1. The Spread Of New Ideas
Chapter 4 : Section 4

2. How did ideas about religion and government influence colonial life?
Essential Question
How did ideas about religion and government influence colonial life?
Recall section 1 of this chapter about the development of rights in England from the Magna Carta to the English Bill of Rights. What do the headings and the images of this section tell you about the spread of new ideas in the colonies?

3. What was education like for the Puritans?

4. What was education like for the Puritans?
Puritans passed laws on education where parents were required to teach their children and their servants how to read.
Towns with 50 or more families would have to start an elementary school and towns with more than 100 families had to have a grammar school to teach older kids.
These Massachusetts laws would be the beginning of public schools in America.
Funding was the difference between public and puritan schools. Puritan schools received both public and private money.

5. What were colonial schools like?

6. Colonial Schools
Religion was a mandatory subject since most schools were under religious sponsorship.
In the south people were separated by great distances, so they had few schools.

7. Did everyone have rights to the same education during colonial times?

8. Colonial Schools Members of the Gentry often hired private tutors.
Poor families usually received no education at all.
Some schools admitted girls, but most would teach them during the summers or when boys were not in school.
Some women would teach boys and girls in their homes, these would be known as dame schools.

9. What was education like for African-Americans?

10. Education for African-Americans
Most colonial schools were restricted to white children.
In New York an Anglican church group ran a school for free African-Americans, Native Americans, and poor whites.
Some Quaker and Anglican missionaries taught enslaved people to read.
Some enslaved people taught themselves from borrowed or stolen books.

12. Upper Levels of Schooling
After elementary schools, some boys went Grammar schools which were similar to modern day High Schools.
The first American colleges were founded largely to prepare men for the ministry.
The Puritan general council financed what became Harvard College.
Harvard College opened in 1638 and was the first college in the English colonies.
The first college in the south would founded in 1693 in Virginia called the college of William and Mary.

13. What were some early forms of literature?

14. Roots of American Literature
The earliest forms of colonial literature were sermons and histories.
Some of the early poets wrote poetry about the hardship of Puritan life.
Early literature would mainly focus on religious stories and teachings.

15. What was Benjamin Franklin’s influence on the colonies?

16. Benjamin Franklin
At age 17 started his own newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette in Philadelphia after moving from Boston.
Franklin was known for his moral sayings such as “God helps people who help themselves.”
Franklin was more than writer. He was a businessman, community leader, scientist, inventor, and diplomat.
He made discoveries about electricity and invented bifocal glasses and the stove.
He became one of the founding fathers of the United States by his role in government during the American Revolution.

17. What was the Great Awakening?

18. The Great Awakening
Religion played a critical role early on within the 13 colonies.
The Great awakening was a religious revival that took place during the early 1700s.
The Great Awakening took place due to what Christians saw a decline in religious zeal.
Forceful preachers such as Jonathan Edwards quickly spread the Great Awakening throughout the colonies.

19. What was the impact of the Great Awakening on the colonies?

20. Impact of the Great Awakening
The Great Awakening led to the rise of many new churches.
Such groups consisted of Methodists, Baptists arose out of the Great Awakening.
The growth of new churches led to more religious tolerance of religious differences in the colonies.
The Great Awakening was on the first national movements in the colonies.
People thought that if they could decide on their own how to worship God, they could decide how to govern themselves.

21. What do you know about the Enlightenment?

22. The Enlightenment
Beginning in the 1600s, a group of European thinkers came to believe that all problems could be solved by human reason.
This type of thinking ushered in a new movement known as the Enlightenment.
Enlightenment thinkers looked for “natural laws” that governed politics, society, and economics.

23. Pioneers of the Enlightenment
John Locke published his famous essay titled Two Treaties on Government.
Locke argued in his essay that people have certain natural rights, that is, rights that belong to every human being from birth.
These rights include life, liberty, and property, and they can not be taken away.
Locke challenged the idea of divine right.
He stated that natural rights came from God, not the monarch.
He argued that people formed governments in order to protect their rights.
Locke’s reasoning led to the conclusion that government exists to protect the rights of the people, if a monarch violates those rights, the people have a right to overthrow the monarch.
This idea would later shape the founding of the United States.

24. Pioneers of the Enlightenment
Baron de Montesquieu was a French thinker who also influenced American ideas.
He wrote a famous book titled, The Spirit of the Laws, and in it Montesquieu argues that the powers of government should be clearly defined and limited.
Montesquieu favored Separation of Powers, which is a division of the power of government into separate branches.
He suggested that government should be divided into three branches: a legislative branch to make laws, an executive branch to enforce laws, and a judicial branch to make judgments based on the law.
Montesquieu’s ideas on division of power would become the basis of government in the United States.

25. Homework Questions:
1- What was the goal of Enlightenment thinkers? 2- Why might the Great Awakening have unsettled many prominent church leaders? 3- How did Locke’s idea of natural rights challenge the power of the monarchy?