EDUCATION

The American Revolution created a republic that in theory placed sovereignty in the people rather than an elite, which in England was composed largely of a hereditary aristocracy and landed gentry. Republics, theorists stated, depended upon the wisdom and virtue of an educated populace. As early as the 1780s the founders of the United States argued that public education was essential for the prosperity and survival of the new nation. Thomas Jefferson in particular believed Americans should consider mounting a "crusade against ignorance." Jefferson was the first American leader to suggest creating a system of free schools that would be publicly tax-supported. However, Jefferson's plans for publicly funded universal education did not take root until the 1830s.

education in the early nineteenth century

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, many American children—regardless of race, class, or gender—did not attend school because they had to work or because their parents could not afford to pay the required fees. Those children who did become educated were taught at home by a parent or tutor, went to a school run by a church or charity, or attended a privately-run school. "Subscription schools" were supported by middle class families and charged a fee based on the number of children enrolled. The poor, if their children did attend school, had to sign documents stating that they were "paupers" in order for their children to be admitted to poverty schools. Most institutions provided schooling only for privileged white boys. A small number of young men could go on to one of several colleges established in America, such as Harvard or Yale, to receive a more substantial, often specialized, education.

By the 1830s, Americans expressed a desire to improve the existing educational system. Reformers found the lack of universal education unsuitable for a growing democracy. In 1846, attorney and politician Horace Mann, the father of American public education, argued that public education was an obligation, "a worthy public expense" that reaped substantial benefits for an emerging industrialized and urban society. Mann argued that a solid public education ultimately meant more productive workers. Americans also believed that citizens needed an education in order to participate fully in the political and economic growth of the country. Reformers argued that schools should be free, paid for by taxes and state supported.

Common schools, or publicly financed elementary schools, gradually emerged in the northeast and midwestern United States, although even by the mid-nineteenth century, no state had a statewide school system and local districts ineptly managed their own. In the South, few public schools existed before the Civil War. Public elementary schools provided basic instruction in reading, writing, and math, along with training in citizenship. The publication of the Reverend William Holmes McGuffey's Reader, which sold nine million copies between 1836 and 1850, augmented efforts to educate the masses. McGuffey's Reader emphasized reading, writing, spelling, and good manners.

education of blacks and women prior to the civil war

Because of racial and gender discrimination, African Americans and women not only struggled to acquire an education but had to combat stereotypes concerning what type of education was most suitable for them. The 1800s witnessed important changes in their education. Prior to the Civil War, Catharine Beecher emerged as one of the most important advocates of female education, promoting it as preparation for women's role in expanding their power in the home and in teacher training.

Most Americans considered teaching as a natural extension of women's maternal role, moving them from the private to the public sphere. Yet some women saw teaching not as a "calling" but as a way in which to support themselves. Such was the case with African American feminist Maria Stewart, who taught school beginning in the 1830s after the death of her husband. Stewart later warmed to her new career and in 1853, opened a school for blacks in Washington, D.C.

Women's education and career options, especially for the middle and upper classes, were aided by the founding of academies and seminaries for girls. In 1821, Emma Willard established the Troy Female Seminary in New York, the first endowed educational institution for women in the United States. In 1823, Catharine Beecher opened the Hartford Female Seminary and later founded seminaries in Cincinnati and Milwaukee. In 1837, Mary Lyon established the Mount Holyoke Seminary with a curriculum that emphasized domesticity, piety, and teaching. Mount Holyoke enrolled girls from both wealthy and poor families; it was the first institution to challenge class discrimination. Founding schools for African American women often proved a challenge. At one Connecticut school for black girls that opened in 1833, a white mob attacked the school to protest the educating of African Americans, forcing the school's closure.

Regardless of race or class, women who attended these early seminaries and academies learned how to be better wives and mothers, often acquiring skills in cooking and sewing. As the curriculum expanded, they took courses like those offered to young men in languages, history, geography, math, and science. Not only did schools for women expand and improve their curriculums, but teacher education for women improved as well, creating a feminine teaching corps by the late nineteenth century. In 1855, the first normal schools were established to provide teacher training for young women.

Except at Oberlin College in Ohio and Berea College in Kentucky, blacks and women had little or no access to white male institutions. In 1837, Oberlin College admitted its first female students, making it the first coeducational institution in the country. Vassar College was established in 1861 for women, and the first women's graduate school opened in 1880 at Bryn Mawr College. Despite racial discrimination, some blacks did attend Middlebury, Amherst, Bowdoin, and Ohio University. For African-Americans, Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), Cheyney State, and Wilberforce College were among the few institutions specifically established for blacks before the Civil War.

Women and blacks often faced difficulties in using their education effectively. Well-educated white women were often considered unsuitable for marriage and motherhood. Most schools required teachers to resign when they married.

the civil war and the education of blacks

The Civil War and Reconstruction period had a profound effect on the education of blacks in the South. The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments granted equal rights to freed slaves. Many sought to take advantage of their new freedoms, especially the opportunity to acquire an education.

The reconstruction era witnessed major advances in segregated education for African Americans. Before the Civil War, education for blacks was practically non-existent in the South, and several southern states had laws

against teaching slaves to read and write. Schools in the North were segregated. African American ingenuity and perseverance produced some notable exceptions. For instance, Milla Granson of Natchez, Mississippi, a slave who had learned to read and write from her master's children, operated a school late at night when her master slept and slaves had finished working in the fields.

During the Civil War, both African American and white teachers began the arduous but rewarding task of educating southern blacks. Indeed, freedmen's education began in army camps. Mary S. Peake began teaching freed slaves at a Fort Virginia School in 1861. Susie King Taylor, a former slave who learned to read and write, taught black soldiers in the army. After the war, some white northern women used their education by moving south to teach the freed slaves. Laura Town was the first to do so; in 1862, she established the Penn School on the South Carolina Sea Islands, which she ran for forty years. The African American educator Charlotte Forten Grimke joined her. In her diary, Forten remarked "I never before saw children so eager to learn." Such was the case with most black children throughout the South. The number of black teachers increased as more African Americans became educated.

Changes came during Reconstruction as Radical Republicans in Congress pushed southern states to create a system of state-funded public schools. Former slaves and black politicians who were elected during Reconstruction were also major promoters of public schools in the South. They were aided in their quest by black schools founded by the American Missionary Association (AMA) and the Freedmen's Bureau, such as Morehouse, Biddle (Johnson C. Smith), and Howard. Despite individual, public, and private support, public education improved, but remained segregated in the United States and in the South in particular. Nevertheless, blacks of all ages who had been denied an education for centuries flocked to these schools to learn to read and write. In contrast to the practice in white schools, co-education was the norm for black students.

the expansion of higher education

During the mid-nineteenth century Americans increased their interest in developing high schools and expanding institutions of higher learning. In 1839, the University of Missouri was founded as the first public university west of the Mississippi River. A growing number of male colleges were founded in the antebellum period, such as Haverford, Davidson, and Kenyon.

In 1862, in the midst of war, Congress passed the Morrill Act granting each Union state 30,000 acres for each of its senators and representatives. The land was to be sold and the proceeds used to establish colleges in engineering, agriculture and military science. While it did not have special provisions for African Americans, the Morrill Act enabled the development of a few southern institutions. Additional private colleges, such as the Seven Sisters in the Northeast and a number of both public and private universities, such as the University of California, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford, were founded in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In 1890, the second Morrill Act was passed to include the sixteen southern states. Land grant colleges included a liberal arts curriculum, but emphasized agriculture as well as the industrial and mechanical arts.

As the United States entered the twentieth century, it had adopted a framework of publicly supported elementary and secondary schools and had seen a significant increase in the number of colleges and universities nationwide.

bibliography

Altenbaugh, Richard J. The American People and Their Education: A Social History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall, 2003.

Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

Butchart, Ronald E. Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction: Freedmen's Education, 1862–1875. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Christy, Ralph D. and Williamson, Lionel, eds. A Century of Service: Land-grant Colleges and Universities, 1890–1990. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1992.

DeBoer, Clara Merritt. His Truth is Marching On: African Americans Who Taught Freedmen for the American Missionary Association, 1861–1877. New York: Garland, 1995.

Durrill, Wayne K. "New Schooling for a New South: A Community Study of Education and Social Change, 1875–1885." Journal of Social History 31 (1997): 156–81.

Hoffman, Nancy. Woman's True Profession: Voices from the History of Teaching. 2d edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2003.

Jones, Jacqueline. Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865–1873. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

Reilly, Wayne E., ed. Sarah Jane Foster, Teacher of the Freedmen: A Diary and Letters. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990.

Solomon, Barbara Miller. In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women & Higher Education in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985.

Urban, Wayne J. and Waggoner, Jennings L., Jr. American Education: A History. 3d edition. New York: McGraw Hill, 2004.

Delia C. Gillis

See also:African Americans (Freed People); Children and the Civil War; Reconstruction.