5c Children of the Covenant Family and Education in Puritan New England

0:03 hello and welcome back so today's lecture is the last one in our series of social history on the colonies and we are looking at children of the Covenant family and education in colonial so in the last lecture we examine the 17th and 18th century discovery of childhood and how this meant that childhood was now recognized as a special stage of human development and we looked at new attitudes towards new attitudes towards play and education now to clarify what I said in the last lecture applies to England and the American colonies in general and not necessarily to specific groups specific groups interpreted this

0:49 intellectual discovery differently right so today we're going to examine family education and childhood in Puritan New England and we're going to examine to what extent the Puritans subscribe to Locke's ideas now keep in mind that the first generation of Puritans arrived in Massachusetts 60 years before Locke's book published so they're obviously not going to be influenced by Locke so in a nutshell in some ways the Puritans deeply embraced Locke's ideas that childhood was a special stage of human development they believed it should be devoted to education and preparation for adult roles the Puritans place tremendous emphasis

1:35 on early literacy education in order to read the Bible early and the Puritans had one of the highest literacy rates in the world however because of their rigid religious beliefs and belief in predestination and human sinfulness Puritans did not necessarily buy Locke's idea that children were merely innocent blank slates that children were free of sin they tended to believe that children were sinful so rather the Puritans clung to pre-modern ideas of the right child they were to some degree weary of play and leisure as potentially

2:22 sinful and this of course is because of their obsession with moral uprightness and human sinfulness so in a nutshell in a nutshell they accepted some of Locke's ideas that childhood was a special Sheen stage of human development but not everything and had particular ideas on and anxieties on children's sinfulness let me start with this idea of children of the Covenant the Puritans I've chosen Puritan New England colonial New England for a reason the Puritans were unique in their preoccupation with child-rearing and education they were sort of obsessed with it and they wrote a disproportionate disproportionate number

3:08 of books and tracts on the subject so think about the Puritans as a struggling minority their survival literally literally depended on ensuring that their children and their children's children would retain and pass on their values the Puritans were convinced that moulding children through proper child-rearing and early education was the most effective way to shape an orderly godly society this was the most effective way to realize their vision of a city on a hill the shining example of moral purity and everything we talked about now children would play a critical role in fulfilling the Covenant this Puritan

3:54 contract with God because obviously the Puritans children and their children's children would be - one would be the ones the Puritans believed would realize this ideal vision of society this City on the hill so this idea of the Puritan children of the Covenant the Puritan hope for the future generations and children this permeates Burien Puritan religious writing it permeates sermons and Diaries it's not something the I'm making up this faith in the future the Massachusetts Minister Eleazar Mathur act asked his congregation in 1671 why came you into this land was it

4:40 mainly not with respect to the rising generation and what with respect to them was it to leave them rich and wealthy people was it to leave them houses lands and living Oh No but to leave God in the midst so I think he says very clearly in plain language why did you come here to this new world did you come to give them material wealth your houses and goods no you came to give them God in a godly society and the hopes were for as he said the rising generation the children another Puritan minister not famous the Reverend John Wilson was even more direct about this idea of children of the Covenant he lectured quote you came hither for your children sons and daughters and for your grandchildren to

5:26 be under the ordinances of God these concerns of Puritan ministers were shared by everyday people one Puritan woman meant Mary anger declared that her reason for coming across the Atlantic was quote thinking that if her children might get good it would be worthy my journeys they did it for their children's so therefore one of the primary motivations for Puritans into 1620s and 1630s was to give their children a better religious life and to shield their children from the moral corruption and social problems of 17th century England all of the things we talked about poverty vagrancy etc and promotes their spiritual well-being this

6:12 contract with God so to what extent was the Puritan view of childhood children different than that of Locke or was selves the Puritan shared Locke's views on the importance of early childhood education absolutely but did not idealize childhood or sentimental eyes it in the way that Rousseau did remember we talked about her so celebrating children's games the idea that children should be children childhood for childhoods sake don't force them to be adults too soon the Puritans didn't necessarily believe in that however unlike Locke's blank-slate theory the Puritans regarded newborn infants as potential sinners and

7:00 these babies had aggressive and willful impulses that needed to be suppressed according to Calvinist doctrine they believed that infants were born depraved infant depravity so that means infants were actually born not innocent but sinful inherent human sin and so therefore babies were believed to be born depraved sinful and infants according to this doctrine who died with who died unconverted were doomed to eternal torment and health so they believe that babies were and potentially sinful creatures not blank slates like Locke in addition infant and child

7:50 mortality rates were high not as high as England but still high almost all families experienced the loss of at least 1 to 3 even more children the very famous Puritan Minister Cotton Mather will talk about him a second said that quote a dead child a dead child was quote a sight no more surprising than a broken picture but to have a dead child or baby was quote a sight no more surprising than a broken picture that's very strong and he would have known very well himself he lost a tremendous number of children even in the healthiest communities of New England where

8:35 mortality rates were lowest even ten percent of children died in their first year so I'll repeat that in places where the mortality rates were the lowest 10 percent of children died before they turn 1 in other places well in other places rich was higher but overall 33% of people died before their 21st birthday so rates of infant and child mortality infant mortality were 10% in the healthiest communities but in Seaport towns like Boston or Salem mortality rates were two to three times higher due to epidemics like smallpox measles mumps and Syria so high rates of

9:23 child and infant mortality the average Puritan mother gave birth to more children than in England seven to nine children on average average not all of whom survived and chances of dying in childbirth given that she gave birth to so many children were one and eight so pretty high staggering statistics this is more children than women typically had in England in England on average women had about four or five children and as I said the norm in Puritan New England was seven to nine not of all of whom survived now I quoted you Cotton Mather on on children he said that a dead child was a sight no more surprising than a broken pitcher let's talk for a moment about

10:09 him you would know Cotton Mather from your primary source readings you had a packet the family in colonial New England he knew all too well about losing children he was married twice both of his wives died and had a total of 15 children out of his 15 children he buried 13 of them and outlived all but two so basically only two of his children survived into adulthood Mather lived from 1663 to 1728 and came from a very influential dynasty or family of Puritan ministers a lot of famous Sheraton ministers in his family his

10:55 father and father's father before him were all ministers and Cotton Mather was one of the most influential minister of ministers of his time he succeeded his father his father had been the president of Harvard College which was a school founded to Train ministers Puritan ministers so he succeeded his father as pastor of the biggest church in Boston Boston's Old North Church and was definitely a member of Massachusetts religious and political lease but getting back to the issue of family regarding infant and child mortality Mather lost all but two of his 15 children and also lost both of his wives

11:41 you would have gotten this from your primary source documents our primary source document describes how his own family got caught up in a horrible measles epidemic in November 1713 so in the document you read he prays devoutly he fast but he interpreted the sickness as a curse from God a punishment from sin you read of how family members his children servants are struck down with the illness his wife was pregnant and he feared greatly for her that she too would become sick because she was of course caring for the other sick family members luckily she delivered healthy twins a boy and a girl which Mather baptized in need and the wife seemed to

12:29 only have mild symptoms of the epidemic however in the meantime his wife took a turn for the worse and unexpectedly died before the epidemic was over Mather lost his wife his newborn twins and another two-year-old toddler so perhaps this is why he said that seeing a dead child was as common as seeing a broken pitcher in the kitchen so as I said infant and child mortality rates were high parents were supposed to accept these deaths with resignation but merrily but many could barely contain their grief which we see in the primary source document on Mather sadness that their child was damned so

13:16 according to this belief as I said they believe that child children were born with sinfulness but over time Puritans softened the Calvinist emphasis on infant depravity infant sinfulness sinfulness and sort of changed the tune so by the end of the 17th century the growing number of Puritans accepted the possibility that baptism would wash away a child's sin and a child would therefore not be damned so for this reason in Puritan homes religious training began at birth it was imperative that baptism occur almost

14:02 immediately church members were urged to bring their infant children to the meeting house for baptism immediately within one to two weeks of birth and I said 1 weeks this task was usually the father's duty like Mather did the task was usually the father's duties given that the mother was probably still recovering from labor at the ceremony the father renewed his covenant with God and promised God his seed his children now this is sort of interesting despite the very alarming high rates of infant mortality and the dangers of disease illness that would be incurred in taking your child outside let's say in the

14:47 middle of winter or a storm so despite the high rates of infant mortality it was deemed more harmful for the child to miss baptism than to incur the high odds of natural death in obtaining this so what I'm trying to tell you is yes it was risky to take your child out in public in the middle of winter or who knows what as a tiny infant but the Puritans believed it was more harmful for the child to delay its baptism then to take a risk in going out in public it was at the baptismal ceremony that the father announced the child's new name many parents gave their children common first names but for many first-generation Puritans many chose

15:34 unusual names with religious significance that expressed their basic moral values and hopes for the future now many many of these first-generation Puritans like the founder of the colony John Winthrop um they joined the movement after breaking from their own parents you know it was pretty radical controversial to be a Puritan and therefore picking these sort of odd unusual names sort of made sense so one Puritan man just a random everyday person from Massachusetts Roger class and his wife named their children experienced weight still preserved hope still wait Thanks desire unites and supply so as I

16:22 mentioned some some Puritan names were very unusual but expressed their basic moral values and hopes of the future other names in this genre included patience prudence Verity meaning truth faith and mercy so this genres unusual Puritan names that express their moral values but obviously biblical names were the most popular choice 80% of 17th century Puritans chose names from the Bible names from Scripture like Zechariah or the literal English equivalent of these biblical names so for instance Zechariah means in English thankful so there were children named

17:07 thankful what exactly were the Puritan views on children and childhood well in some ways the Puritans held to the pre-modern view of children as semi animalistic savages we talked about a sinfulness Puritan sermons portrayed silk children Puritan sermons portrayed children as riddled by sin and crush even a newborn infant soul with tainted by original sin this is what we mean by infant depravity they believe that a newborn infant soul was tainted with what Christians call original sin and

17:54 this is the human sinfulness the natural human sinfulness that caused Adam the first man to sin and fall in the Garden of Eden so as Cotton Mather the famous minister whom we talked about here described children's sinfulness are they young yet the devil has been bidden with them already they go astray as soon as they are born that's pretty strong so in fact although they thought childhood was a special stage and devoted a lot of importance to it the Puritans emphasized the moral uprightness that enlightenment reformers like Locke when it gets Puritans

18:43 considered crawling beastial they considered crawling uncivilized and considered play although they allowed it as a potential waste of time to be undertaken with caution Puritans to some extent believed children were miniature adults in need of trading and who needed to be prepared for salvation as soon as possible quite literally religious education began from the cradle no time was to be wasted on early religious training 17th century Boston ministers urged their congregations I'm not kidding to quote try to infuse holy truths and quote into their infant and tell these tell

19:30 their infants holy truths when they were dressing them undressing them bouncing them on their knee or changing their their diapers as a stereotype Puritans are often described as cold as humorless you know they're obsessed with sin they have these moral roles they supposedly terrorized the young with threats of damnation and Hellfire and they believed according to the stereotype that the chief tasks of parenthood was to break children's sinful will they had to break children's sinfulness which is more or less what I described last lecture with regard to the pre-modern upright child we'll talk

20:18 about whether this stereotype holds true the Puritans viewed the household as a little Commonwealth like a miniature version of the relationship between God and His people so the father is sort of leading the family in the worship of God and the father is sort of like a miniature version of God he's to have absolute authority and obedience over his family members New England Puritan families were patriarchal and paternal so patriarchal means a society based on the rule of men also depended on age and paternal means they traced lineage they traced the family through the male line

21:05 in the household fathers were to enjoy full paternalistic authority over family members and fathers were to oversee the whole family's religious upbringing the the paternalistic authority was very serious for instance the offense the legal offense first son striking hitting his father or burbling up verbally abusing his father like calling him really serious names was in some cases capital punishment death that's pretty strong and again our primary source readings attest to this we read about you should have we read about the case of John Porter from Massachusetts in the 1660s

21:53 in the case of John Porter will be we read a Puritan story of a product of the prodigal son it's a disobedient son who rebels against fatherly Authority specifically a 30 year old man named John Porter wasted away his fortune from his father he goes on scandalous voyages to the British colony of Barbados he goes into debt he's imprisoned and reading between the lines it's presumably because of drinking and gambling so pretty bad to be in debt and prison in the Caribbean for a Puritan young man although his parents welcomed

22:38 him home try to reform him try to get him back on his feet the Sun only rebels even more stubbornly he attacks both of his parents with a laundry list of insulting names and he also attacks town magistrate looking at the primary source he calls his father a thief liar simple eight a bed that's pretty strong he calls his mother basically a prostitute a soul monger she's the rankest so in the town lots of interesting curses he levels at her in any cases in any case the father pressed charges against the

23:25 son who was really ruining the family reputation which was fully within his rights Wow the son did and he didn't quite admit to everything so therefore his sentence although it could have resulted in capital punishment death his sentence was not death but shame and bodily punishment when he was ordered to stand as a gallows in his town for an hour with a rope around his neck now this clearly stood for the noose of paternal Authority right this this rope around his neck reminded him that he could be executed that he could be hanged any time in the future if he

24:11 continues to not deny his father so after that he was whipped imprisoned sentenced to a fine and that was the end of the story we also read that it was only through the intervention of his mother that his execution was prevented so were Puritans turn cold authoritarian let's look at some other evidence let's look at visual evidence this is a painting that we looked at last time brief last time um in this portrait that we saw before we saw children I didn't tell you who they are it's the children of a prominent Boston Baker and they are dressed like adults

24:56 looking at them you know they they look pretty Stern an adult like eight-year-old David Mason holds a silver top cane and gloves symbols of high social status his sister Johanna holds a fan and a coral necklace coral necklace was was thought to ward off disease and Abigail Abigail carries a rose a symbol of innocence now we don't actually have any Diaries that talk about the relationship of these children to their parents were their parents cold and indifferent to them we don't really know so does this stereotype of the Puritan

25:42 family being cold humorless terrorizing children with threats of damnation does it hold water well I'll let you alter the judge but I will suggest that it was a bit more complicated than this stereotype it's complicated so the Puritans were one of the earliest groups to systematically reflect on child development they published many of the earliest child-rearing manuals and pedagogic old manuals or educational manuals now this is may or may not be surprising in fact during the 17th and 18th centuries the Puritans wrote twice as many books in English on proper

26:27 child-rearing as any other group the Puritans wrote two times as many books on child-rearing as any other group and urge parents to begin their godly education of children as soon as possible as one minister declared parents ought to begin to nurture that children as soon as they are capable of any instruction now interestingly enough I mentioned to you Puritan parenting and child-rearing manuals these parenting manuals were directed to father's and not mothers as it was ultimately the male head of household who was in charge and charged with the religious education and upbringing of the family so what we

27:13 retain attitudes towards children and childhood well I'm trying to stress to you that their attitudes are complicated some things are modern some things are not necessarily modern in some ways some Puritan beliefs were very progressive and like and even overlap with the ideas of Locke and Rousseau the Puritans were among the first people to condemn swaddling which Locke disagreed with and they also condemned wet-nursing to encourage maternal breastfeeding and this is over a hundred years in advance of Rousseau so in Europe it was very

27:59 common for another lactating woman to nurse a newborn child wet-nursing you paid another mother to nurse your child and said of you this was especially common in the first four or five days after a baby was born because there was a folk belief that the mother's first milk colostrum was bad for a child but of course in reality you know if you study nursing or anything like that that this is packed full of nutrients and very good for babies so in any case in colonial New England paid wet-nursing was very uncommon the Puritans were the first group of people to condemn wet-nursing

28:46 and they did so out of fear that the wet nurses who were often of lower class status than the mother they they feared that the wet nurses would pass on undesirable traits bad traits to the infants they nursed and you know would not allow them to realize that religious goals Puritans also believed that newborns nursed by their own mothers were less likely to die in infancy for instance Cotton Mather Cotton Mather sari Cotton Mather was one of many Puritan theologians to criticize wet-nursing he argued that mothers had a religious duty to nurse their own children and to not nurse their own

29:31 children was selfish he lectured you will suckle your infant yourselves if you can be not such an ostrich to decline it merely because you would be one of the careless women living at ease end quote not to say this wasn't hypocritical of Mather to say so since he himself had been wet nurse in Boston and his own children were actually wet nursed by the way they did have the Puritans did have these in between stages of childhood like we talked about in the last lecture they weren't just forced to be adults at age seven a child was considered an infant as long as it was nursed

30:18 interestingly enough when a child was nursed when it was an infant it was usually referred to as it in the house it was not called its name it was called it when it was weaned no longer nurse the child was now regarded as a child and full family member and actually called its name and not it remember given high rates of infant mortality we talked about Mather infancy was regarded as a liminal dangerous realm between this world and Lex this world and the next and you know infancy is so fragile so many babies dies another progressive belief of the Puritans that definitely went along with these new ideas on childhood was the Puritans were the first society to state that entire

31:03 communities were responsible for children's moral development development they honored this commitment by establishing publicly funded schools and they also criminalized child abuse the abuse of children so we'll talk about schools and education at the end how did the Puritans differ with Locke's views on children and childhood and education well let's look at these ideas now differing with reformers like Locke the Puritans still regarded childhood as a time of deficiency they associated infants inability to walk or sign I'm sorry they associated infants inability

31:49 to walk or talk as a sign of their sinful nature and animality they were more like an animal than a human so the Puritans basically did still believe in the upright child to a certain extent particularly in terms of morality therefore the Puritans believed it was essential to children to teach children to stand upright being upright is associated with morality propriety and teach them to read scripture quickly and as soon as possible to prevent infants from crawling infants were dressed in long gowns long robes regardless of sex

32:35 boys or girls and of course the Puritans used standing stools they also use leather corsets and wooden rods against the baby spine to promote proper posture and to make them upright unlike today Puritans parents did not baby-proof their homes they didn't scream screen off fireplaces or cover up well they didn't block stairways and children get into all sorts of real physical trouble and danger so rather than in but adjust their environment to the like most parents do today Puritans believed that the child was best served by teaching the child the skills and rules necessary to function or survive in adult world in the adult world so in

33:22 other words the child had to it survive in the adult world and not the other way around now although the Puritans did not believe that children were angels and they wanted to teach obedience and morality Puritans were against harsh physical punishment they agreed with Locke they believed that it either produced rebellious children or resentful children most New England states most New England colonies had laws against what we would classify as undue physical punishment of children child abuse parents were told in these child-rearing manuals always to explain the reasons for a positive and never discipline and anger and refrain from

34:08 undue whipping beatings any sort of physical punishment what about Puritan attitudes towards play the Puritans accepted play as a natural part of childhood and allowed children to be you know children into their teens there were these in between stages like we talked about last time purity Puritan children wrote hobbyhorses they draw on slates they wrote on swings they played with kites dolls they had pets but still the older attitude that play was a sinful waste of time it's still there and Puritan thought so they allowed them to play but they're a little nervous about it Puritan ministers lectured against bad types of play particularly on the

34:54 Sabbath so the Puritan ministers were against playing games on the Sabbath and forbid any games on the Sabbath involving cards and dice so while the Puritans sort of held on to the notion of the upright child there is evidence that they began to loosen these standards after 1700 and 1750 after the halfway covenant they just loosened up a bit so however while children were allowed to play as early as possible children were to prepare for death ministers taught children to reflect on death and

35:39 their sermons for adults and children alike contain graphic descriptions of Hell and the horrors of eternal damnation so death and sin or something that children were introduced to very early this is what cotton mather lecture 2 lectured in a sermon for children go into burying places children you will see their graves as short as yourselves yay you may be at one place one our dead dead the next so in plain language he's telling children to go into a graveyard and look for small graves of people your own age and he's reminding them that death is always there and could happen at any time

36:28 children were shown pictures of the Dead pictures of corpses exposing children early to the reality of death was to give them an awareness of sin and encourage them to reflect on God's divine judgement this message apparently worked countless Diaries and letters attest to toddlers and children bursting into tears for fear of Hell and their own sin so children seem to have been affected by this as a practical example of this this Puritan obsession with death and sin this even pervaded children's literature and children's school textbooks ok for instance the most famous school book the textbook

37:15 used in colonial Puritan New England was the 1690 New England primer it was a textbook and it had a famous rind alphabet and illustrated alphabet while learning the alphabet the Puritan children were taught specific morality lessons and there's quite a lot there about sin and death so the New England primer have had a rhymed and illustrated alphabet it had the Lord's Prayer it had the Ten Commandments and it had other advice in rhymes so notice the emphasis on death and sin in Adams fall we sin all time

38:00 cuts down all both great and small jerk Xerxes the great did die the Persian king and so much you and I so death that that sin and here the Puritan belief in work and that you shouldn't be idle the idle fool is whipped at school so this is the gist of this emphasis on death and sin likewise coming back to this idea of the Puritan family the Puritans were unique from other religious sects with their emphasis on early childhood education that began in the household truly from

38:48 birth right begin with baptism and the idea that parents were supposed to lecture their babies on religion one Puritan child Nathaniel Eden remembered quote my education was in a religious manner from the cradle that I was trained to read scripture in um New England parents and Families fathers were legally responsible for family members religious instruction and actually had to do so by law at least once a week fathers were two khattak eyes catechized their children teach them religion at least once a week fathers were to catechized their children and servants in religion through Bible reading self-examination of their sins singing

39:36 Psalms etc generally Puritan children gained basic literacy in the home mothers were responsible for teaching children to read while the father taught writing reading and writing their separate skills at the time in the household there was no division between religion and reading skills it was all together children were expected to learn to read early by listening to others read aloud reading aloud that's big in the 17th century and from there they were to memorize things memorize the Lord's Prayer memorize Psalms memorize him and eventually memorize entire scripture passages these high literacy rates

40:22 I'll give you figures in a second we're very important to the Puritan self-identity the Puritans believed that reading and interpreting the Bible themselves this made them different from Catholicism they distinguished themselves from the tyranny of Catholic priests Puritans believed that Catholics were far too dependent on the intermediaries of priests and relying on priests to interpret the Bible for them no we do it ourselves the last point that we want to look at is education among the Puritans most important legacies to us today is the belief that

41:08 early childhood is the most formative stage at light of life the idea that children are malleable sponges and need careful educational training the principle of free compulsory public education was first established early on in colonial New England in 1650 so compulsory free public education the idea that education should be provided by the state free of charge and this was revolutionary this first occurred in Puritan New England due to the close cooperation of church and state the religious beliefs of the Puritans and the fact that it was practically possible the Puritans lived in towns

41:58 and it was easy to you know set up schools and the towns be not so easy where you have more spread out rural agrarian populations like in the south so further Puritans education first began in the home children gained basic literacy in the home under their father and mother as we already discussed so most children in colonial New England first studied in their home and sometimes at Dame schools dame schools either referred to instruction in the actual household or in the household of a neighbor sometimes women had too many children to teach all of their own

42:44 children so sometimes women's open gained schools basically small schools that they operated in their own home these Dame schools offered basic instruction in writing reading arithmetic and the ABCs at these Dame schools girls also learned sewing and knitting usually the Dame schools were the only school that girls attended so as we will see although it's progressive in some ways the Puritans the Puritan education was very gendered Puritans were generally were generally

43:29 content to teach girls reading and writing but for them it would stop there still more than half of Puritan women enjoyed basic literacy could read basic things newspapers and consign their own names their own wills which is better than women in England at the time boys went on to primary schools and secondary schools and never again were they taught by women they were taught by professional male teachers religious a reading instruction pardon me was accomplished through the primer and also through a horn book a horn book

44:14 this is a horn book a horn book was a sheet of paper attached to a board and covered with a thin layer of transparent animal horn this was their textbook okay the greatest legacy of the Puritan New England was the idea of compulsory education in 1642 the Massachusetts government passed a compulsory education law meaning that education was mandatory for everyone the law berated parents for neglecting quote the training of their children in learning and labor it was parental responsibility to

45:00 provide education education had to be education was henceforth mandatory and free and was supported by public taxes this 1642 Massachusetts the 1642 law was first passed in Massachusetts and copied by all of the other New England colonies with the exception of Rhode Island the law held that public primary schools so primary schools is what we think of it's in elementary school the law held that public primary schools had to be established in all towns of bigger than 50 households and they were to be supported by public tax funds similar laws for grammar schools were made for

45:48 towns of more than 100 households a grammar school so a primary school is a Elementary School a grammar school is a secondary school a grammar school was a secondary school only for boys based on the study of Latin history in the classics it's a classical education as preparation for probably attending university okay in any case why is this so progressive why is this so advanced well just to give you a little bit of perspective in early modern Europe in early modern Europe schooling tended to be parochial attended to be supported by the church and financed by the church

46:36 and not free and basically this law establishing public schools was over a hundred years in advance of Europe right so the very first place that primary public schools were established in Europe was in many of the German states and this was not until the late 1700s public education did not come about in England until the late 1970s sorry until the late 19th century the 1870s or so and the same principle applied to France free compulsory public schooling

47:22 established in the 1870s so basically this was far before this happened in Europe the result was that we associate Puritan New England with dramatically higher literacy rates than in Europe so here are some figures for literacy rates on the eve of the American Revolution so this stands from men for some for males on the eve of the American Revolution 85% of men were literate in the New England colonies 63% of men in the middle colonies and 55% of men in the southern colonies for women the figures

48:11 are lower 50% in the New England colonies a third in the middle colonies and 25% in the south nonetheless these these rates are still higher than contemporary figures in England and Europe so we focused in this lecture on the family and education in Puritan New England because they're so distinctive for their views but I want to conclude by giving you just a three of what education was like in the other colonies and will be brief generally education so let's start with the well in the other regions generally education was private and parochial parochial and generally education in the

48:58 middle and southern colonies was less progressive than in New England education was largely the responsibility of family or church so it was private or parochial provided by the church and I could be very specific but there were certainly public schools in some regions but it tended to vary by region and I'm going to keep it general here so the lecture isn't too long let's talk about the southern colonies first so in the southern colonies it varied by class the upper classes were typically educated by private tutors or governesses in their own home because it is much more rural or they were sent abroad to England for schooling for the middle classes middle

49:48 class children in the south were sent to a type of parochial school a church funded school which were called old field schools they were log-cabin schools in old tobacco fields and they usually were taught by the local clergyman so they were connected to the church the school's curriculum was not as complete and developed as in the New England colonies and the schools were only open from April to September that's April to September because it was the offseason for the tobacco growing so

50:34 limited sort of public schools although they're connected to the church the middle colonies like the southern colonies education was primarily a church or family affair there were public schools they were attempts to attack establish public schools but there was nothing as widespread as New England so generally speaking as a rule without being really really specific and tedious in the middle and southern colonies education tends to be private and parochial however there were attempts to establish public education for instance Pennsylvania Penn's frame of government his original Constitution had stipulated

51:22 that children were to be taught the 3 R's reading writing and arithmetic until the age of 12 and then they should learn a useful trade however this dream and these ideals in the Constitution were never realized generally in Pennsylvania for instance education was provided by the different religious groups for instance in Quaker communities quaker meeting houses established their own schools supported by tuition they were not free similar to other religious groups nonetheless the middle colonies were famous for the quality of their private schools and the private schools in Philadelphia were particularly good

52:08 let's talk about the Philadelphia academies so you had to pay there was a tuition why are these Philadelphia academies famous and important the Philadelphia academies private schools in Philadelphia were a great innovation to education because they pioneered practical modern utilitarian useful subjects and not just the classical curriculum let's talk about how the New Philadelphia academies were different than the grammar school so I mentioned the grammar school before the grammar school was a secondary school a high school if you will that

52:54 prepared male students for higher education University the grammar school was based on the classics the classical stuff subjects Greek and Latin and it was a preparatory school for university it also included history mythology literature but classical texts primarily the American Academy was different and tended to stress more modern practical subjects and more modern practical languages and things that people could apply to everyday life and careers and trades so for instance the Philadelphia academies offered French and German living language is not just rican LAN and taught a variety of new subjects so

53:41 not just history logic rhetoric and philosophy but practical subjects like geography accounting geometry algebra navigation astronomy drawling so overall a stress on practical useful subjects and not just classical Greek and Latin okay thank you very much for listening to