Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for ProtestantsSutherland, E. A. (Edward Alexander)
Religion
Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for Protestants
Sutherland, E. A. (Edward Alexander)
Church and education; Education -- History; Religious education
From the very foundation of Harvard may be seen indications that there
was alongside of these principles of Christian education somewhat of
medieval teaching, which, unless discovered and banished would act as
leaven, permeating the whole loaf. For instance, when the college was
less than twenty years old, we find this requirement for admission
announced: “When any scholar is able to read Tully or any like classical
Latin author, _ex tempore_, and make and speak true Latin in verse and
prose, and define perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek
tongue, then may he be admitted to the College; nor shall any claim
admission before such qualifications.” This, of course, was patterning
after the European universities, and theirs was a papal system.
This was the Harvard of colonial times. As we enter the Revolutionary
period, we may look for changes as the result of both the correct and
the incorrect principles harbored. Is Harvard, with all her wonderful
facilities, training as many for gospel service to-day as she did of old?
Yale, the second Congregational school, followed closely the plans and
object of Harvard.
[Sidenote: Education in Virginia monarchical]
William and Mary, the second college in the United States, was founded
under different circumstances. It was born in the midst of wealth, and
was befriended by cavaliers and courtiers. “The roots,” says Boone, “were
deep in the great English ecclesiastical system,” and yet the avowed
object was “that the college, when established, should be a ‘seminary
for the breeding of good ministers.’” Notwithstanding good intentions,
it mixed scholastic teachings; for it stood for “the Oxford order of
humanities; the _abstract_ as the foundation of the concrete; everything
for discipline; the ancient languages before the modern.” Jefferson was
a graduate of this school, and later it will be seen how this man, whose
mind comprehended so clearly the principles of religious liberty, strove
to break away from this mixture in education, and advocated a decidedly
secular education in schools which were supported by the State, thereby
avoiding in such institutions the mixture of secular and religious
training.
So far, we see the Episcopal school, William and Mary, deeply rooted in
the English ecclesiastical system, and unable to receive the Reformation
principles of education pure and simple. The two Congregational schools,
Harvard and Yale, approached more nearly the Protestant ideal, but being
unable to break wholly the bond of scholasticism, they made much of
preparatory work in the classics.
[Sidenote: Education problems of Colonial days]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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