Section 4: The Spread of New Ideas

The Importance of Education Puritans passed laws to promote education Required parents to teach their children and servants to read Required every town with at least 50 families to start an elementary school; towns with 100 families had to have a grammar school (like a high school) In grammar school, they learned Greek, Latin, geography, math, and composition Schools were run with public and private money Some towns paid a fine rather than set up a school

Colonial Schools Included instruction in religion Taught reading, writing, and ciphering Used hornbooks In the South the gentry hired private tutors because there were few schools; poor children usually received no formal education

Colleges First founded to educate men to be ministers First college was Harvard which was opened in 1638 by the Puritan general council The first college in the South was the College of William and Mary opened in Virginia in 1693.

The New England Primer

For 50 years the New England Primer was the only textbook in school. It was published in 1690.

A Girl with a Hornbook

Hornbook The New England Primer is a graded reader, that is, it has sections for a variety of reading levels, including beginners. The syllabarium, lists of letters in different fonts, and lists of words grow out of the hornbook tradition. Hornbooks had been used in England since at least the fifteenth century and usually consisted of a sheet of paper tacked to a wood, bone, or leather frame and protected by a leaf of horn. The frame often had a handle that could be held or tied to a child’s waist. As with the example at the right, hornbooks usually started with a cross in the top left-hand corner and included the alphabet in upper and lower case, a list of the vowels, a syllabarium, an invocation to the Trinity, and the Lord’s Prayer. All of the elements of the hornbook appear in the New England Primer except the cross. Because Puritans believed that the cross was a symbol of idolatry, publishers were probably reluctant to include it: there is no edition of the Primer known to have an image of the cross in it. Hornbooks were used as far back as 1492.

Colonial American Literature Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack– Collection of advice, proverbs, and thoughts about how to live well Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” – Sermon calling on people to examine their lives and commit themselves to God Play Sermon Audio Phillis Wheatley, “To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty” and “On the Death of Rev. Dr. Sewall”– Poems concerned with morality and goodness William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation– Narration of how the Puritans broke completely with the Church of England Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America– Poems expressing joys and hardships of life in Puritan New England

http://www.richhall.com/poor_richard.htm http://www.poorrichards.net/benjamin-franklin

Johnathan Edwards