Education in Colonial America
Mr. Peterson is Headmaster of The Pilgrim Academy, Egg Harbor City, New Jersey. He teaches economics and is constantly in search of ways to support and defend the principle of voluntarism in education.
One of the main objections people have to getting government out of the education business and turning it over to the free market is that “it simply would not get the job done.” This type of thinking is due, in large measure, to what one historian called “a parochialism in time,”[1] i.e., a limited view of an issue for lack of historical perspective. Having served the twelve-year sentence in government-controlled schools, most Americans view our present public school system as the measure of all things in education. Yet for two hundred years in American history, from the mid-1600s to the mid-1800s, public schools as we know them to day were virtually non-existent, and the educational needs of America were met by the free market. In these two centuries, America produced several generations of highly skilled and literate men and women who laid the foundation for a nation dedicated to the principles of freedom and self-government.
The private system of education in which our forefathers were educated included home, school, church, voluntary associations such as library companies and philosophical societies, circulating libraries, apprenticeships, and private study. It was a system supported primarily by those who bought the services of education, and by private benefactors. All was done without compulsion. Although there was a veneer of government involvement in some colo nies, such as in Puritan Massachusetts, early American education was essentially based on the principle of voluntarism.[2]
Dr. Lawrence A. Cremin, distinguished scholar in the field of education, has said that during the colonial period the Bible was “the single most important cultural influence in the lives of Anglo-Americans.”[3]
Thus, the cornerstone of early American education was the belief that “children are an heritage from the Lord.”[4] Parents believed that it was their responsibility to not only teach them how to make a living, but also how to live. As our forefathers searched their Bibles, they found that the function of government was to protect life and property.[5] Education was not a responsibility of the civil government.
Education Began in the Home and the Fields
Education in early America began in the home at the mother’s knee, and often ended in the cornfield or barn by the father’s side. The task of teaching reading usually fell to the mother, and since paper was in short supply, she would trace the letters of the alphabet in the ashes and dust by the fireplace.[6] The child learned the alphabet and then how to sound out words. Then a book was placed in the child’s hands, usually the Bible. As many passages were familiar to him, having heard them at church or at family devotions, he would soon master the skill of reading. The Bible was supplemented by other good books such as Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, The New England Primer, and Isaac Watt’s Divine Songs. From volumes like these, our founding fathers and their generation learned the values that laid the foundation for free enterprise. In “Against Idleness and Mischief,” for example, they learned individual responsibility before God in the realm of work and learning.[7]
How doth the busy little bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower.
How skillfully she builds her cell,
How neat she spreads the wax
And labours hard to store it well
With the sweet food she makes.
In works of labour, or of skill,
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.
In books, or work, or healthful play
Let my first years be passed;
That I may give for every day
Some good account at last.
Armed with love, common sense, and a nearby woodshed, colonial mothers often achieved more than our modern-day elementary schools with their federally-funded programs and education specialists. These colonial mothers used simple, time-tested methods of instruction mixed with plain, old-fashioned hard work. Children were not ruined by educational experiments developed in the ivory towers of academe. The introduction to a reading primer from the early 19th century testifies to the importance of home instruction.[8] It says: “The author cannot but hope that this book will enable many a mother or aunt, or elder brother or sister, or perhaps a beloved grandmother, by the family fireside, to go through in a pleasant and sure way with the art of preparing the child for his first school days.”
Home education was so common in America that most children knew how to read before they entered school. As Ralph Walker has pointed out, “Children were often taught to read at home before they were subjected to the rigours of school. In middle-class families, where the mother would be expected to be literate, this was considered part of her duties.[9]
Without ever spending a dime of tax money, or without ever consulting a host of bureaucrats, psychologists, and specialists, children in early America learned the basic academic skills of reading, writing, and ciphering necessary for getting along in society. Even in Boston, the capital city of the colony in which the government had the greatest hand, children were taught to read at home. Samuel Eliot Morison, in his excellent study on education in colonial New England, says:[10]
Boston offers a curious problem. The grammar (Boston Latin) school was the only public school down to 1684, when a writing school was established; and it is probable that only children who already read were admitted to that . . . . they must have learned to read somehow, since there is no evidence of unusual illiteracy in the town. And a Boston bookseller’s stock in 1700 includes no less than eleven dozen spellers and sixty-one dozen primers.
The answer to this supposed problem is simple. The books were bought by parents, and illiteracy was absent because parents taught their children how to read outside of a formal school setting. Coupled with the vocational skills children learned from their parents, home education met the demands of the free market. For many, formal schooling was simply unnecessary. The fine education they received at home and on the farm held them in good stead for the rest of their lives, and was supplemented with Bible reading and almanacs like Franklin’s Poor Richard’s.
Some of our forefathers desired more education than they could receive at home. Thus, grammar and secondary schools grew up all along the Atlantic seaboard, particularly near the centers of population, such as Boston and Philadelphia. In New England, many of these schools were started by colonial governments, but were supported and controlled by the local townspeople.
In the Middle Colonies there was even less government intervention. In Pennsylvania, a compulsory education law was passed in 1683, but it was never strictly enforced.[11] Nevertheless, many schools were set up simply as a response to consumer demand. Philadelphia, which by 1776 had become second only to London as the chief city in the British Empire, had a school for every need and interest. Quakers, Philadelphia’s first inhabitants, laid the foundation for an educational system that still thrives in America. Because of their emphasis on learning, an illiterate Quaker child was a contradiction in terms. Other religious groups set up schools in the Middle Colonies. The Scottish Presbyterians, the Moravians, the Lutherans, and Anglicans all had their own schools. In addition to these church-related schools, private schoolmasters, entrepreneurs in their own right, established hundreds of schools.
Historical records, which are by no means complete, reveal that over one hundred and twenty-five private schoolmasters advertised their services in Philadelphia newspapers between 1740 and 1776. Instruction was offered in Latin, Greek, mathematics, surveying, navigation, accounting, bookkeeping, science, English, and contemporary foreign languages.[12] Incompetent and inefficient teachers were soon eliminated, since they were not subsidized by the State or protected by a guild or union. Teachers who satisfied their customers by providing good services prospered. One schoolmaster, Andrew Porter, a mathematics teacher, had over one hundred students enrolled in 1776. The fees the students paid enabled him to provide for a family of seven.[13]
In the Philadelphia Area
Philadelphia also had many fine evening schools. In 1767, there were at least sixteen evening schools, catering mostly to the needs of Philadelphia’s hard-working German population. For the most part, the curriculum of these schools was confined to the teaching of English and vocations.[14] There were also schools for women, blacks, and the poor. Anthony Benezet, a leader in colonial educational thought, pioneered in the education for women and Negroes. The provision of education for the poor was a favorite Quaker philanthropy. As one historian has pointed out, “the poor, both Quaker and non-Quaker, were allowed to attend without paying fees.”[15]
In the countryside around Philadelphia, German immigrants maintained many of their own schools. By 1776, at least sixteen schools were being conducted by the Mennonites in Eastern Pennsylvania. Christopher Dock, who made several notable contributions to the science of pedagogy, taught in one of these schools for many years. Eastern Pennsylvanians, as well as New Jerseyans and Marylanders, sometimes sent their children to Philadelphia to further their education, where there were several boarding schools, both for girls and boys.
In the Southern colonies, government had, for all practical purposes, no hand at all in education. In Virginia, education was considered to be no business of the State. The educational needs of the young in the South were taken care of in “old-field” schools. “Old-field” schools were buildings erected in abandoned fields that were too full of rocks or too overcultivated for farm use. It was in such a school that George Washington received his early education. The Southern Colonies’ educational needs were also taken care of by using private tutors, or by sending their sons north or across the Atlantic to the mother country.
Colonial Colleges
A college education is something that very few of our forefathers wanted or needed. As a matter of fact, most of them were unimpressed by degrees or a university accent. They judged men by their character and by their experience. Moreover, many of our founding ‘fathers, such as George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Ben Franklin, did quite well without a college education. Yet for those who so desired it, usually young men aspiring to enter the ministry, university training was available. Unlike England, where the government had given Cambridge and Oxford a monopoly on the granting of degrees,[16] there were nine colleges from which to choose.
Although some of the colonial colleges were started by colonial governments, it would be misleading to think of them as statist institutions in the modern sense.[17] Once chartered, the colleges were neither funded nor supported by the State. Harvard was established with a grant from the Massachusetts General Court, yet voluntary contributions took over to keep the institution alive. John Harvard left the college a legacy of 800 pounds and his library of 400 books. “College corn,” donated by the people of the Bay Colony, maintained the young scholars for many years.[18] Provision was also made for poor students, as Harvard developed one of the first work-study programs.[19] And when Harvard sought to build a new building in 1674, donations were solicited from the people of Massachusetts. Despite the delays caused by King Philip’s War, the hall was completed in 1677 at almost no cost to the taxpayer.[20]
New Jersey was the only colony that had two colleges, the College of New Jersey (Princeton) and Queens (Rutgers). The Log College, the predecessor of Princeton, was founded when Nathaniel Irwin left one thousand dollars to William Tennant to found a seminary.[21] Queens grew out of a small class held by the Dutch revivalist, John Frelinghuyson.[22] Despite occasional hard times, neither college bowed to civil government for financial assistance. As Frederick Rudolph has observed, “neither the college at Princeton nor its later rival at New Brunswick ever received any financial support from the state.”[23] Indeed, John Witherspoon, Princeton’s sixth president, was apparently proud of the fact that his institution was independent of government control. In an advertisement addressed to the British settlers in the West Indies, Witherspoon wrote:[24] “The College of New Jersey is altogether independent. It hath received no favor from Government but the charter, by the particular friendship of a person now deceased.”
Based on the principle of freedom, Princeton under Witherspoon produced some of America’s most “animated Sons of Liberty.” Many of Princeton’s graduates, standing firmly in the Whig tradition of limited government, helped lay the legal and constitutional foundations for our Republic. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, was a Princeton graduate.
Libraries
In addition to formal schooling in elementary and secondary schools, colleges, and universities, early America had many other institutions that made it possible for people to either get an education or supplement their previous training. Conceivably, an individual who never attended school could receive an excellent education by using libraries, building and consulting his own library, and by joining a society for mutual improvement. In colonial America, all of these were possible.
Consumer demand brought into existence a large number of libraries. Unlike anything in the Old Country, where libraries were open only to scholars, churchmen, or government officials, these libraries were rarely supported by government funds. In Europe, church libraries were supported by tax money as well, for they were a part of an established church. In America, church libraries, like the churches themselves, were supported primarily by voluntarism.
The first non-private, non-church libraries in America were maintained by membership fees, called subscriptions or shares, and by gifts of books and money from private benefactors interested in education. The most famous of these libraries was Franklin and Logan’s Library Company in Philadelphia, which set the pattern and provided much of the inspiration for libraries throughout the colonies.[25] The membership fee for these subscription libraries varied from twenty or thirty pounds to as little as fifteen shillings a year. The Association Library, a library formed by a group of Quaker artisans, cost twenty shillings to join.[26]
Soon libraries became the objects of private philanthropy, and it became possible for even the poorest citizens to borrow books. Sometimes the membership fee was completely waived for an individual if he showed intellectual promise and character.[27]
Entrepreneurs, seeing an opportunity to make a profit from colonial Americans’ desire for self-improvement, provided new services and innovative ways to sell or rent printed matter. One new business that developed was that of the circulating library. In 1767, Lewis Nicola established one of the first such businesses in the City of Brotherly Love. The library was open daily, and customers, by depositing five pounds and paying three dollars a year, could withdraw one book at a time. Nicola apparently prospered, for two years later he moved his business to Society Hill, enlarged his library, and reduced his prices to compete with other circulating libraries.[28] Judging from the titles in these libraries,[29] colonial Americans could receive an excellent education completely outside of the schoolroom. For colonial Americans who believed in individual responsibility, self-government, and self-improvement, this was not an uncommon course of study. Most lawyers, for example, were self-educated.
Sermons as Educational Tools
The sermon was also an excellent educational experience for our colonial forefathers. Sunday morning was a time to hear the latest news and see old friends and neighbors. But it was also an opportunity for many to sit under a man of God who had spent many hours preparing for a two, three, or even four hour sermon. Many a colonial pastor, such as Jonathan Edwards, spent eight to twelve hours daily studying, praying over, and researching his sermon. Unlike sermons on the frontier in the mid-19th century, colonial sermons were filled with the fruits of years of study. They were geared not only to the emotions and will, but also to the intellect.
As Daniel Boorstin has pointed out, the sermon was one of the chief literary forms in colonial America.[30] Realizing this, listeners followed sermons closely, took mental notes, and usually discussed the sermon with the family on Sunday afternoon. Anne Hutchinson’s discussions, which later resulted in the Antinomian Controversy, were merely typical of thousands of discussions which took place in the homes of colonial America. Most discussions, however, were not as controversial as those which took place in the Hutchinson home.
Thus, without ever attending a college or seminary, a church-goer in colonial America could gain an intimate knowledge of Bible doctrine, church history, and classical literature. Questions raised by the sermon could be answered by the pastor or by the books in the church libraries that were springing up all over America. Often a sermon was later published and listeners could review what they had heard on Sunday morning.
The first Sunday Schools also developed in this period. Unlike their modern-day counterparts, colonial Sunday Schools not only taught Bible but also the rudiments of reading and writing. These Sunday Schools often catered to the poorest members of society.
Modern historians have discounted the importance of the colonial church as an educational institution, citing the low percentage of colonial Americans on surviving church membership rolls. What these historians fail to realize, however, is that unlike most churches today, colonial churches took membership seriously. Requirements for becoming a church member were much higher in those days, and many people attended church without officially joining. Other sources indicate that church attendance was high in the colonial period. Thus, many of our forefathers partook not only of the spiritual blessing of their local churches, but the educational blessings as well.
Philosophical Societies
Another educational institution that developed in colonial America was the philosophical society. One of the most famous of these was Franklin’s Junto, where men would gather to read and discuss papers they had written on all sorts of topics and issues.[31] Another society was called The Literary Republic. This society opened in the bookbindery of George Rineholt in 1764 in Philadelphia. Here, artisans, tradesmen, and common laborers met to discuss logic, jurisprudence, religion, science, and moral philosophy (economics).[32]
Itinerant lecturers, not unlike the Greek philosophers of the Hellenistic period, rented halls and advertised their lectures in local papers. One such lecturer, Joseph Cunningham, offered a series of lectures on the “History and Laws of England” for a little over a pound.[33]
By 1776, when America finally declared its independence, a tradition had been established and voluntarism in education was the rule. Our founding fathers, who had been educated in this tradition, did not think in terms of government-controlled education. Accordingly, when the delegates gathered in Philadelphia to write a Constitution for the new nation, education was considered to be outside the jurisdiction of the civil government, particularly the national government. Madison, in his notes on the Convention, recorded that there was some talk of giving the Federal legislature the power to establish a national university at the future capital. But the proposal was easily defeated, for as Boorstin has pointed out, “the Founding Fathers supported the local institutions which had sprung up all over the country.”[34] A principle had been established in America that was not to be deviated from until the mid-nineteenth century. Even as late as 1860, there were only 300 public schools, as compared to 6,000 private academies.[35]
A Highly Literate Populace
The results of colonial America’s free market system of education were impressive indeed. Almost no tax money was spent on education, yet education was available to almost anyone who wanted it, including the poor. No government subsidies were given, and inefficient institutions either improved or went out of business. Competition guaranteed that scarce educational resources would be allocated properly. The educational institutions that prospered produced a generation of articulate Americans who could grapple with the complex problems of self-government. The Federalist Papers, which are seldom read or understood today, even in our universities, were written for and read by the common man. Literacy rates were as high or higher than they are today.[36] A study conducted in 1800 by DuPont de Nemours revealed that only four in a thousand Americans were unable to read and write legibly.[37] Various accounts from colonial America support these statistics. In 1772, Jacob Duche, the Chaplain of Congress, later turned Tory, wrote:[38]
The poorest labourer upon the shore of Delaware thinks himself entitled to deliver his sentiments in matters of religion or politics with as much freedom as the gentleman or scholar . . . . Such is the prevailing taste for books of every kind, that almost every man is a reader; and by pronouncing sentence, right or wrong, upon the various publications that come in his way, puts himself upon a level, in point of knowledge, with their several authors.
Franklin, too, testified to the efficiency of the colonial educational system. According to Franklin, the North American libraries alone “have improved the general conversation of Americans, made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defense of their privileges.”[39]
The experience of colonial America clearly supports the idea that the market, if allowed to operate freely, could meet the educational needs of modern-day America. In the nineteenth century, the Duke of Wellington remarked that “the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton and Cambridge.” Today, the battle between freedom and statism is being fought in America’s schools. Those of us who believe in Constitutional government would do well to promote the principle of com petition, pluralism, and government non-intervention in education. Years ago, Abraham Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the classroom will be the philosophy of the government in the next generation.”
1. Bertrand Russell, quoted in: Tim Dowley, ed., The History of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Pub. Co., 1977), p. 2.
2. Clarence B. Carson has emphasized this point in his The American Tradition (Irvington- on-Hudson: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1964).
3. Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1789. (New York: Evanston and London: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 40.
6. Elizabeth McEachern Wells, Divine Songs by Isaac Watts (Fairfax, Va.: Thoburn Press, 1975), p. ii.
8. Eric Sloane, The Little Red Schoolhouse (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1972), p. 3.
9. Ralph Walker, “Old Readers,” in Early American Life, October, 1980, p. 54.
10. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Intellectual Life of New England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965), pp. 71, 72.
12. Louis B. Wright, The Cultural Life of the American Colonies (New York: Harper and Row Pub., Inc., 1957), p. 108.
15. Carl and Jessica Bridenbaugh, Rebels and Gentlemen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 36.
17. Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University (New York: Random House, A Vintage Book, 1962), pp. 15-16.
21. Archibald Alexander, The Log College (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1968, First Published, 1851), pp. 14-22.
22. William H.S. Demarest, A History of Rutgers College, 1766-1924 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1924), p. 45.
24. John Witherspoon, “Address to the Inhabitants of Jamaica and Other West-India Islands, in Behalf of the College of New Jersey,” Essays upon Important Subjects, Vol. III (Edin burgh, 1805), pp. 312-318,328-330.
25. Max Farrand, ed., The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Berkeley, California, 1949), p. 86.
30. Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1958), pp. 10-14.
31. This later became, of course, the American Philosophical Society.
35. Richard C. Wade, et. al., A History of the United States with Selected Readings, Vol. I (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1966, 1971), p. 398.
36. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education (Nutley, N.J.: The Craig Press, 1963, 1979), p. 330.
Comment by John on 23 October 2009:
this is jot xxx
Comment by Harold Harmon on 28 January 2010:
I, too, with Mr. Bruce White would like to find Colonial sermons to determine if they stirred the colonists to revolt from England. Where can those be found online?
Thank you.
Comment by Glenda Ainsworth on 20 March 2010:
Thank you for your essay on early American Education. We emphasize early American Educators like Webster and Mann but never mention the parents and the people themselves as educators.
Comment by Diane on 2 August 2010:
Robert, thank you for this thought provoking article. I have homeschooled my four children for most of their education. They attended the public school for a few years while I gained courage through joining the Home Legal Defense Association, them being behind me. At that particular time, they were arresting parents who were doing so in Michigan. My children are very bright, two of them have Bachelors degrees, and one an associates. They wish to homeschool their own children. I am so pleased that you are sharing the historical view of American education. Most people are not given the chance would make different choices in there children’s education if they were made aware. Thank you once again. I posted this to my Facebook. Keep up the good work!
Comment by James Madison Fan on 3 August 2010:
This article is a giant “Wisdom of the Ancients” fallacy.
Using Mr. Peterson’s “logic” we should revisit blood letting, slavery, witch trials, and other anachronisms we abandoned as we traversed the Age of Enlightenment. If his deepest wish is to return to a simpler time when Johnny and Suzie learned the “Three R’s” in the Bible at their mommy’s knee I would suggest joining an Amish colony rather than expecting the whole of the US to join him in his quest for ignorance.
What’s worse is he pretends that this was some sort of golden age in the US when the 176 of the 200 years he describes the United States were British colonies rather than an independent nation. When the US finally threw off King George literacy was made mandatory in 9 of the 13 Colonies. Most of the “highly skilled and literate men and women” that founded this country came from wealthy families that could afford real professors (Jefferson, Madison, and Hancock). The list of Founders that came from children of dirt farmers educated in the fireplace ash is not particularly long (Franklin’s family was fairly poor). So this lassaiz-faire education system he pines for where children rise from poverty into prosperity based on a humble education taught by the light of the hearth never existed.
“A system of general education, which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest.” – Jefferson
Mr. Peterson spends upwards of 30 paragraphs explaining how wonderful education was in the 1600’s to 1800’s but fails to mention that the US in 1600 to 1800 was an agrarian society. You don’t need an education to plant seeds and husband cows. It is marginally more important in pre-industrial and industrial societies. However in a post industrial-technology based economy that we’ve been living in for nearly a century now it is vital. We cannot hope to compete in a world market where children have a well financed secular education while we pop out kids that think lightning rods protect people from God’s wrath, Evolution is a fraud, the Earth is flat, and some invisible super entity is going to damn you to Hell if you so much as say the words “stem cell.”
What Mr. Peterson is proposing is a return to a stratified society where the poor work endless hours in the mills making rich men richer, the middle class is nearly non existent, and the elite collect wealth like dragons on a horde. There is a reason the US economy explodes after we deposed the Robber Barons. That kind of Draconian Capitalism is no more viable than Marxism because the worker lacks incentive. Wealth is generated far quicker when the workers are a part of the economy they are building rather than observers laboring in the shadows. A store cannot make money when the people walking by can only afford to window shop.
Comment by Anonymous on 15 September 2010:
ur gay
Comment by Smile on 5 October 2010:
“Logic” would tell us that we can find any number of atrocities at any time throughout history, even today. E.g., it’s sad that escalating tax burdens limit businesses from hiring, criminals at times have more resources than law abiding citizens, and our congress writes laws intended to be complicated or vague. Yet, these things don’t address anything in the article. It’s logical to conserve some things, resist what has been proven not to work, and add things that truely enhance yet doesn’t interfere with the Constitution. The Constitution is the law. Laws are rigid, just like the speed limit. They can be changed but not ‘re’ interpreted.
It’s not that one insists the “Three Rs” must be learned from the Bible but rather that they be learned (period). Graduating without this knowledge/experience is the travesty. When looking at the ordinary citizen, yes, from poverty into prosperity based on a humble education taught by the light of the hearth existed. One need only take a brief look into the vast storehouse of information provided by the very people to whom this happened. This has nothing to do with whatever ‘beginnings’ the various founders might have had.
When quoting Thomas Jefferson, it’s important to remember the many other things he said and stood for. He never meant for location of those being educated to be compulsory. He simply wanted all to be educated. He certainly never intended for the state to censor education but rather to help promote it by reasonable means. Though he developed plans for education which encompassed elementary through university levels he said it was “safer to have the whole people respectfully enlightened than a few in a high state of science and many in ignorance as in Europe. BTW, he used the Bible as a learning tool. There should be no disrespect in that, it certainly would sharpen ones literacy.
Thomas Jefferson had six simple principles which he hoped for everyone:
# “To give every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business;
# To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts, and accounts, in writing;
# To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties;
# To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either;
# To know his rights; to exercize with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgment;
# And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.
“I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our creator.” Thomas Jefferson
He was the chairman of the American Bible Society and considered it his highest and most important role.
Immediately after creating the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress voted to purchase and import 20,000 copies of Scripture for the people of this nation.
Of the first 108 universities founded in America, 106 were distinctly Christian, including the first, Harvard University. It’s interesting to note that acceptance required Latin and Greek.
One would have to be lacking attention to not be able to understand that an agrarian nation was part of the discussion when reading the above article. Farming of any sort takes much more than what one might expect. If you don’t believe that, try raising a cow, vegetables or grain successfully without further assistance or knowledge. These are just the basics of farming; we’re not considering grafting and hybrid.
If one doesn’t have capital to spend inside the shop one can only gaze through the window. If a business doesn’t have capital they can’t expand and hire these elusive “workers.” Frankly, a ‘class’ of people should not be referenced as workers, as if there are some who don’t work. We should all have enough knowledge to realize that we must busy our hands with work, whether at home or away, sophisticated or simple. Some of the most rewarding work is the most ordinary.
So, to work for an ordinary education is one of our most important and rewarding endeavors. An appreciation for this has been seriously eroded but should have been conserved. One need only glance at the Dept of Ed website to see that illiteracy is an epidemic.
Comment by Tim Davis on 10 October 2010:
James Madison Fan (JMF) said: “and some invisible super entity is going to damn you to Hell if you so much as say the words “stem cell.””
Why I ask do liberals always wish to lie about the truth. Either that or JMF is completely ignorant that there are 2 types of stem cells. Adult and Embryonic. Christians have been championing Adult Stem Cells for many years with over 70 actual cures. Cure ranging from paralyzed people walking to new jaws being grown. Embryonic stem cells have no cures associated with them as yet and infact have usually resulted in cancers and other such consequences.
JMF are you aware of this?
Comment by fredifer fartbag on 12 November 2010:
i don’t get any of this
Comment by James Madison Fan on 12 November 2010:
Tim,
I just noticed your reply due to the above post dated today. I am aware there are different types of stem cells. As of now they are broken down into five different classes. Totipotent (also known as omnipotent), Pluripotent, Multipotent, Oligopotent, and Unipotent.
Totipotent (TP) and Pluripotent (PP) cells are “embryonic stem cells” since they come from the union of a sperm and and ovum. Pluripotent cells are the “offspring” of Totipotent cells. These can become any cell in the body from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. From hair to heart to brain to skin.
The “Adult” cells would be the other three types: Multipotent (MP), Oligopotent (OP), and Unipotent (UP). Each is limited in what it can become. The most potent of the adult cells are Multipotent, which can turn into many cell types but only a specific group closely related to the parent MP cell.
You left out the reason we don’t have any cures associate with TP and PP cells is every Republican President since Regan has made experimenting on them illegal. Even when allowed the testing is held in contempt by the religious right in much the same way abortion clinics are. The sad thing is Regan died from a disease that probably could have been cured by the technology he outlawed. An irony lost on him but not his wife, Nancy, who is an agressive supporter of stem cell research.
The thing I don’t understand is the logic behind Christian opposition to use of “embryonic” stem cells? You don’t need to abort a fetus to harvest these cells, you can get them from cord blood and clone them. If we don’t use them they get thrown away anyway. Better to toss out the cells in the bio-hazard bag than use them to save someone’s life or health? I’d love to hear a rational explaination for that if anyone can manage one.
It seems to me this is the same kind of foolishness as the Jehovah’s Witnesses denying themselves and their children blood transfusions and other life saving medical procedures.
If you want to put your own health in jeopardy that’s fine with me but if you would be so kind as to step out of the way so they can cure me I’d really appreciate it.
Comment by Joseph A. Gomeztagle on 7 December 2010:
what was the literacy rate in Boston around 1770 vs England?
Comment by Steve on 1 February 2011:
@JamesMadisonFan, Christians don’t oppose use of embryonic-stem-cell-like cells from cord blood, nor has research on them been illegal.
Comment by Lisa on 2 February 2011:
JMF: God is not “some invisible super entity”. He is the creator of all that exists. And he does not go around “damning people to hell”. People choose to go. Those of us who believe the Bible are not ignorant to the lies all around us, we simply choose to live by the truth and teach our children that as well. My kids know that evolution is not true. They are also very intelligent and attend public school. I just hope you discover who God really is someday.
Comment by CSYNCIERE on 25 March 2011:
THIS IS STUPID AS HELL!
Comment by Terry on 17 April 2011:
I always enjoy a selective history of education in the United States. I especially enjoyed the response post from the home school parent from Michigan who claims bright children (which I’m sure they are), yet she used the wrong form of “there” in her post. “…different choices in there children’s education…” should be “…different choices in their children’s education…” Hope you taught your kids the right way to use those words or they’re going to have problems posting Neo-Christian nonsense to utterly useless internet articles.
Comment by Joe Schmoe on 17 April 2011:
“Using Mr. Peterson’s “logic” we should revisit blood letting, slavery, witch trials, and other anachronisms we abandoned as we traversed the Age of Enlightenment.”
It was at this point that I realized you had nothing interesting to say and probably haven’t even read the article. Nice try though.
“If his deepest wish is to return to a simpler time when Johnny and Suzie learned the “Three R’s” in the Bible at their mommy’s knee I would suggest joining an Amish colony rather than expecting the whole of the US to join him in his quest for ignorance.”
Yes, that’s exactly what he wants. He even turn around and- oh, wait a minute. No, he never mentioned that at all. Pity.
“Most of the “highly skilled and literate men and women” that founded this country came from wealthy families that could afford real professors (Jefferson, Madison, and Hancock). The list of Founders that came from children of dirt farmers educated in the fireplace ash is not particularly long (Franklin’s family was fairly poor). So this lassaiz-faire education system he pines for where children rise from poverty into prosperity based on a humble education taught by the light of the hearth never existed.”
If you consider ‘prosperity’ the act of being a Founder, then sure. Otherwise this whole train of thought is a gigantic non sequitur.
Yes, you can be a founder without being a ‘Founder’.
“Mr. Peterson spends upwards of 30 paragraphs explaining how wonderful education was in the 1600’s to 1800’s but fails to mention that the US in 1600 to 1800 was an agrarian society.”
No, not really. He did mention that the US was agrarian (hence the repeated references to farms), and he did not claim education was wonderful. In fact his key argument was that literacy was higher and in fact quite easy to accomplish.
“We cannot hope to compete in a world market where children have a well financed secular education while we pop out kids that think lightning rods protect people from God’s wrath, Evolution is a fraud, the Earth is flat, and some invisible super entity is going to damn you to Hell if you so much as say the words ‘stem cell’.”
I see: this response is some kind of emotional reaction to the thought that people could become literate by reading a bible. I don’t see why you would take offense to that fact but clearly you’ve some kind of vendetta against religion that can only be sated with senseless attacks. No, I’m not religious, but I’m sure as hell not going to have a panic attack at the thought that it could have done some good as a human institution at some point in history.
“What Mr. Peterson is proposing is a return to a stratified society where the poor work endless hours in the mills making rich men richer, the middle class is nearly non existent, and the elite collect wealth like dragons on a horde.”
Yes, that’s exactly what he wants. He even turn around and- oh, wait a minute. No, he never mentioned that at all. Pity.
“There is a reason the US economy explodes after we deposed the Robber Barons.”
It’s called exponential growth.
“That kind of Draconian Capitalism is no more viable than Marxism because the worker lacks incentive. Wealth is generated far quicker when the workers are a part of the economy they are building rather than observers laboring in the shadows. A store cannot make money when the people walking by can only afford to window shop.”
True; historically, economies were simply filled with laborers & slaves who weren’t consumers and were hardly producers, with a small assortment of middle class, skilled tradesmen producing goods for the rich elites. This is mainly why their economies could not expand as rapidly as they do now.
But you fail to recognize or address the fact that the primary consumers of the industrial revolution were not rich elites but the lower and middle class, and often the very same people who were the producers.
Pingback by Supply and demand in education « IndividualRightsGovernmentWrongs.com on 2 August 2011:
[...] to compete for business by offering the curriculums that parents want. Indeed, this was the case in colonial America: Historical records, which are by no means complete, reveal that over one hundred and twenty-five [...]
Comment by billy on 14 October 2011:
yeah
Comment by Dessie on 18 October 2011:
Hello James Madison Fan,
You posted,
What Mr. Peterson is proposing is a return to a stratified society where the poor work endless hours in the mills making rich men richer, the middle class is nearly non existent, and the elite collect wealth like dragons on a horde. There is a reason the US economy explodes after we deposed the Robber Barons. That kind of Draconian Capitalism is no more viable than Marxism because the worker lacks incentive. Wealth is generated far quicker when the workers are a part of the economy they are building rather than observers laboring in the shadows. A store cannot make money when the people walking by can only afford to window shop.
Hello??? Where are you living? What you discribed is exactly what the Globle Economy is facing at this day and time. THe reason is because the Bible and pledge to our country was taken out of the schools and replaced with guns and drugs. Love for one another is replaced with greed and jelousy of one another.
Comment by Vi on 14 November 2011:
Thank you for the insight on the early educational system and how it affected the population at the time. It’s sad to see so many people being so rude about such a wonderful essay with good and accurate information, some of which I have been having a hard time finding in my research on children in the colonies.
To all of you who are bringing religion and politics into your comments: Please stop and take all that somewhere else. This is meant to be an educational essay on what life WAS like not what it IS like. As far as everyone’s religious beliefs go, I don’t care and I wish that you would all grow up and realize that everyone believes in different things.
My opinions: I am an Atheist, I think that stem-cell research is fine. End of story, my beliefs, get over it. Moving on
THANK YOU FOR THIS GREAT ARTICLE! IT REALLY HELPED ME OUT ON MY ESSAY!!!
Comment by valley of the hare on 25 December 2011:
Dear James Madison Fan,
Have you ever owned a stock? The company that issued the stock reguraly sends you a finacial report and sometimes a dividend. Why? Because you are a owner of that company. Every year you send the IRS a finacial report (tax return) and a dividend (tax payment). Why? because the government ownes you. You, and all the rest of us slaves to the state. But why do you love paying taxes? It is because you are a tax taker I’m willing to bet. You’re in public education and this artical threatens you. Where do you get the money to pay your taxes? You get it from taxes paid by tax payers who produce the wealth of this nation while scum like you poison the minds of America’s youth.
Comment by Clarified on 11 January 2012:
I am not sure why this article has risen from the ashes since it was written in 1983 by a young man of about 25 years old. Since that time he passed away in about 2003 of a heart attack. So trying to debate him now is moot. Perhaps as he matured, so did his ideas, but we will never know this now. Don’t beat on a dead man.
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