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Education History

What factors in society ended sectarianism in schools, and made them secular?

Probably no single movement so greatly affected colonial America as the Protestant Reformation. Most of the Europeans who came to America were Protestants, but there were many denominations. Lutherans from Germany and Scandinavia settled in the middle colonies along with Puritans and Presbyterians. The Reformation was centered upon efforts to capture the minds of men, therefore great emphasis was placed on the written word. Obviously schools were needed to promote the growth of each denomination. Luther's doctrines made it necessary for boys and girls to learn to read the Scriptures. While the schools that the colonists established in the 17th century in the New England, southern and middle colonies differed from one another, each reflected a concept of schooling that had been left behind in Europe. Most poor children learned through apprenticeship and had no formal schooling at all. Those who did go to elementary school were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. Learning consisted of memorizing, which was stimulated by whipping. The first "basic textbook", the New England Primer, was 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,...