=Colonial School Organization: The Aristocratic Type in Virginia.=--As a result of these general traditions and characteristics, there would seem to have been three chief types of school organization in the colonies. These were (1) the _laissez faire_ method, current in Virginia and the South; (2) the parochial organization of New Netherlands and the Middle Colonies in general; (3) the governmental activity in Massachusetts and most of the other New England colonies. We may profitably discuss these typical organizations in order. Turning first to the aristocratic colonies of the South, we may select Virginia, the oldest of these provinces, as representative of the type. That colony constituted the first attempt of England at reproducing herself in the New World, and here are found an order of society, form of government, established church, and distinction between classes, similar to those of the Mother Country. For some time there existed a sharp line of demarcation between the gentry, or landowning class, and the masses, which included the landless, indentured servants, and other dependents. In education, the colonists had brought with them the idea of a classical higher and secondary training for the upper classes in the semi-monastic type of university and the (Latin) grammar school (see pp. 120 f.), and but little in the way of elementary education, except private ‘dame’ schools and the catechetical training by the clergy. There were, in addition, the family ‘tutorial’ education, both secondary and elementary, for the children of the wealthy, and evident attempts at perpetuating the old English industrial training through apprenticeship for orphans and children of the poor. But no such institution as a public elementary school was at first known. In consequence, the educational legislation in colonial Virginia is concerned mainly with (a) the organization of a college or university, (b) individual schools of secondary grade, and (c) apprenticeship education for the poor. [Sidenote: Efforts to found a college] [Sidenote: and secondary schools.]