A student's history of educationGraves, Frank Pierrepont
History
A student's history of education
Graves, Frank Pierrepont
Education -- History
=The ‘Grammar’ Schools in the American Colonies.=--It was after these
‘grammar’ schools of the mother country that the first secondary
schools in America were modeled and named. In many instances the
fathers of the colonies, such as Edward Hopkins, William Penn, and
Roger Williams, had been educated in the grammar schools of England,
and naturally sought to model the institutions in their new home after
them as nearly as the different conditions would permit. The Boston
Latin (Grammar) School was founded as early as 1635 (Fig. 23), and
other towns of Massachusetts,--Charlestown, Ipswich, Salem, Dorchester,
Newbury, Cambridge, and Roxbury, also before long established grammar
schools. Similarly, towns of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York,
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the other colonies, had in many cases
founded grammar schools before the close of the century. Moreover,
the legislatures of Massachusetts (1647) and Connecticut (1650) soon
ordered that a ‘grammar’ school be established in every town having one
hundred families. The American grammar schools, like their prototypes,
were secondary and sustained no real relation to the elementary
schools. They were mostly intended to fit pupils for college, although
sometimes the college had not yet been established, and thus to
furnish a preliminary step to preparation for the Christian ministry.
Hence their course consisted chiefly in reading the classics and the
New Testament, and used among its texts Lily’s _Grammar_ and the
_Colloquies_ of Corderius. And while the hold of formal humanism upon
secondary education was somewhat relaxed during the subsequent stages
of the ‘academy’ and the ‘high school,’ the formal classical training
was considered the only means of a liberal education until well into
the nineteenth century.
[Illustration:
_a._ Drawing of Winchester College and its inmates by Warden Chandler
of New College, Oxford, in 1460. The picture reveals the relationship
of Winchester to the old monastic institutions, before it became
humanistic.]
[Illustration: _b._ Eton College in 1688, from the drawing of David
Loggan.
Fig. 17.--Great English Public Schools.]
[Sidenote: Interests of this life.]
[Sidenote: More social and moral in the North, and more individual in
Italy.]
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