That the policy has been a wise one, is indicated by New Englands share in the various struggles for liberty which the country has seen, the stability of all her institutions, her exemption from disorder and industrial disputes which culminate in violence, her inhospitality to boss rule in politics, and the thrift and prosperity of her citizens.
Historically speaking, the public school is a very ancient New England institution. Boston had one as early as 1635, and in 1647 the General Court of Massachusetts enacted:
That to the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers, it was ordered in all the Puritan colonies that every township, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty households, shall appoint one to teach all children to write and read; and when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families, they shall set up a Grammar School, the master thereof to be able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the University.
Nine years earlier, in 1638, the same body had founded a college (Harvard) at Cambridge, in order, as they said, that the light of learning might not go out, nor the study of Gods word perish. These two acts of the General Court may be reckoned as the germs from which has developed that system of secondary and higher education which has given Massachusetts the place of leader in the history of education in America.
In 1645, Connecticut passed a law similar to the earlier Massachusetts statute of 1642, but not until 1701 was Yale University founded at New Haven. Rhode Island did not have a system of popular education until just as the eighteenth century was closing. New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont accepted the Massachusetts methods and ideals, with some minor variations.
Devout as were the founders of New England, it followed inevitably that they should establish institutions where their children might obtain a distinctly religious training as well as a general education. Thus, for a long period of New England history, the Christian academy, under denominational control, flourished just as it does now in the West, and for much the same reason. As the public-school system has expanded, as town after town has added the high school to the primary and grammar school, as sectarian fences have toppled over or ceased to be restrictive, the academy of the old type has ceased to play the part it once did in New England life. But, in any survey of the history of education in New England, it should not be overlooked. Many excellent institutions of this type still survive to meet the demands of those persons who either distrust the public high school, or else are unable to send their children to one, owing to residence in towns where the school system has not developed to that extent. But, as a rule, the New England boy and girl, no matter what the social station or wealth of his or her parent, still derives his or her preparation for college or life from the community in which he or she lives. And, as Phillips Brooks said in his address at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Latin School:
That is the real heart of the whole matter It constitutes the greatest claim of the public-school system. It represents the fundamental idea of the town undertaking the education of her children It educates the thought of law and obedience, the sense of mingled love and fear, which is the true citizens true emotion to his city. It educates this in the very lessons of the school-room, and makes the person of the State the familiar master of the grateful subject from his boyhood It is in the dignity and breadth and seriousness which the sense that their town is training them gives to their training, that the advantage of the public-school boys over the boys of the best private schools always consists.
Emigrating westward, the pioneers from New England carried with them the public school, the academy, and the college. Connecticuts settlers in the Western Reserve, Ohio, took with them conceptions of duty in this respect, which profoundly affected the future history of the commonwealth. Ohio has come to be, in this later day, what Virginia was in the early history of the country The Mother of Presidents and has more colleges within its borders than any State in the Union. It was a Massachusetts soldier, Gen. Rufus Putnam of Rutland, a Congregational clergyman, Rev. Manasseh Cutler of Hamilton, Massachusetts, and an Ipswich, Massachusetts, lawyer, Nathan Dane, who founded Marietta, Ohio, and induced Congress to put into the epoch-marking Ordinance of 1787 governing the Northwest Territory, this remarkable declaration and article:
Religion, and morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and means of education shall forever be encouraged.
As early as 1797, Muskingum Academy was founded in the territory conceded, and in due time came Marietta, Oberlin, Wabash, Illinois, Knox, Beloit, Olivet, and Ripon Colleges, all Christian institutions within the territory originally governed by the Ordinance of 1787.
Precisely similar has been the record of New England emigrants beyond the Mississippi. Wherever they have settled and shaped the civic ideals, whether in the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, or in California, there they have laid the foundations of a free public-school system, and of academies and colleges controlled by Christian educators and trustees. Nor do they cease to believe in the academy and the college now that the competition of the State university in the States of the interior and the West is so intense, and the reliance of the treasuries of these Western Christian institutions upon the gifts of their friends in New England increases rather than abates.
Impressed with the need, in all sections of the country, of a well-instructed and intelligent electorate, and convinced that the South was too poor to provide for itself the schools that its unfortunate illiterate whites and blacks needed, New Englanders early began to contribute to the support of academies and colleges in the South. Not always welcomed by the ruling class, the pioneers in this work persevered, and many of them have lived long enough to receive the thanks of those who at first despised and scorned them. Millions of dollars have gone from New England for the founding and support of such institutions as Berea College, Kentucky; Atlanta University, Georgia; Hampton Institute, Virginia; Fisk University, Tennessee; and Tuskeegee Institute, Alabama. Three New Englanders, George Peabody of Danvers, Mass., John F. Slater of Norwich, Conn., and Daniel Hand of Guilford, Conn., have given between them $5,100,000 in bequests or donations for the establishment or assistance of schools, colleges, and training schools for teachers in the South. The Peabody Education Fund, from 1868 to 1897, distributed in the South, from its income alone, a sum amounting to $2,478,527.
Nor is New Englands influence, educationally speaking, limited to the United States. The educational system of Honolulu is based on New England models. Robert College, near Constantinople, has spread the principles of Christian democracy in Church and State, as they are held by New Englanders, throughout Bulgaria and the Balkan states, and given ideals to the Young Turkey party in the land where the Sultan is dominant. The Huguenot Seminary in South Africa was distinctly modelled after Mt. Holyoke Seminary, and its first teaching staff was made up of New England women educated at Mt. Holyoke. Wherever American Protestant missionaries have gone and established schools and colleges in Asia, Africa, or Europe, almost invariably the master spirits, the men and women who have given character to, and established the ideals of, the institutions, have been graduates of the New England colleges and academies, even if not New-England-born.