Professor of Philosophy and Education in Columbia University, New York 4 SECONDARY EDUCATION BY ELMER ELLSWORTH BROWN Professor of Education in the University of California THIS MONOGRAPH IS CONTRIBUTED TO THE UNITED STATES EDUCATIONAL EXHIBIT BY THE STATE OF NEW YORK SECONDARY EDUCATION One could not expect to find distinctively American institutions among the colonists of the seventeenth century. There was as yet no distinctively American character. Two opposing influences were at work shaping the colonial life: the first was the spirit of protest against European institutions, which many of the colonists had brought with them from the Old World; the second was the ever-present instinct of imitation. Real American schools might be expected to develop with the development of real American nationality. In the beginning, there could be only such schools as might arise under the mingled influence of a desire to be like the mother-country and a desire to be different. We find, as a matter of fact, the history of American secondary education presenting three pretty well-defined types and stages of development. There is, first, the colonial period, with its Latin grammar schools; secondly, the period extending from the revolutionary war to the middle of the nineteenth century, during which the attempt was made to solve the problem of American secondary education by means of the so-called academy; and, thirdly, the succeeding period down to the present time, chiefly characterized by the upgrowth of public high schools. The specific influences which most vitally influenced the early development of secondary education in America were, on the one hand, the example of the "grammar schools" of old England; and, on the other hand, the rising spirit of democracy, in large measure Calvinistic as to its modes of thought, and in touch with movements in the Calvinistic portions of Europe. THE BEGINNINGS Early in the history of the colony of Virginia, funds were raised and lands set apart for the endowment of a Latin grammar school. But these promising beginnings were swept away by the Indian massacre of 1622, and the school seems never to have been opened. The town of Boston, in the Massachusetts Bay colony, set up a Latin school in 1635, which has had a continuous existence down to the present time. This school was established by vote of the citizens in a town meeting. It was supported in part by private donations, and in part by the rent of certain islands in the harbor, designated by the town for that purpose. A town rate seems also to have been levied when necessary to make up a salary of £50 a year for the master. Other Massachusetts towns soon followed the example of Boston. The money for the support of these schools was obtained in a variety of ways. School fees were commonly but not universally collected. A town rate, which was depended upon at first only to supplement other sources of revenue, gradually came to be the main reliance; and by the middle of the eighteenth century the most of the grammar schools of Massachusetts charged no fee for tuition. Latin schools were early established in the colonies included in the territory of the present state of Connecticut one at New Haven in 1641, and one at Hartford not later than 1642. A notable bequest left by Edward Hopkins, sometime governor of Connecticut colony, whose later years were passed in England, became available soon after the middle of the seventeenth century. The greater part of it was devoted to the maintenance of Latin grammar schools in Hartford and New Haven, and also in the towns of Hadley and Cambridge in Massachusetts. The Dutch at New Amsterdam-now New Yorkopened a Latin school in 1659. This school was continued for some years after the colony passed under English rule. Secondary schools were established in the colony of Penn |