The education system in early America was very unique. Private education within the home, churches, the schools with the Bible at the center of character development was the norm. The early pilgrims along with the colonists had education high on their priority list as they saw it predominately as a personal, family, and church responsibility.
Formal education was sometimes offered by communities at the township level but parents always maintained control over what their children were being taught and the content was always biblically based.
During America’s Colonial period, our early founders knew the great importance of education as they founded hundreds of colleges and private schools. Many if not most of these colleges primary focus was training men for ministry work.
Here is an account by Educator Rosalie J. Slater about the Founders early educational efforts:
“At the time of the Declaration of Independence, the quality of education had enabled the colonies to achieve a degree of literacy from 70% to virtually 100%.
This was not education restricted to a few. Modern scholarship reports “the prevalence of schooling and its accessibility to all segments of the population.” Moses Coit Tyler, historian of American literature, indicates the colonists “familiarity with history…. extensive legal learning…. lucid exposition of constitutional principles, showing, indeed, that somehow, out into the American wilderness had been carried the verry accent of cosmopolitan thought and speech.” When the American state papers arrived in Europe…they were found to contain “nearly every quality indicative of personal and national greatness.”
Hmmm…..All of this achieved without a Department of Education? No common core? No Government program upon program like the “No Child Left Behind Act?
The literacy rate for the United States in 2021 was at just 86%. In 245 years we have gone from a quality of education in America that enabled the colonies to achieve a literacy rate of nearly 100% to now where we are hovering just around 86% which puts us at around 125th worldwide.
How did the colonists achieve this?
- Familiarity with history
- Extensive legal learning
- Lucid exposition of Constitutional Principles
They knew their history. They learned their legal system and knew how our system worked. They knew our founding principles.
These men and women educated themselves. They cared about the facts. They knew all too well what happened to a society that was not educated. We simply do not care about the facts today. We do not care about our history. Our current state of affairs reflect this.
Many do not even have a basic understanding of how our legal system works. Just look at the recent Supreme Court Decision of the overturning of Roe v Wade. If many knew or even cared about how that process works, you would not see as many people crucifying one another because much of what people are speaking out on the matter is based out of ignorance of the law. It is the same issue concerning Separation of Church and State. The statements made or based on feeling not fact.
What were our founding principles? Look no further than the Scriptures that inspired these words from the unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Here is what I noticed in my study of the success of early American education:
- Private Education in the home was common
- Community education always remained under parental control
- Bible was the foundation of character development
If we wish to seek out the source of what truly made America great, we need to look no further than the 150 years of the instruction within Christian Schools along with the self-governed, “principled study and reasoning undertaken in Christian homes”
Many see the name Webster and simply resonate it with the most current version how we are defining words of the day. But in all reality Noah Webster is considered to be the father of American Education. He is known for making the development of Christian character the very core of his educational philosophy.
As we have seen in early America, because all education was built on the foundational principles found within the Word of God, children grew up knowing how and where to find guidance for human aspirations through reasoning from these biblical principles.
The Scriptures were the economic and political textbook of our founders. The Bible was considered the great textbook of the Patriots. It is what led, guided and directed them. You want to know their motives, look to the Scriptures.
Rev. J. Wingate Thornton’s Pulpit of the American Revolution is noted to say that in 1777, the Continental Congress wrote “directing the Committee of Commerce to import 20,000 copies of the Bible, the great political textbook of the patriots.”
If we want to fix our education system here in America we must look to the guiding light of the Scriptures. Our schools were founded upon these principles.
As a parent myself, there is no greater issue in my own heart and mind than the failure of the education system here in America and how far we have strayed from our founding principles.
Today the blame game continues as we try and understand this failure by pointing fingers at teachers, parents, administrators, bureaucrats rather than looking for a solution to this epidemic.
If we wish to figure out where we went wrong and how to right this wrong, we must look to our Christian history that will help us focus on long-term solutions. By looking to our rich Christian history, we look to the Scriptures.
Many today do not know their history or care which in part has led to this downfall. If we do not have a clear understanding of our past both good and bad, we will be led astray very quickly and believe the lies that are being fed to us from the politicians today like “separation of church and state.” If the Bible was at the very core of our Early American Educational system, please tell me where “separation of church and state” fits that bill?
We want to understand mass shootings today? We want to understand students’ behavior in the classroom? What has changed? We must go back to the beginning and see what changed and when? Only then can we find the root of the problem.
We can pour millions of dollars into education and create government program after program but until we dig into our past and find that fork in the road where we veered off course, only then will begin to find solutions to todays heart problem that America has.
Morality and religion have left the public sector altogether.
As John Adams wrote to the Massachusetts Militia on October 11, 1798:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
When we compare the educational philosophy of the early Americans to this modern, extremely progressive philosophy and the content taught in the classrooms from then and now the standard that is missing is the Word of God.
Does this mean that the early education system was without problems? Of course not. There will always be problems. But when a problem arose many of our founders looked to the Word of God as their lamp.
What do we look to today? What is the standard? What is at the core of our current educational system? What and who are we looking to for guidance when problems arise?
There is no standard within the current educational system. The system that our founders set up had been completely disregarded and thrown in the trash-heap of history.
So, when did it all begin to change?
1838. Horace Mann. [1]
[1] Foster, Marshall. The American Covenant: The Untold Story. Pages 20-21
Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom in America 