Last time, I talked about the Boston Latin School, the U.S.’s oldest public school. That sent me down a very enjoyable rabbit hole of how education has changed in the last 390 years. There was no such thing as standardized education, so what follows is a description of education in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Other colonies, such as Virginia, operated almost entirely on a homeschool model, “every man according to his own ability in instructing his children.”*
Image in the public domain
The structure of schooling in colonial America was very different from now. Students who attended school (and not all did because it cost money) began at age 5 or 6 in a ‘petty,’ or primary, school. The petty school taught students their letters and how to read, plus very simple arithmetic like adding and subtracting. In some schools, arithmetic cost extra. Students used a primer (pronounced ‘primmer’) that combined basic literacy with moral instruction. At left, you can see a page from the New England Primer that taught children their letters by means of rhyming couplets. Some couplets are convenient illustrations and others are religious principles. This was likely the only book students would have in school. Other instruction, like writing, required a ‘horn book;’ a thin wooden board held by a handle with a piece of paper fastened to it. On the paper was the alphabet, written in lowercase and capital letters, and the Lord’s Prayer. To protect it, the paper was covered in a translucent sheet of pressed and polished animal horn. The child then put a thin piece of vellum over the horn and traced letters and sentences.
For many students, the petty school was their only educational experience. They left as soon as they had mastered reading and writing — between ages 8 and 10 (or earlier, if family finances dictated) — and were apprenticed to a trade or worked in the family business. It’s hard to say how many boys would go on to a ‘grammar,’ or secondary school like Boston Latin School (BLS). Some sources say most boys, others put the figure much lower. From its inception, Boston Latin School’s curriculum — like all grammar school curriculum — was meant to “instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the Universitie.”** All colleges and universities in the 1600s studied classical literature in its original languages (Latin and Greek). The BLS curriculum devoted all of its seven years of instruction to ensuring students had a thorough grounding in Latin, Greek, and classical literature — both prose and verse — and not much else, though they were taught more “complex” mathematics, which at that time meant multiplication and division and calculating interest and exchange rates. It appears that students could at least somewhat move through the curriculum at their own pace. For a long, long time, this program of study was enough to prepare them for Harvard (founded the year after BLS opened) even though most boys did not go on to university, mainly because no profession at the time required any college-level study. Their grammar school experience was also relatively short; most boys finished around age 14 or 15 and then left for university or to learn a specific trade.
Child learning with a hornbook. Image in the public domain
It seems almost incredible that students could complete their formal education and be ready for college by age 14 until you realize all the things students learn now that weren’t — couldn’t — be studied in 1635 because they had yet to be discovered or had been discovered but were not yet understood. Consider the following:
- There was nothing we would recognize as science — even the term science wouldn’t mean a systematic study of the natural world for nearly another 160 years. There were no scientists; people who observed the natural world were called natural philosophers.
- Boston Latin was established 52 years before Newton published his theory of gravity. A helio-centric solar system would not be widely accepted for another 65 years and the solar system at that time was just the Earth and 5 planets — Uranus, Neptune and Pluto would have to wait until 1741, 1846, and 1930 respectively to be discovered. The first telescope that allowed for observation of the 5 planets had only been developed 24 years earlier in 1609, and Kepler had only just arrived at the conclusion that planetary orbits were oval instead of round.
- Although electricity was observed in 600 BCE, Ben Franklin*** would not confirm that lightning was a form of electricity for another 117 years and electricity wouldn’t have any practical applications until almost the 20th century.
Hornbook, circa 1700; image in the public domain.
- Algebra would not be part of Harvard’s curriculum until 1726 and would not be required for admission until 1820. Geometry wouldn’t be part of general school curriculum until 1840.
- There was no Shakespeare^, Milton, Dickens, Twain, Hawthorne, Poe, or Fitzgerald and certainly no Douglass, Ellison, Hughes, or Morrison. Classical literature would hold sway for a long, long time — in 1900, half of all students in public school were still taking Latin. Advanced Placement didn’t retire its Latin exam until 2009. English-language literature didn’t become a standard part of curricula until the nineteenth century and American literature even later than that. Even then most professors of American literature taught it somewhat apologetically.
- History, as a subject area, was learned in grammar schools somewhat tangentially to other classical studies. The prevailing belief at the time was that a grounding in Greek and Roman history (not English history and certainly not U.S history because there wasn’t a U.S. yet) was necessary to prepare free men to be citizens. Obviously, we have almost 400 years of additional history to wade through now.
- Geography would not be taught in U.S. schools for another 149 years — entering U.S. classrooms around 1784. Because of territorial expansion and a variety of wars both home and abroad, geography would remain a very fluid and rapidly superseded subject area for a long time.
The curriculum of the Boston Latin School would be miniscule compared to that of the average modern elementary school. Consider that most elementary students learn to calculate percentages (the pinnacle of grammar school mathematics) by the time they leave 5th grade. The sheer volume of what we currently require students to learn by the time they graduate far outstrips what students were expected to master by the time they left grammar school. This is perhaps one of the the reasons we no longer expect children to start their working lives at age 14 — the information required to function as a citizen has changed dramatically.^^
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*This was part of a comment made by Virginia’s governor and I think he is giving a bit of side eye to his fellow Virginians. He is tacitly acknowledging that not every person had sufficient knowledge to teach their children and that many prioritized economic opportunity over formal education. Education in the southern colonies was very hit or miss and strongly correlated with family income. Many poorer children and virtually all enslaved children were completely uneducated. As a result, literacy rates in the southern colonies were significantly lower than in the north and would remain so until the 19th century. Even now, basic literacy rates in the southern U.S. among adults are still lower than in the north.
**This was the wording of important legislation called the Old Deluder Satan Act that required communities of 50 households to pay a school master to educate their children in a petty school and communities of 100 households to establish a grammar school whose mandate was to prepare boys for university, even though the vast majority of boys did not go on to higher education.
***Franklin is one of Boston Latin School’s most famous dropouts. He started at the school in 1697 at age 8, but had to quit 2 years later when his family could no longer afford to educate him. Since BLS was free to attend, presumably his family needed the income he could earn and called him home.
^Shakespeare died in 1616, just 4 years before the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. By the time of his death, his plays had fallen out of fashion and would be banned completely (as were all theatrical performances) during the Protectorate, which began in 1642. They would not begin gaining in popularity again until after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, although with the endings often changed so the characters could live happily ever after. Serious academic study of Shakespeare didn’t begin until the 18th century.
^^And of course, we can’t neglect to mention that girls and people of color were not routinely educated until the late 1700s and late 1800s respectively. Education is a lot more streamlined when you’re only educating 50% of the population.