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Education In Colonial America

This research will examine the system of education in colonial America from 1607 until 1776. Three influences on the form of education in three sections of colonial America - New England, the Southern Colonies, and the Middle Colonies - will be presented and then various educational laws governing forms of schooling that were passed in each of these areas will be discussed.

The form that education took in colonial America differed according to the cultures that emerged in its various geographical regions. The diverse cultures of New England, the South, and the Middle Colonies strongly affected the official attitudes toward the educational systems, and these attitudes were reflected in legislation that governed the forms that educational systems took. As Edgar Knight points out, "schools and other means of education in the American colonies were for the most part inherited from Europe; so also was colonial culture in general" (71).

The Puritan culture in New England profoundly affected the structure of education from 1607 to 1776. The initial settlement of Massachusetts Bay brought with it the Puritan version of English norms, which mandated that children be educated within the family, and as Johanningmeier points out, formal institutional schooling eventually replaced in-home schooling of children (12). Yet institutions were not common in the initial years of the colony, which resulted in the establishment in 1642 of what Johanningmeier terms the family law, whereby parent colonists were given responsibility for educating the children in a way that made them useful and pious citizens. Parents were reminded "that it was the duty of parents to bring up their children so they would know how to read, how to understand and obey the laws of the country, and how to understand and live by the principles of their religion" (13). As a practical matter, this obligation also resulted in the apprenticeship of children to sundry trade...

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Education In Colonial America. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:57, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1681843.html