NEW LONDON, PENNSYLVANIA. School of the Synod of Philadelphia, opened as a private undertaking by the Rev. Francis Alison 1741, adopted by the synod 1844. It was removed to Elkton 1752 and to Newark, Delaware, 1767, where it was incorporated two years later as the Academy of Newark. ALEXANDER. Op. cit., chap. 7. LEBANON, CONNECTICUT. The Lebanon School, established by several joint proprietors 1743, taught by Nathan Tisdale 1749-1787. Article on Master Tisdale and the Lebanon School, in the American Journal of Education [BARNARD'S], v. 28, pp. 793-797. PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA. The Academy of Philadelphia, probably opened 1749, incorporated 1753. It grew into the University of Pennsylvania. MONTGOMERY, THOMAS HARRISON. History of the University of Pennsylvania from its foundation to A. D. 1770. . . . Philadelphia, 1900, pp. 566. GEORGETOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA. School of the Winyaw Indigo Society, endowed by the society 1756. The income from this endowment has been devoted since 1886 to the support of the public graded school of Georgetown. MERIWETHER. Loc. cit. [In all, fourteen grammar schools are known to have existed in South Carolina in the colonial period. Loc. cit., Appendix 2.] NAZARETH, PENNSYLVANIA. Nazareth Hall, opened as a boarding school of the Moravian Brethren 1759. It was closed during the latter part of the Revolutionary war, but was soon reopened and is still flourishing. REICHEL, REV. LEVIN T. A history of Nazareth Hall. . . . Philadelphia, 1855. Second ed., revised, 1869. NEW YORK (CITY). Grammar school of King's College, established by the governors of the college 1763 (opened 1764?). It became an independent school, under the rectorship of Prof. Charles Anthon (1830?), and has continued as such to the present time. MOORE, N. F. An historical sketch of Columbia College.. New York, 1846, pp. 126. NEWBERN, NORTH CAROLINA. The public school in Newbern, incorporated 1766. pp. 40-42. SMITH, CHARLES LEE. The history of education in North Carolina. Washington, 1888 (pp. 180) CHARLOTTE HALL, MARYLAND. Charlotte Hall School, formed 1774 by the union of three of the old county grammar schools. It is still in operation. STEINER. Maryland, p. 37 ff. CHANGES. In the latter part of the colonial period, particularly from the seventeen-hundredthirties on, various influences were obviously operating to transform the old grammar schools or bring about the substitution for them of schools of a different type. The hard life of our widening frontier and the growing commercialism of the older settlements were alike unfavorable to the maintenance of the classical ideal. In this country, too, as in western Europe, the growth of literature in the vernacular was slowly breaking down the monopoly of Latin as the sole custodian of higher learning. People were reading scientific and philosophical works in the English language and were demanding that such studies be made accessible in the schools to students who had not learned to approach them through the Latin tongue. Of still greater practical significance, in an age when the main support of higher education rested on the general conviction that candidates for the Christian ministry must have such education, was the demand which now arose that young men be ordained on the completion of a much briefer course of instruction. This was partly a demand on the part of those followers of Whitefield and the Wesleys who feared that the higher education would have a dampening influence on the spiritual fervor of the pulpit. It was partly a demand growing out of the necessities of the more western communities, which could with difficulty be supplied with pastors who had had a full collegiate training. Speaking still more broadly, it may be said that the influences which were making for change in the type of secondary school were the same influences which were raising the middle, commercial, and yeoman classes to self-consciousness and power. After many uncertain, half-blind efforts at the making of schools to meet the half-felt needs of the time, there emerged a fairly definite new type of secondary school, the American academy. II. FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE CIVIL WAR. THE EARLY ACADEMIES. The new institution seems to have been influenced to some extent in its earlier beginnings by parallel movements in western Europe, and particularly by the establishment of the so-called academies of the nonconformist sects in England. The "Log College" of William Tennent in Pennsylvania was an early foreshadowing of this type. The first school to be regularly incorporated as an academy seems to have been that established at Philadelphia, chiefly through the efforts of Benjamin Franklin, which grew ultimately into the University of Pennsylvania. It received its first charter in 1753. Other institutions bearing the title academy were established in the Middle and Southern States before or during the Revolutionary war. The winning of independence, the establishment of the new State governments, and the formation of a National Government under the Federal Constitution were events of capital importance in our educational as well as our political history. So far as secondary education is concerned, the earlier years of our national life were marked by a great upgrowth of schools of the academy type. An influential movement in New England was initiated by the founding of the two Phillips academies, one at Andover, Mass., and the other at Exeter, N. H., in the later years of the Revolutionary war. This type of school proved equally well adapted to the very different social and economic conditions of the Southern States, and as the new west was opened up, the masters of academies followed hard after the pioneer woodsman and the pioneer preacher. THE ACADEMY TYPE. The type was indeed protean, but some of its more usual characteristics may be indicated in a few words. An academy was generally a secondary school, incorporated by the State but managed by a self-perpetuating board of trustees. Sometimes it was under the immediate patronage of a religious sect, but more commonly it was "nonsectarian." It was a school sometimes for boys, sometimes for girls, and sometimes coeducational. Often, but not always, it was a boarding school. Sometimes an academy, so called, was taught by a single teacher. A well-developed school of this type, however, was equipped with two or more teachers, who divided the subjects of instruction among them so as to secure some degree of specialization. The studies of the academies will be noted further on. SOME OF THE EARLIER ACADEMIES. CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA. Liberty Hall Academy, incorporated 1777. It began as a classical school 1767, and was for a time known as Queen's College. In 1784 it became Salisbury Academy. SMITH. Op. cit., pp. 32-36. [Mr. SMITH mentions twenty-four other academies and "seminaries" incorporated after this in North Carolina, before the close of the eighteenth century.] CALVERT COUNTY, MARYLAND. Lower Marlboro Academy, incorporated 1778, when it became the successor of the old Free School. It had existed for some time as a private school. From 1798 to 1821 it was merged in Charlotte Hall. STEINER. Maryland, p. 39 ff. SOMERSET COUNTY, MARYLAND. Washington Academy, incorporated 1779. It had been maintained by several joint proprietors since 1767. STEINER, Loc. cit. ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS. Phillips Academy, opened 1778, incorporated 1780, still flourishing. In [BARNARD'S] American Journal of Education, v. 30, pp. 669-776. TAYLOR, REV. JOHN L. A memoir of His Honor, Samuel Phillips, LL. D. Boston, 1856, pp. 11+391. NORTH FAIRFIELD, CONNECTICUT. The Staples Free School, incorporated 1781. STEINER. Connecticut, p. 49. EXETER, NEW HAMPSHIRE. Phillips Academy, incorporated 1781, opened 1783, still flourishing. CUNNINGHAM, FRANK H. Familiar sketches of the Phillips Exeter Academy and surroundings. SOUTH BYFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS. 1782, still in operation. CLEAVELAND, NEHEMIAH. Dummer Academy, opened as Dummer School 1763, incorporated The first century of Dummer Academy. . . . Boston, 1865, pp. 71+43. WASHINGTON COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA (NOW IN TENNESSEE). Martin Academy, incorporated by the legislature of North Carolina 1783. It became Washington College in 1795. SMITH, Op. cit., p. 43. GERMANTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA. Germantown Public School, established 1760, incorporated 1784. Philadelphia, 1882, pp. 64. PLAINFIELD, CONNECTICUT. Plainfield Academy, organized 1770, incorporated 1784. STEINER. Connecticut, p. 49. LEICESTER, MASSACHUSETTS. Leicester Academy, incorporated and opened 1784. WASHBURN, EMORY. Brief sketch of the history of Leicester Academy. Boston, 1855, pp. 7+158. HINGHAM, MASSACHUSETTS. Derby School, incorporated under this name 1784, reincorporated as Derby Academy 1797, opened 1785, still in operation. WALTON, GEORGE A. Report on academies, in Fortieth annual report of the [Massachusetts] PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA. Protestant Episcopal Academy, founded 1785, incorporated 1787. EAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK. Clinton Academy, incorporated 1787, closed about 1881. HOUGH, FRANKLIN B. Historical and statistical record of the University of the State of New York. (Albany, 1885), pp. 413 and 604. FLATBUSH, NEW YORK. Erasmus Hall, incorporated 1787 (now Erasmus High School, Brooklyn). GUNNISON, WALTER B. Erasmus Hall. ... In The Brooklyn Teacher, v. 1, pp. 1-2, March, 1897. PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA. Pittsburg Academy, incorporated 1787. WICKERSHAM. Op. cit., p. 379. NEWARK, NEW JERSEY. Newark Academy, incorporated 1792, still flourishing. MURRAY, DAVID. History of education in New Jersey. Washington, 1899 (pp. 344), pp. 27 and 74. GROTON, MASSACHUSETTS. Lawrence Academy, incorporated 1793, still in operation. The jubilee of Lawrence Academy. New York, 1855, pp. 76. [Mr. WALTON's Report mentions in all sixteen academies which were incorporated in Massachusetts in the last two decades of the eighteenth century, besides Phillips Andover, 1780. Two of these had been merged into public high schools and six had been discontinued.] OXFORD, NEW YORK. Oxford Academy, opened 1792, incorporated 1794. KINGSTON, NEW YORK. Kingston Academy, incorporated 1795. It is said that the school had been established in 1774. HоUGн. Op. cit., pp. 356, 416, and 650. [Mr. HOUGH's list contains the names of seventeen academies incorporated in New York in the last two decades of the eighteenth century. Seven of these had been discontinued, two had been merged in public high schools, and one had been merged in Hamilton College.] YORK, PENNSYLVANIA. York Academy, incorporated 1799. It had previously existed as an academy of the Protestant Episcopal Church. WICKERSHAM. Op. cit., pp. 99, 379. [Mr. WICKERSHAM mentions eleven academies which were incorporated in Pensylvania in the last two decades of the eighteenth century.] NEW SCHOOL SYSTEMS. The academies were privately managed institutions charged with responsibility for public education of secondary grade. Some of the older grammar schools still survived, but the most of them either died or were transformed into institutions of the newer type. When the National Government was formed, it did not assume direction of educational affairs, but it did much in the way of subsidizing educational systems in the several States by grants of public lands. New State systems of education soon appeared. In some instances these systems took little account of secondary schools. There were, however, a few cases in which seeondary schools seem to have received the chief consideration. In such cases we find State support and supervision, usually of a very fragmentary and imperfect kind, exercised over schools of the privately managed academy type. The system was public, secular, civil; its component members were private institutions, for the most part intensely religious in character, sometimes under ecclesiastical control. One of the new forms of State organization showed unmistakable evidence of French influence. This was the territorial university, which embraced in one comprehensive administrative system the whole provision for the higher grades of education within the bounds of a given State. This scheme was carried into effect in the University of the State of New York, and traces of its influence are observable in the educational history of Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Maryland, and a few other States. In the most of the States the legislatures merely subsidized privately managed academies with donations of land or of money, and charged them with providing for the educational needs of the people, with only loose provision or no provision at all for superintending the administration of those endowments. Such was the procedure in Maine, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and several other States, the several systems of which present a rich diversity of detail along with a general similarity of drift and purpose. Massachusetts continued her old provision for Latin grammar schools in the several towns, but relieved from the operation of the law all towns having less than two hundred families. Parallel with this provision for grammar schools she undertook the subsidizing by grants of public lands of a goodly number of academies, each of which was intended to provide educational facilities for a scattered population of some twenty-five or thirty thousand people. STUDIES PURSUED IN THE ACADEMIES. The academies were intended to offer instruction in a wider range of subjects than the old grammar schools. They were not primarily schools preparatory to college, but were intended to meet the growing desire for an education of a more advanced character than that of the elementary or district schools on the part of many young people who were not destined for the learned professions and had no expectation of going to college. This, however, tells only half of the story, for even from the beginning a large proportion of the academies also took over from the earlier schools, with but little change, the classical course which prepared the student for college. We have already noted the general movement of college-admission requirements down to the close of the eighteenth century, when the main business of preparing boys for college was passing over to the academies. In a hundred and sixty years four slight changes had taken place. The requirement of ability to speak in Latin had been relaxed, the requirement in Greek had been somewhat advanced, arithmetic had been added, and in general the requirements were coming to be expressed in more specific, quantitative terms. Latin, Greek, and arithmetic were still the only subjects required for admission to American colleges. During the half century next following a slow but steady change was going on, which consisted mainly of an increase in the amount of work definitely prescribed within the three subjects already named and the addition of new subjects. Geography was first required at Harvard in 1807, English grammar at Princeton in 1819, algebra at Harvard in 1820, geometry at Harvard in 1824, and ancient history at both Harvard and Michigan in 1847. a The course of instruction on the classical side of the academies, as in the old grammar schools, was arranged to meet these requirements. The additional studies which were offered in the academies were, some of them, such as had been taught in a more advanced way in the colleges. Some of them were such as had not been commonly taught in either the grammar schools or the colleges. Studies in English, algebra, geometry, and ancient history, after being introduced into the academies, were added by the colleges, as we have seen, to their admission requirements. Certain branches of natural science, modern languages, the history of the United States, and some forms of applied mathematics, as navigation and surveying, were among the other subjects taught in various academies. Commercial branches, too, were sometimes taught, especially bookkeeping. Much interest was aroused in a This list, from Doctor Broome's monograph, takes account only of the requirement for admission to the standard classical course in six of the leading institutions of the country. ་ courses of instruction based upon certain books of a formative sort-such as Mason on Self-knowledge and Watts's Improvement of the Mind. Some of the newer studies were pursued by students who came to school for brief periods only, but in time they came to be pretty generally organized into collateral curriculums, parallel with the classical course already described. These parallel courses at the first were intended for students whose schooling could not be continued beyond the academy. Studies pursued in the academies of New York in the early years of the nineteenth century. [This table is given in Hough, op. cit., p. 421.] Vergil, arithmetic, and exercises in reading and making Latin, continued. Valpey's Greek Grammar. Roman history; Cicero's select orations. "Delectus;" Dalzel's Collectanea Græca Minora. Greek Testament; English grammar; declamation. Third year: The same Latin and Greek authors reviewed. English grammar and declamation, continued. Sallust; algebra. Exercises in Latin and English translations. Fourth year (parallel with the first year of college): Collectanea Graeca Minora. Horace; Livy; parts of Terence. Excerpta Latina, "or such Latin and Greek authors as may best comport with the student's future destination." Algebra; geometry; elements of ancient history. Adam's Roman Antiquities, etc. II. English Department. First year: English grammar, including exercises in reading, in parsing and analyzing, and in the correction of bad English. Punctuation; prosody; arithmetic; geography. Algebra through simple equations. ED 1903--36 |