Benjamin Rush: Church-Related Schools

would receive a scholarship to continue his education at a grammar school. The ten scholarship students of highest academic achievement would receive additional state aid to attend the College of William and Mary.

Jefferson’s plan represented an early compromise over issues of equity and excellence in American education. Although its provision of primary school for most children was a step toward equity, the concept of academic selectivity tilted toward the idea of secondary schools as “sorting machines” that identified and educated the most academically able students.

5-2d Benjamin rush: church-related schools

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813), a leading physician and medical educator of the early republic, did not subscribe to Jefferson’s principle of separation of church and state. Seeing no conflicts among science, republican government, and religion, Rush wanted the Bible and Christian principles taught in schools and in colleges. Anticipating the contemporary theory of “intelligent design,” Rush believed that science revealed God’s perfect design in creating the natural order.10 Unlike Jefferson, Rush did not believe that government support of church-related schools threatened freedom of religion and scientific inquiry.

Rush’s plan for a comprehensive system of state schools and colleges combined private and public interests. Private citizens’ groups, especially members of churches, would raise money for a school and then would receive a charter from the state to be eligible for public funds. Emphasizing the nation’s Christian roots, Rush wanted schools to be denominationally affiliated and offer a faith-based education.

A determined advocate of women’s education, Rush rejected the sexist bias that women were intellectually inferior to men and needed only a limited education. Arguing that women’s intellectual powers were equal to men’s, he proposed a system of academies and colleges for women.

10Hyman Kuritz, “Benjamin Rush: His Theory of Republican Education,” History of Education Quarterly (Winter 1967), pp. 435–36. For a biography of Rush, see Alyn Brodsky, Benjamin Rush: Patriot and Physician (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004).

timeline

thomaS jefferSon

o t o. com h HultonA rchi ve / i S t o c k p

1740 1750

1743 Birth 1779 Introduces “Bill for the More general Diffusion of Knowledge”

1779–1781 governor of Virginia

1760–1762 Attends College of William and Mary

1776 Author of Declaration of Independence