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paratory to college. The fact that the institution of higher learning sought a means of preparing its prospective students, while the elementary school was seeking to broaden its work produced two opposing tendencies. The conflict that has resulted within the field of secondary education has been sharp and long continued, but out of it has come a distinctively American institution, the free public high school.

The secondary schools of the Colonies, the so-called grammar schools, closely resembled the Latin schools of England, after which for the most part they were modeled. They were religious in character and distinctly classical in content. They were founded primarily to fit the youth of the time for college-Harvard and Yale in the North and William and Mary in the South. The training given was such as would meet the demands of the colleges.

The requirements for admission to Harvard, first formulated near the middle of the seventeenth century, are typical of the college demands of this early period:

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 (suo ut aiunt Marte), and decline perfectly the paradigms of names and verbs in the Greek tongue, these may be admitted to the college; nor shall any claim admission before such qualification.1

As already noted, the times in which the Colonists lived were profoundly affected by religious questions. The "holy tongues" (Latin and Greek) were thought to have peculiar value in religious training. In consequence, the content and subject matter of the colonial grammar schools were little more than a prolonged drill in Latin grammar, supplemented by some attention to Greek; a detailed grammatical and rhetorical study of selected Latin texts, such as Cicero, Ovid, Terence, and Virgil; and the daily reading in Latin of portions of the Bible, of catechisms, and of creeds, and, in the upper classes, of New Testament epistles in Greek. Thus these schools remained, until well toward the Revolution, college preparatory in specific purpose, narrowly classical in the content of instruction, permeated by the pietistic spirit of the times, and adapted to the needs of a small part of the community only.

While the dominant educational thought of the Colonists took form in the college and its preparatory schools, there was a growing undercurrent of dissatisfaction with both their content and purpose.

A broad view of the complex educational activities of the Renaissance period will show that each is related to one or to the other of two antagonistic tendencies. On the one hand, there was the tendency to fix the "Golden age" in the past, among the ancient Greeks

1 New England First Fruits, in Old South Leaflets, No. 51, p. 2.

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and Romans. This worship of the past led to a wider and more intensive study of the Latin and Greek languages; to a devotion to the classic literature of both languages; to a search for the manuscript remains of this literature, to a passion for collecting them; and, finally, through the discovery of printing, for their general dissemination. The immediate effect of this devotion to the study of classical literature was the introduction into the schools of a new and enriching content, one which stood in strong contrast with the abstract, metaphysical, and unreal content of the scholastic education of the Middle Ages. It was not long, however, before the educational effort of the time shifted from content to that of the mastery of form alone. This conception of education placed little value on preparation for social activity; it provided no place for the study of nature or of history; it ignored almost completely the physical training of the youth; it gave no consideration to the world, its people, and their problems; in short, the dominant educational practice of the sixteenth century had degenerated to a condition little less formal and profitless than the narrow scholastic type of the fourteenth.2

The tendencies antagonistic to this narrow classical education likewise had their beginnings in the period of the Renaissance. Erasmus, Rabelais, John Milton, Montaigne, Mulcaster, Comenius, and other great educational lights of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were the speakers for the opposition. These men were a unit in criticism of the narrow, formal, linguistic teaching of the time. They all respected the classics, and as a means to an end each of these men in a measure grasped the modern conception that education should be a training for social service in church, state, city, and family, and that this need must affect the content of education. Erasmus, in his System of Studies, wrote:

Knowledge seems to be of two kinds-that of things and that of words. That of words comes first, and that of things is the more important.

Rabelais, though advocating the study of languages-Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and even Chaldee and Arabic, violently condemned the old linguistic and formal education. While he believed that almost the whole of education was to be gained through books, he would have their content mastered because of its bearing on other problems of practical life. The famous Tractate on Education, wherein Milton "sets down in writing that voluntary idea, which hath long in silence presented itself to me, of a better education, in extent and comprehension far more large, and yet of time far shorter, and of attainment far more certain, than hath been yet in practice," arraigned the edu

1 Monroe, The Hist. of Ed., p. 354.

2 Ibid., ch. 6.

Ibid., p. 447.

cation of the times, and in addition expressed his own conception, which is summarized in the notable definition of education which he formulated:

I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.

Montaigne had much to say in criticism of the "custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupils' ears, as if they were pouring into a funnel, while the business of the pupil is only to repeat what the others have said."

Mulcaster bemoaned the "imperfection at this day [of elementary instruction], so that we can hardly do any good, the groundwork of their entry being so rotten underneath."1 Finally, the position of Comenius is briefly indicated by the following passage in The Great Didactic:

I call a school that fulfills its functions perfectly one which is a true forging place of man-in a word, where all men are taught all things thoroughly.

Though this slowly evolving conception, due primarily to the growing stores of knowledge and the expanding activities of the times, that education must take into account the needs which life imposes, was the chief source of dissatisfaction with existing conditions, the prevailing use of classical authors to provide the content of instruction was attacked on an ecclesiastical ground, namely, the belief that, inasmuch as such authors were non-Christian, their teachings and that of the Bible were in conflict. This view, which was Puritan in its inception, was forcibly expressed by William Dell, master of a college in the time of Cromwell. He said:

My counsel is that they [children] learn the Greek and Latin tongues especially from Christians, and so without the lies, fables, follies, vanities, whoredoms, lust, pride, revenge, etc., of the heathens, especially seeing neither their words nor their phrases are meet for Christians to take in their mouth. 2

This view never became dominant even among the Puritans, the majority of whom held firmly to the position that the classics were helpful in religious instruction, which to them was the chief aim of education.

While these insurgent views of the Old World found zealous exponents among the American colonists, the narrow humanistic conception of education was for the time in the ascendancy. Indeed, it was under the dominance of this view that Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1647 ordered, under penalty of a fine, that whenever any town within the colony should increase to the number of 100 families a school should be established which would fit the youth for college.

1 Quoted in Watson, The English Grammar School, p. 138.

2 Ibid., p. 535.

The colony, however, failed in enforcing the order to any considerable degree; for, in addition to the views of distrust which many of the Colonists shared with the people of Europe, there were local causes at work. The several communities were very poor and could ill afford the expense; the tax for the support of such a school fell upon all, whereas only a few could avail themselves of its advantages; the competition of the elementary school for maintenance, the rise of towns and cities, the increase of trade, the rise of a political life, the struggle to conquer the ever-widening frontier, were other factors as well. In short, the social, economic, and political conditions under which the Colonists lived operated in the same direction, and in consequence a secondary education which prepared for but a single vocation became a matter of indifference to an increasing number of people, and a general apathy toward the grammar schools resulted. An institution more closely adjusted to the changed conditions was needed. The academy, which was not long in coming, was the immediate, though not final, answer to this need.

The colonial academy, like the colonial grammar school, was of English ancestry, and in its inception in both England and America it primarily expressed religious dissent. The establishment of the academy in England was chiefly an attempt to provide the children of nonconformist clergymen and of other nonconformists with an education in free imitation of the university. At first, for obvious reasons, these schools were established secretly, but under the Toleration Act of 1689 conditions became somewhat easier, so that such schools multiplied rapidly, and later became an integral part of the English educational scheme.

It was easy for the founders of these schools to accept and act upon the suggestions which were being made by the leaders of the time in educational reform. Preparation for ecclesiastical offices in nonconformist congregations was a prominent though not an exclusive purpose of these schools, and therefore an important place in the course of study was given to the classical languages and to the Scriptures. To the study of these, however, many subjects were added which were excluded from the grammar schools of the time. These newer subjects gradually came to be taught in the mother tongue, the study of which was emphasized in all these schools. Inasmuch as the nonconformist children were denied the university, these academies were designated as finishing schools, in consequence of which we find them extending their curriculum beyond the grammar schools and including the elements of some of the subjects taught in the universities, and also attempting to incorporate in their courses studies that had a closer relation to the practical duties of life than those traditionally pursued. The departure from the grammar

schools of the time is best shown by an enumeration of the subjects treated, varying with the school. These included French, Italian, Hebrew, logic, rhetoric, ethics, metaphysics, history, economics, oratory, theology, natural philosophy, anatomy, geography, geometry, algebra, surveying, trigonometry, conic sections, celestial mechanics, and even shorthand.1

In so far as the academy in England was the result of forces other than religious dissent, it had its counterpart in the Real Schools (Realschulen) of Germany. There the rise of cities, the growth of i trade, the development of technical sciences, and the rapid expansion of the industrial world created a demand for a course of instruction suited to these modern needs which the Real Schools sought to supply.2

Though a school called an "academy" was founded in Pennsylvania in 1726, the first American school really expressing this new spirit was established at Philadelphia in 1751, through the efforts of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin's idea, expressed in his Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, was widely circulated, and exercised a profound influence, for it helped to give to the academy, as developed in America, its distinctive features. Concerning the content of instruction, he wrote in his "Proposals":

As to their studies, it would be well if they could be taught everything that is useful and everything that is ornamental. But art is long and their time is short. It is therefore proposed that they learn those things that are likely to be most useful and most ornamental, regard being had to the several professions for which they are intended. All interested for divinity should be taught the Latin and Greek; for physics, the Latin, Greek, and French; for law, the Latin and French; merchants, the French, German, and Spanish; and, though all should not be compelled to learn Latin, Greek, or the modern foreign languages, yet none that have an ardent desire to learn them should be refused; their English, arithmetic, and other studies absolutely necessary, being at the same time not neglected.3

As originally organized, Franklin's Academy, which eventually developed into the University of Pennsylvania, comprised three departments-the Latin school, the English school, and the mathematical school. Later a department of philosophy was added, which, together with the Latin school, was called the "college," while the name "academy" was retained by the English and mathematical departments.*

By the time the Revolution began a number of schools similar in character had been established in the middle and southern Colonies, and before the close of the war the founding of an academy in Mas

1 Monroe, Hist. of Ed., p. 499.

2 See Paulsen, German Education, ch. 2.

3 Sparks, Works of Franklin, Vol. I, pp. 572, 574.
Brown, The American High School, p. 18.

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