few of the very wealthy sent their sons abroad for schooling.
In all schools a single master taught the different subjects to children of all ages, with only now and then an exception in the larger towns where the grammar school master might have an assistant. The common method of instruction was memorization of the lessons by the pupil, followed by recitations in the presence of the master. Standard manuals, like the New-England Primer for beginning readers, were used throughout the colonies. In some secondary schools, more utilitarian subjects began to be offered to young men who had no intention of going to college. As towns grew and commerce flourished, schoolmasters set up classes in surveying, navigation, accounting, and foreign languages for ambitious youth who hoped to succeed in business.
Deficient as colonial education may seem in retrospect, it nevertheless created and maintained a level of elementary skill and achievement unmatched in the seventeenth century. By 1700 in New England, nineteen of twenty men could sign their own names to legal documents. This may be a crude way of measuring literacy, but it is the only test available.[2] Although the proportion of the literate declined to the southward, it is still probably the case that more Americans could read and write than any other element of comparable size and social diversity within the realm of European culture.
[2.] Samuel E. Morison, The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England (New York, 1956), pp. 82-85.