This paper will discuss the evolution of education in America during the Revolutionary and Early National periods (1776-1828). In the colonial period which preceded the Revolutionary War, American education was dominated by the influence of churches. The main purpose of education was to give children the ability to read the Bible and other religious texts. During the colonial period, "there was scarcely any other purpose in the maintenance of elementary schools" (Cubberly 41). Elementary training of the time, particularly in New England, centered around the Latin grammar school. This was a very exclusive school designed to teach Latin to young men from the upper classes in order to prepare them for college training (Knight 113-14). Women, the poor, and nonwhite races were largely disregarded. Prior to the Revolutionary War, nine colleges had been founded throughout the colonies, and "the religious motive was strong in the establishment of all except one" (114). The exception was the College of Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania colony. Thus, early colonial education in America was not of the universal or public nature which developed in the years following the Revolutionary War.
The development of education in Pennsylvania was somewhat different than in the other colonies. There was more religious variety in Pennsylvania than elsewhere, and this caused the Pennsylvania leaders to be more open-minded in terms of public education. George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, believed that education should be practical and not "limited to Quakers alone, nor even to the Whites, but should include also Negroes, Indians and the poorer classes of society as well as the rich" (Woody 8). William Penn, in his framing of the early government of Pennsylvania, also encouraged the idea of universal public schooling for all children (Wickersham 39). In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Pennsylvanian ...