The Colonial Period

STuDyINg ThE hISToRy of American education provides an opportunity for you to write your educational autobiography. This examination of the origin of your ideas about education also is useful to the construction of your own philosophy of education. you can trace the roots of your ideas and beliefs about education by looking into your grandparents’ and parents’ school experiences, as well as your own. As you discover your own educational origins, you can build a bridge between your experiences and the broader historical developments that shaped American education. To research your educational autobiography, you might (1) interview your grandparents, parents, and others about their school experiences; (2) identify and examine family artifacts, photographs, records, and other memorabilia that relate to attending and graduating from school; and (3) think deeply and reflectively about your own educational experiences, especially your teachers and their methods. Then you can record your findings and begin to write your own autobiography. you can use this chapter, which examines the history of elementary schools, high schools, and colleges and universities, as a framework on which to locate your own experiences. your may find that the discussion of the publicschool policy regarding the education of diverse racial, ethnic, and language groups relates to your own education or that of your ancestors.

This chapter on the history of American education analyzes how individuals and groups built schools and developed educational processes in the united States. It examines (1) the introduction of European educational ideas and institutions to North America during the colonial period; (2) the efforts to create a uniquely American educational system during the revolutionary and early national eras; (3) the establishment of public education during the common school movement; (4) the development of secondary education from the Latin grammar school, through the academy, to today’s comprehensive high school; (5) the development of colleges and universities; (6) the immigration and the education of culturally diverse populations; and (7) the historical background of the contemporary standards controversy.

5-1 the colonial period

North America’s colonization in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries caused complex cultural encounters and often-violent conflicts between Europeans and the indigenous Native Americans. The Europeans, who carried contagious diseases such as measles and smallpox, infected the Native Americans who lacked immunity to these illnesses. Epidemics of these contagious illnesses ravaged the tribes living along the Atlantic coast. For example, a smallpox epidemic in 1618–1619 killed 90 percent of the Native Americans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.1

Many Europeans who came to North America as explorers, conquerors, and colonists held an ethnocentric opinion that European culture and language—English, French, or Spanish—were superior to that of the Native Americans. They categorized the indigenous peoples they encountered as culturally inferior, lesser humans who needed to be saved, civilized, or eliminated.

The Native Americans and the European colonists had diametrically opposed perspectives on nature, the uses of the environment, and property that would lead to conflict. For the American Indians, the natural environment and its resources were not

1For European and Native Americans relationships, see Peter C. Mancell and James H. Merrell, American Encounters: Natives and Newcomers from European Contact to Indian Removal, 1500–1850 (New York: Routledge, 2006); and Margaret Szasz, Indian Education in the American Colonies, 1607–1783 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007).