The Extent and Duration of Primary Schooling in Eighteenth-Century America

The educational attainment literature has brought back interest in early American primary schools, and much current research views those schools as superior to their European peers in the education offered to youth. Its emphasis, though, on using school enrollment as the prime indicator of attainmen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:History of education quarterly 2023-08, Vol.63 (3), p.313-335
Main Author: Shammas, Carole
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
18th century
19th century
Academic Standards
Administrative Organization
Arithmetic
Autobiographies
Bans
Basic Skills
Child Labor
Children
Children & youth
Democracy
Education
Educational Attainment
Educational Experience
Educational History
Egalitarianism
Elementary Education
Elementary Schools
Enrollment
Enrollment Rate
Enrollment Trends
Enrollments
Evidence
Handwriting
Human Capital
Labor Demands
Legislation
Literacy
Mathematics
Numeracy
Parents
Population
Primary Education
Protestantism
School Surveys
Schools
Scientific Concepts
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Summary:The educational attainment literature has brought back interest in early American primary schools, and much current research views those schools as superior to their European peers in the education offered to youth. Its emphasis, though, on using school enrollment as the prime indicator of attainment conflicts with the revisionist view of a previous generation of historians who argued that education in the heavily rural and agricultural society of the time should be considered as a process of social reproduction delivered by households, with schools being peripheral for most youth. This article, relying on evidence from statutes, indentures, and a 1798 New York State school survey, finds increased resort to primary schooling over the eighteenth century, attributable not to American exceptionalism but to a transatlantic movement away from scribal-dominated literacy and numeracy toward common use of a standardized written vernacular and “arithmetic by pen.” However, the dependence of households on child labor meant that the Three Rs did not get distributed in either an egalitarian or compact fashion. Small doses spread over a number of years—educational sprawl—best describes the system, and it lasted through much of the nineteenth century.
ISSN:0018-2680
1748-5959
DOI:10.1017/heq.2023.12