Colonial Colleges

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Colonial Colleges

• 1636-1789

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Colonial Colleges

• Goals
• Teach the young
• Culture
• Teach the Classics
• Problem couldnt understand Latin
• Prepare for service (clergy public servant)
• In this period college was teaching you to use
  your mind

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Colonial Colleges

• Beginning of Revolutionary War 9 colleges
  existed
• Background on 9 colony colleges
• By 1646 200 graduates of Oxford/Cambridge
  settled in colonies
• 1636- Harvard Puritan General Court of
  Massachusetts
• Every one shall consider the main end of his
  life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ,
  which is eternal life.
• 1693 William and Mary Anglican
• piously educated youth of good letters and
  manners and also propagate Christian faith among
  the Indians.
• 1701-Yale Puritan
• Where in youth may be instructed in the arts
  and sciences, who through the blessings of
  Almighty God, may be fitted for public
  employment, both in the church and state.
• 1740 College of Philadelphia
• Unique-no mention of the training of ministers
  as a purpose

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Colonial Colleges

• Background on 9 colony colleges cont.
• 1746 College of New Jersey
• Calvinists-New Lights
• 1754-Kings College (New York)
• Conflict b/w Anglican/Presbyterian
• 1764 College of Rhode Island
• Increase Baptist ministers
• 1769 Dartmouth
• Educate ministers to serve Indians
• 1770-Queens College (New Jersey)
• Dutch Reform
• Early colony colleges did not administer
  religious admissions tests
• 9 colony colleges founded by cooperation b/w the
  state and church

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Colonial Colleges

• Interesting Tidbits on impact of religion on
  colonial colleges
• The main gate at Harvard
• Congregational Church desired to breed, bring
  up, and create in the college successors for the
  educated ministers that had emigrated from
  England.
• Rhode Island charter sectarian differences of
  opinions shall not make any part of the public
  and classical instruction although all religious
  controversies may be studied freely, and
  explained.
• Kings College may not exclude any person of
  any religious denomination whatever, from equal
  liberty and advantage of education.
• College of New Jersey provided that those of
  every religious denomination may have free and
  equal liberty and advantage of education in said
  college.

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Colonial Colleges

• Colonial Life
• 17th Century 600 students enrolled at Harvard
  485 graduated
• 1710 Yale 36 students, Harvard 123 students
• 1770- Yale 338 students, Harvard 413 students
• 1776 3000 living graduates of colonial colleges
• 1770- SC newspaper editorializing against
  founding college in SC learning would become
  cheap and common, every man would be giving his
  son an education.
• Admission requirement for colonial college
• oral and written exams in Latin w/president
• Evidence of character
• Admittatur granted by the President

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Colonial Colleges

• Curriculum
• Classical languages and literature core
  classical curriculum
• Year 1 Latin, Greek, logic, Hebrew, rhetoric
• Year 2 Latin, Greek, Hebrew, natural philosophy
• Year 3 natural and moral philosophy (economics,
  ethics, political science, and sociology)
• Year 4 Latin, Greek, logic, natural philosophy,
  math
• Mid 18th C- Addition of natural sciences, English
  literature, some modern languages
• 1738 Harvard created a physics lab students
  studied earthquakes
• 1749- Yale received a telescope, microscope, and
  a barometer
• New sciences did not replace the classical
  curriculum
• 1754-Kings College announced a curriculum of
  surveying, navigation, geography, commerce,
  govt. historyof every thing useful
• 1720 Harvard geometry studied senior year 1855
  admission requirement

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Colonial Colleges

• Degrees
• Harvard awarded 1st bachelors degree in 1642
• 9 students received bachelors in 1642
• Harvard assumed authority to grant a degree
  step toward independence
• Masters program 3 years w/o prescribed course
  of study

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Colonial Colleges

• Faculty and Administration
• - Medieval times- colleges self governing under
  the authority of the king or pope
• - Harvard created a Board of Overseers,
  consisting of judges and clergy
• Harvard (1806) faculty excluded from serving
  on the corporation, indication that faculty had
  lost control of Harvard
• - President of Harvard-only member on Board w/a
  college background
• - Yale Single governing board Congregational
  clergy held all seats
• - Yale changed this model in the mid 18th C
• - Colonial college presidents Administration,
  may have been the primary teacher, handled all
  discipline-normally flogging
• -

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Colonial Colleges

• Student Life/Socioeconomic facts
• 1677-1703 occupations of 300 fathers of students
  consisted of
• 79 ministers 45 shopkeepers 35 lawyers/judges
  28 wealthy landowners, military31 artisans
  seamen servant 11 ordinary farmers
• These s do not equal 300 but hey dont shoot
  the messenger!
• Typically only the sons of the rich attended
  college
• Some members of the lower class did attend
  college
• Financial aid existed students could work and be
  paid by the more affluent student

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Colonial Colleges

• Student life cont.
• Residential colleges
• - Oxford and Cambridge had residential colleges
• - Colonial colleges built dormitories to house
  students-they were not the living learning
  centers of the English colleges
• Religion dominated student life
• Student Clubs
• literary societies developed-opportunities for
  free expression beyond classroom recitation
• Discipline/rebellion/beer
• Friction b/w faculty and students, petty rules
  governing every aspect of life, flogging replaced
  by fines, loss of privileges, food an issue,
  beer served in dining halls until early 1800s

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Colonial Colleges

• Reasons for not sending son to college
• - Curriculum not aimed at preparing practical
  people
• Does a farmer really need to know Hebrew?
• - Cost required available cash
• - Distance was a problem
• - Most families were farmers and could not lose
  sons
• - Education was the responsibility of parents
• College Admittance
• - oral and written presentations
• - Yale required evidence of good moral
  character 1745- arithmetic
• - Knowledge of Greek and Latin
• - As secondary curriculum grew those students
  who lacked the skills taught at the secondary
  level studied with a tutor clergyman until
  prepared for college

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Colonial Colleges

• Curriculum
• - Classics from Cambridge/Oxford
• Instruction
• Memorization
• Latin phased out
• Evidence of the war b/w practical training and
  colonial college education or Starbucks
  conversation
• Native Americans response to invitation to send
  6 boys to Williamsburg College in the 1770s We
  thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must
  know that different nations have different
  conceptions of things, if our ideas of education
  happen not to be the same as yours. We have had
  some experience with it. Several of our young
  people were formerly brought up at your college
  they were instructed in all your sciences but,
  whey they came back to us, they were bad runners,
  ignorant of every means of living in the woods,
  unable to bear either cold or hungertake a deer
  or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly,
  were therefore neither fit for hunters or
  warriors, they were totally good for nothing.
  Though we decline accepting your offer, if the
  gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of
  their sons we will make men of them

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Colonial Colleges

• Thats it folks!