by the author's thought with respect to the development of our American schools. One who is a member of the teaching profession will come from his perusal of the volume with a clearer understanding of the purpose of our public schools and with a renewed acceptance of the call to professional service. GEORGE D. STRAYER

CHAPTER I

THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION

HE keynote of American life is democracy

TH

social

democracy. I say social democracy, because England is politically more democratic than the United States. On the other hand, England inherits conceptions of caste of which we know nothing. The English churchman prays to be content with that station in life in which Providence has placed him. On the other side of the water, schools for the poor are free; the rich must pay for their education. The great preparatory schools of England, as well as the venerable universities, are for gentlemen's sons, and only gentlemen are wanted in the church, at the bar, or in the army and navy.

The found

Beginning of education in New England. ers of this republic thought it a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. The settlers of New England left the old world in search of religious freedom - to found a new home in which each might worship God in his own way. They were so intensely in earnest that they were willing to suffer for the faith, and so conscientious that they were willing also to make others suffer for differing with them.

They were stern men, those ancient fathers of New England, and they had little faith in the natural course

1A revised reprint from the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW, New York, June, 1906, used by courtesy of the publishers.

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of human development. Five years after the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony they founded the Boston Latin School younger" and more vigorous today than at any other time in its history. A letter written at the time says: "After God had carried us safely to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear'd convenient places for God's worship, and settled the Civill Govt.: one of the next things we longed for, and looked after, was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust."

Next, in 1640, they founded Harvard College — also "younger and more vigorous than at any other time in its career. Then, two years later (1642), they urged selectmen to see that parents provided for the education of all children to the extent of teaching them (1) to read, (2) to understand the principles of religion, (3) the capital laws of the colony, and (4) to engage in some suitable employment.

In 1647 the General Court of Massachusetts passed its epoch-making act providing for public instruction: "It being one chief object of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from the use of tongues, that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers in the Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors, etc., etc. It is therefore ordered" that there be (1) one teacher for every fifty householders, to teach reading and writing, and (2) one