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The historical foundations of education in the United States of America were laid by colonists from England seeking to recreate in North America the patterns of British schools. The curriculum of the elementary schools included reading, writing, arithmetic, and
religious indoctrination. The chief preparatory school was the Latin grammar school, which stressed the Latin and Greek classics as the means to higher education. Education of upper colonial classes was still heavily influenced by the Renaissance humanists, who believed that the classics contained the main body of wisdom needed by an educated man. These two kinds of school were separate systems.
The colonists imported their "Old World" conceptions about the kind of education that was appropriate to males and females. Formal education, especially at the secondary and higher levels, was reserved for males. Although girls attended the elementary schools and the dame schools (private schools taught by women in their homes), they rarely attended Latin grammar schools and colleges during the colonial period.
To the American colonist a 'public school' was not the institution with which we are familiar. In many cases, this school was privately financed; the term 'public' distinguished it from a school catering exclusively to a special group — usually a religious group.
The various colonies handled education matters differently. In New England, the governing bodies exerted general authority over education and directly supported their schools. In the Middle Atlantic colonies, a tolerant policy toward religion brought about several different sects, each group wanting its own religious principles taught in its schools. Consequently, various schools with various policies emerged. The Southern colonies did not pass laws requiring communities to establish schools. Individual parents educated their own children by making arrangements with private tutors or by sending them to private schools.
The New England colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Hampshire were very important in the development of American educational ideas and institutions. The colony of Massachusetts, in particular, enacted the first laws that governed formal education in the British colonies of North America. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was settled mainly by the Puritans. Unlike the contemporary situation in the US, where a strict separation between church and public school exists, the first schools — established in New England — were closely related to the Puritan church, in Puritan New England, education encouraged social conformity and religious commitment.
There was also an economic rationale for schooling in New England, which was reinforced by the Puritan outlook. The good citizen of the Puritan commonwealth was to be an economically productive individual who would produce wealth by hard work in farming, manufacturing, and trade. It was farther assumed that schooling would contribute to a person's economic and social usefulness by cultivating literacy, resourcefulness, enterprise, punctuality, and thrift. The Puritan conception of the child was another important element in New England colonial education, in order to civilize the child, the Puritan teacher applied constant discipline. The good child appeared to be a miniature adult. In 1647, the General Court enacted the "Old Deluder Satan" Act, which required every town of 50 or more families to appoint a reading and writing teacher. Towns of one hundred or more families were required to employ a teacher of Latin so that students could be prepared for entry to Harvard College. The act of 1647 was designed to outwit Satan, who, the Puritans believed, led people to sin because of their ignorance.
The sons of the upper classes attended the Latin grammar school, which prepared them to enter colleges of Harvard and Yale. These children generally had learned to read and write English from private tutors. A boy would enter the Latin grammar school at the age of eight and remain there for eight years. After completing the Latin grammar school, the student applied for admission to Harvard College, established in 1636. The student had to demonstrate his competency in Latin and Greek in order to be admitted to Harvard, where the curriculum consisted of grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, ethics, metaphysics, and natural sciences.
The Middle Atlantic colonies — New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania — differed markedly from the New England group. In contrast to New England, where a common language, religion, and value structure existed, the Middle Atlantic colonies were characterized by linguistic, religious and cultural pluralism.
The Southern colonies — Maryland, Virginia, California and Georgia — represented still another pattern of colonial education. A very important characteristic of education in the South resulted from the unique agricultural economy based on that region's plantation system.
The slave system of labor and plantation system of landholding and ownership contributed to a development of education. The children of privileged class of white plantation owners had the benefit of private tutors, who often lived in the plantation manor. Occasionally, the Anglican missionary society established a school for these children. As for black slaves, they were trained to be agricultural workers, field hands, craftspeople, or domestic servants, but they were forbidden to learn reading or writing.
The American Revolution of 1776 ended British rule in the thirteen colonies and a new government based on a system of checks and balances distributed political power among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Although the denominational elementary schools and Latin grammar schools continued for some time, the leaders of the new republic sought to create new patterns of education that would be suited to the self-governing citizens of the United States of America.
The first national educational legislation was included in the Northwest Ordinance of 1785, which called for surveying and division of the Northwest Territory into townships of 36 square miles. Each township was further divided into 36 sections, the sixteenth section of which was to be used for education. The provisions of the Northwest Ordinance established the pattern of financing education through land grants. Numerous plans as for designing an educational system, that would serve the needs of the new political system and contribute to nation building, were put forth by-such people as George Washington, Benjamin Rush, Robert Coram, Samuel Smith, and Noah Webster. These plans shared certain aims:
1.Education should reflect the needs of a self-governing policy;
2.Education should reflect the needs of a developing nation with vast expanses of frontier land and abundant supplies of natural resources;
3.Education should be useful rather than classical or ornamental;
4.Education should be American rather than European.
In 1749, Benjamin Franklin wrote "Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania". This served as a basis for the academy that he founded. His academy was a private secondary school that offered a practical curriculum. English grammar, classics, composition, rhetoric, and public speaking were to be the chief language studies.
In 1779, Thomas Jefferson's Bill for the more general "Diffusion of Knowledge" was introduced in Virginia legislature. This legislature assumed that the state had the responsibility to cultivate an educated and literate citizenry. The major purpose of education was to serve the general welfare of a democratic society by seeing to it that the knowledge and understanding necessary to exercise the responsibility of citizenship were made available to all.
Like Western Europe, early nineteenth-century America was undergoing the first phase of industrialization. Women and children worked in the factories of the industrial Northeast and to give the child factory workers some minimal learning, Sunday schools were opened in some of the larger cities, such as New York and Philadelphia.
