Education History

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America’s own contribution to education(Pulliam, Van Patten 86). Used from 1609 until the beginning of the 19th century, its purpose was to teach both religion and reading. The child learning the letter a, for example, also learned that "In Adam’s fall, We sinned all." As in Europe, then, schools in the colonies were strongly influenced by religion. This was particularly true of schools in the New England area, which had been settled by Puritans and other English religious dissenters. The school in colonial New England was not a pleasant place either, physically or psychologically. Great emphasis was placed on the shortness of life and the torments of hell. Like the Protestants of the Reformation, who established vernacular elementary schools in Germany in the 16th century, the Puritans sought to make education universal. They took the first steps toward government-supported universal education in the colonies.
In 1647, Puritan Massachusetts passed a law requiring that ...

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of seamen, merchants, artisans, and frontiersmen. The effect of these new developments on the curriculum in American schools was more immediate and widespread than its effect in European schools. Practical content was soon in competition with religious concerns.
Vocational education was more significant in the Middle colonies than elsewhere in colonial America. The academy that Benjamin Franklin helped found in 1751 was the first of a growing number of secondary schools that sprang up in competition with the Latin schools. Franklin’s academy continued to offer the humanist-religious curriculum, but it also brought education closer to the needs of everyday life. Teaching such ...

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