ton, another at Williamsborough in Granville, and three or four others in the State, of considerable note." South Carolina. - "Gentlemen of fortune, before the late war, sent their sons to Europe for education. During the late war and since, they have generally sent them to the middle and northern states. Those who have been at this expense in educating their sons, have been but comparatively few in number, so that the literature of the State is at a low ebb. Since the peace, however, it has begun to flourish. There are several respectable academies at Charleston; one at Beaufort on Port Royal island; and several others in different parts of the State. . . . Part of the old barracks at Charleston has been handsomely fitted up, and converted into a college, and there are a number of students; but it does not yet merit a more dignified name than that of a respectable academy. . . . The college at Cambridge is no more than a grammar school." Georgia. The act for the establishment of "The University of Georgia," with its provision for an academy in each county, receives extended notice.1 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES The histories of the University of Pennsylvania, by WOOD, THORPE, and MONTGOMERY, and the Works of FRANKLIN, edited by JOHN BIGELOW, especially volume I., containing the Autobiography, are rich in material relating to the early history of the Academy at Philadelphia. For the two Phillips academies we have much scattered information and two or three volumes of importance. TAYLOR'S Memoir of Samuel 1 Op. cit., II. and III., passim. In this and the following chapters, no attempt is made to limit closely the use of the term academy. While we may speak of an "academy type," in recognition of certain dominant tendencies in the schools of this period, it will be remembered that this type is rather loosely defined and has admitted of much variation. In the narrower sense an academy, in this country, is an incorporated, undenominational school of secondary grade, under the control of a self-perpetuating board of trustees, and not conducted for pecuniary profit. But institutions bearing this designation may differ from one another in any of these particulars. Phillips, PARK's Annals, and the works on the Phillips Exeter Academy by BELL and CUNNINGHAM have been chiefly consulted. W. WINTERBOTHAM's work is in four volumes, and is entitled An historical, geographical, commercial, and philosophical view of the American United States, and of the European settlements in America and the West Indies. London: Printed for the Editor, 1795. Extended excerpts are given in BARNARD'S Am. Journ. Ed., XXIV., pp. 137–157. CHAPTER X EARLY STATE SYSTEMS OF SECONDARY EDUCATION WE have come to the time when French thought is to exercise an appreciable influence on American education. The philosophical and revolutionary literature of France in the eighteenth century was full of educational theories, and the tendency of these theories was strongly secular. Along with the doctrine that education should return to nature appeared the doctrine that the direction of education should return to the state. We find Helvetius pushing the claims of education to the last extreme, making it all-powerful in the determination of human character. He deplored the fact that instruction was pulled this way and that by the opposing demands of church and state, and would put an end to this difficulty by simply having the state absorb the church. We find La Chalotais taking a leading part in the campaign for the expulsion of the Jesuits, and putting forth his idea of educational organization in the Essai d'éducation nationale. We find Voltaire describing education as a "government undertaking." We find Turgot declaring that, "the study of the duty of citizenship ought to be the foundation of all the other studies." "I do not presume to exclude ecclesiastics," said La Chalotais, "but I protest against the exclusion of laymen. I dare claim for the nation an education which depends only on the state, because it belongs essentially to the state; because every state has an inalienable and indefeasible right to instruct its members; because, finally, the children of the state ought to be educated by the members of the state." 1 Into the midst of this discussion came Rousseau with the enlivening abstractions and impossibilities of the Émile. Numerous other educational essays and treatises were put forth. But of especial significance for its suggestions relative to the making of systems of instruction, was the Plan of a university drawn up by Diderot, for Catherine of Russia, about the time of the American Revolution. "A university," wrote Diderot, "is a school which is open without discrimination to all the children of a nation, where masters paid by the state initiate them into the elementary knowledge of all sciences." He compared the course of instruction to "a great avenue, at the entrance of which appears a crowd of people who cry out continually, 'Instruction, instruction! We know nothing unless we be taught.'" Some can go farther on this avenue than others. The studies should be arranged accordingly. Such as are most generally useful should come first: the essential or primitive knowledges, which all should have. Such studies as are next in usefulness-those needed by the greatest number less than the whole people should follow; and so on to the end. - Reading, writing, and the first principles of arithmetic should be mastered before the pupil enters this public school. Having entered, he first comes under the instruction of the faculty of arts. Here he is offered a course of study, divided into eight classes, comprising the mathematical and natural sciences, logic, the languages, and rhetoric. Parallel with this are two other courses, which all will take one in metaphysics, morals, religion, history, geography, and economics; the other in drawing and the principles of architecture. There is a suggestion, too remote for serious consideration in the eighteenth century, of a 1 Cf. COMPAYRE, History of pedagogy, ch. 14-16; and SHErwood, The University of the State of New York (Circ. Inf. no. 3, 1900), pt. 1, course of "exercises," - music, dancing, horsemanship, and swimming. A prophecy is added, that the day will come when schools of agriculture and commerce will be established, whether within or without the university, not only in the cities but in the remoter country districts of the realm. After the faculty of arts come the other traditional faculties of medicine, jurisprudence, and theology. It is evident from his earlier Essai sur les études en Russie, that Diderot was influenced to some extent, in the making of this scheme, by his knowledge of the universities and gymnasiums of Germany. But in many particulars he drew far apart from his German models. His university was an institution for the education of the whole people, beyond the first elements of learning. He entered an eloquent plea for the education of all. The thatched cottages of the realm, he declared, were to the palaces in the proportion of ten thousand to one; so the likelihood was as ten thousand to one that genius, talent, and virtue would emerge from a cottage rather than from a palace.1 It was the French view of the administration of educational affairs by the state, rather than the doctrine of naturalism, which became influential in this country at an early period. And we are not surprised that Thomas Jefferson should have been one of the first Americans to respond to this influence. Jefferson drew suggestions from so wide a range of conference and reading, that his schemes cannot be looked upon as a mere working out of French ideas. Far from it. He learned from Switzerland and Scotland and Old and New England and from many other sources, and reacted vigorously on all that came to him. But the French influence is more conspicuous in his proposals than any other that has not already appeared in this narrative. In 1779 Jefferson, as a member of the committee appointed to revise the laws of Virginia, presented to the legislature of 1 Euvres de Denis Diderot, XII., pp. 153-234. |