This is a summary of the first chapter of Homeschool: An American History by Dr. Milton Gaither.  Feel free to respond either to my summary or to the chapter itself.  If you post on this chapter, be sure to let me know through a comment or an email so that I can include your post in the thoughts I share regarding the discussion at the end of the week.

This chapter opens in Amsterdam in 1608, looking at a small band of Protestant separatists who had left their home in Scrooby, England with hopes of “finding enough religious toleration to allow them to follow God’s revealed pattern of church government.”  The history and conflicts of this significant little band of Christians is condensed into a few paragraphs, but serves to set the scene for the reason they chose to leave Holland for America:

many of their children, by these occasions and the great licentiousness of youth in that country, and the manifold tempations of the lace, were drawn away by evil examples into extravagant and dangerous courses, getting the reins off their necks and departing from their parents…So that they saw their posterity would be in danger to degenerate and be corrupted.  Of Plymouth Plantation

I appreciated in this brief analysis the recognition that the Pilgrims came to America seeking more than religious freedom…this they possessed in Holland.  Instead, the primary concern for these families was the education of their children.

He then goes on to describe family life in colonial days, conflicts with Native Americans and the role the state played in the family.  Thus we enter into the support for the main theme of this chapter:  that during this period of our history, civil government actually enforced a certain sort of home education.  Rather than being free from governmental control as is often depicted in modern looks at home education’s history, the family and civil government were viewed as parts of the same, God-ordained heirarchical structure.

As the King governed by Divine right, so did the father.  And both family and state were created by God to serve the same purpose–the peaceable government of society according to Divine law.  p. 14

Home education was not merely tolerated nor allowed.  It was strictly enforced.

A summary of laws to support the point:

1.  Massachusetts School Law of 1642, giving authority of selectmen to oversee parents and masters in the education of children.  Keeping a “vigilant eye” even.

2.  Connecticut Code of 1650 (scroll down). It would seem that Puritan Massachusetts had its influence on Puritan Connecticut from the wording of the law.

3.  New Haven in 1655 (p. 54 and 55) added even more to the same basic law.

New York, Plymouth and Pennsylvania also enacted laws enforcing educational standards on parents, and while enforcement varied, parents and masters stood under the authority of government appointed officers and could face fines and eventual loss of custody for their children if they were not educated sufficiently, or were “unruly.”

Families were not autonomous, and officers were even employed by the state in order to monitor families.  The Massachusetts General Court, for example, established “tithingmen” in 1657 to monitor and inspect families.

The remainder of the chapter provides an overview of practices not so relevant to today, including formal apprenticeships starting at a relatively young age and the “putting out” of children to be educated by other families, with a brief look at the education “inside the Great House” on southern plantations.

My one criticism at this point is that Gaither seems to focus heavily on the northern colonies, those most influenced by the Puritans who were not religious radicals, but religious conservatives.  New York was a middle colony, and Virginia was a southern colony, but the single reference to the law in Virginia refers only to “a fine of five hundred pounds tobacco was to be levied when clergy discovered parents who were ‘delinquents in the catechizing the youth’…”  Rather than placing power in the hands of civil authorities (who according to Puritan notions worked alongside the church, not independently of nor in authority over), this seems to leave power with the church, where it had been under English custom.

According to a website summarizing education in colonial America put together by Notre Dame,

First and foremost, Southerners believed that education was a private matter and not a concern for the state. They were quick to point out that in all traditional societies the most important training a child receives is in the home where he/she is inducted into the values of the society he/she is about to enter. If the family fails in this endeavor, then how can the schools be more successful? They felt a priority should be placed upon creating a college-bred elite, if their traditions and way of life were to be successfully transferred to successive generations. This system helped to perpetuate the sharply defined social-class structure which existed in the South. There were planters (plantation owners) and there were slaves; no middle-class existed in the South to bridge the gap between upper and lower classes, and as such, there was no demand for services beyond that provided for those who could afford to pay. Another reason that public education did not flourish in the South was that the population was more dispersed than it was in the North, making it difficult to find enough children in one area to justify a school. Also, the Anglican religion of the South did not put quite as much emphasis on religious indoctrination through schooling as did Puritan New England. The final reason was the South’s feeling about slavery, which will be mentioned below.  Education in the Southern Colonies

This perhaps also sheds light on why Horace Mann’s reforms took hold more readily in the North, where there was a longer history of public education and state involvement in education, than further south where the population was sparser and education seems to have been viewed as a more private matter.