American School System: The Beginning

American School System: The Beginning

The puritans were group of Protestants that escaped England and came to the new world to practice their religion without the fear of persecution from the throne. The puritans were not the only group that arrived to the new world; there were also the Dutch, English, Irish, Scottish, and German. The puritans were the dominant group out of all the other ethnic groups. The Europeans brought their formal education system, culture and philosophy.
The puritans purpose for establishing their educational system was to strive to save the souls of the villagers, their beliefs is that human beings are born morally corrupted because their sense of right and wrong therefore they need to be thought how to live righteously and the only way they can ever achieve this feat was to be thought the bible. They had to achieve their own school system which was mainly the same system that they brought from Europe, which was call, the Dane schools.
Dane schools were schools that was established by women and were commonly ran from the house of the person or teacher that was in charge of that particular house. The Dane Schools were not free, those that could afford to send their children to school, they were charged a modest fee, the type of education these students receive were the basics reading, writing and mathematics, attendance was not too important because on top of going to school the children still had to do their daily chores, farming, herding of animals basically anything to help their family out, so depending on the season that’s how attendance was determined, girls were educated as well but not to the extent as the boys were, girls were mainly thought how to do certain chores such as sewing, cooking and how to be a good hostess, once a young men has finished with their basic education, if necessary they were enrolled in college.
Colleges were mainly to teach the bible, which these students will be thought Latin and religion, being that religion was the central purpose of the schools the training was extremely rigorous and only the sons of the wealthy members of the society could afford to attend a secondary school. The first every secondary school was Harvard College which was established in 1636, in Boston Massachusetts the second college was established in 1693 which was called the College of William and Mary which was founded in Williamsburg, Virginia. These post-secondary schools were established for one reason and one reason alone and that reason is to save the souls of the puritans.