families should "set vp & mainteyne two gramar schooles and two wrighting schooles." 1 After the colony had become a royal province, the colonial school law was re-enacted, in substance, though somewhat modernized in wording. A grammar school was to be maintained in every town of one hundred families, under penalty of ten pounds for each conviction. One half of the receipts from fines for the selling of liquors without license and for certain other offences, was devoted to the support of grammar or writing schools.3 The provision relating to the maintenance of grammar schools having been "shamefully neglected by divers towns," the penalty for non-observance was increased in 1701 to twenty pounds per annum. It was further provided that every grammar master must be approved by the minister of the town or the ministers of two adjacent towns, and hold a certificate to that effect; and that the minister of a town should not serve as schoolmaster.1 In 1718, "by sad experience it is found that many towns that not only are obliged by law, but are very able to support a grammer school, yet choose rather to incurr and pay the fine or penalty than maintain a grammer school." A law of that date accordingly increases the fine to thirty pounds for every town of one hundred and fifty families, forty pounds for such as have two hundred families, and so "pro rato" (sic) for a town of two hundred and fifty or three hundred families.5 A new Massachusetts was by this time growing up, as the frontier settlements were pushed farther and farther into the interior. The new towns did not all take kindly to the compulsory maintenance of schools, and the older towns were not unanimous in their adherence to it. The legislature and the courts of the province had much to do, as the records 1 Records of the governor and company, etc., V., pp. 414-415. 2 Province laws, 1692-93, ch. 26, sect. 5, passed November 4, 1692. 8 Id., 1700-01, ch. 8, sect. 6, passed June 29, 1700. Id., 1701–02, ch. 15, sect. 6, passed June 18, 1701. Id., 1702-03, ch. 4, sect. 5, passed March 27, 1703. Id., 1703-04, ch. 5, sect. 5, passed July 31, 1703. Id., 1701-02, ch. 10, passed June 28, 1701. 5 Id., 1718-19, ch. 2, passed June 17, 1718. show, in the effort to make these independent-spirited Massachusetts communities live up to a law which was one of the chief glories of the commonwealth. The Massachusetts act of 1647 was copied almost verbatim in the Connecticut code of 1650. After the union of the Connecticut and New Haven Colonies, the county instead of the town was made the territorial unit in the maintenance of grammar schools. In May, 1672, the general court granted each county town six hundred acres of land for the support of such a school, and later in the same year the requirement of a grammar school in each town of one hundred families was changed to one in each county town. From time to time various colony funds were voted to the support of these schools; and a fine of ten pounds was imposed on any county town which should fail to comply with the law. It was on these lines that a general system of secondary schools was maintained in Connecticut throughout the remainder of the colonial period.1 New Hampshire was a part of Massachusetts when the law of 1647 was adopted, and for many years thereafter. When the separation took place, the northern colony continued the same educational policy, in the face of all the obstacles to be met with on an exposed frontier in times, fretted with wars against the French and Indians. In 1719 an act was passed which was in the main a reproduction of the original Massachusetts law, but the penalty for failure. to maintain schools was increased from five to twenty pounds. Two years later, the selectmen of the towns were made individually liable for such failure. These laws were still in force at the time of the Revolution.2 Another powerful and pervasive spiritual force in the colonies, after Calvinism, was the doctrine and life of "the people called Quakers." Of especial significance in the history of education was their doctrine of the inner light, and 1 STEINER, History of education in Connecticut, pp. 17-29. their insistence upon the separation of church and state. Revelation, for these people, was not brought to an end with the completion of the New Testament. It was continued in the spiritual illumination of each individual Christian. The Scriptures, then, though a true revelation and of the greatest value, were not the only guide of life. Such doctrine would lead some to lay great emphasis on the higher learning, but would lead all to give to learning the second place, while an enlightened conscience was held to be the principal thing. As early as the seventeenth century there was a spirited discussion of the question of "an educated ministry." And members of the society of Friends, quite consistently, took the ground that the education of the minister was a matter of secondary importance. It is not surprising that some members of this society went further, and developed a positive opposition to education beyond the merest rudiments; yet the more intelligent of their number manifested from the beginning a lively sense of the importance of schools of every grade, from the lowest to the highest. The Quakers made themselves felt at an early day in the life of the several colonies. George Fox came to America in 1671 for an extended preaching tour. His followers were influential in the affairs of Maryland. William Penn was one of the company of Friends which for a time exercised. proprietary rights over West Jersey; and finally Quaker influence in the colonies culminated in the magnificent grant which Penn received, in 1681, from Charles the Second. There is much that has a very modern sound in the Frame of Government which Penn drew up for his colony: Freedom of religion (except for "Papists "); large powers granted to an elective legislature; and intimately connected with these, a system of education under civil control. "The Governor and Provincial Council shall erect and order all public schools, and encourage and reward the authors of useful sciences and laudable inventions in the said province." And one of the committees into which the Provincial Council was divided for purposes of administration was "a committee of manners, education, and arts, that all wicked and scandalous living may be prevented, and that youth may be successively trained up in virtue and useful knowledge and arts." 1 Penn's first legislature (1682) confirmed his Frame of Government and passed the "Great Body of Laws." One of these statutes provided that the laws of the province should be taught in the schools of the province. The second legislature, meeting March 10, 1683, passed a bill requiring parents and guardians to have their children instructed in reading and writing and "taught some useful trade or skill, that the poor may work to live, and the rich, if they become poor, may not want." Some months later, the Governor and Council engaged Enoch Flower to teach reading, writing, and casting accounts, in Philadelphia.2 Thus far we find the provincial government taking very advanced ground in the matter of public control of education. The new frame of government adopted in 1696, after the brief term of royal administration, renewed the educational provision of the frame of 1682. Then a retrograde movement began. Penn's final frame of government, presented in 1701, omitted entirely the earlier provision for education. The attempt was now made to provide for public instruction through the agency of the several religious denominations in the province. The Charter School at Philadelphia was first put under the control of one of the "meetings" of the Society of Friends. In its final organization it was a privately managed institution, without formal responsibility either to a sect or to the provincial government. The overseers of this institution were empowered to set up a general system of schools for the city and county of Philadelphia. After some difficulty, caused by the opposition of the British government, an act of the provincial legislature was finally put in force, empowering religious denominations to establish and maintain schools. So the 1 CLEWS, op. cit., pp. 278-279. 2 Id., pp. 280-282. early movement toward a system of public education under civil control in Pennsylvania came to an end. If ever the inner history of this effort shall be written, it must prove highly interesting and instructive. The mixture of civil, ecclesiastical, and private agency in the system of education proposed for Maryland by the act of 1696, invites examination. What we see at first glance is this: A colony which has just set up a quasi establishment of the Church of England within its territory, proceeds, by act of legislature, to provide for public education; and this it does by erecting a corporation, private in form, but in some sort of co-operation with the highest dignitaries of the English Church, charged with the establishment and administration of schools in the several counties, the officers of government making individual contributions to the support of the undertaking. The notable fact, so far as our present discussion is concerned, is that the really decisive action in Maryland was that taken by the civil power. Miss Clews remarks that "The step from a government church to government schools was short." It must be remembered, however, that this short step was important, for it was taken at a time when in the world at large a church under the episcopal form of administration was apparently incompatible with a system of government schools. We have here another of those passages in the history of American education which offer promising topics for special investigation. Some Calvinistic influence may have been felt in the movement,1 and the example of the New England colonies doubtless had some weight. There was, moreover, a strong contingent of Quakers in Maryland. The educa 1 In the early days of the colony, Father Henry More, in transmitting to Rome the "twenty cases "submitted to him by the Jesuit missionary Father White, made the following comment: "In leading the colony to Maryland, by far the greater part were heretics, also the country itself, a meridie Virginiae ab Aquilone, is esteemed to be a New England, that is, two provinces full of English Calvinists and Puritans." Quoted by GAMBRALL, Civil, social and ecclesiastical history of early Maryland, p. 228. |