THE EARLY FREE SCHOOLS OF AMERICA. 663 

 THE EAELY FEEE SCHOOLS OF AMERICA. 



By ALICE HYNEMAN EHINE. 



WITH the discovery of America, the founding of colonies in the 

 New World relieved the Old of so much surplus population as 

 gave the people of both hemispheres many new chances in life. The 

 advantages of education, meager as was the information given by the 

 schools, inspired men with a desire for larger liberty than the old mo- 

 narchical governments were either able or willing to give. The men 

 that emigrated to America were of the liberty-loving type. Unfortu- 

 nately, however, it was love of liberty for themselves, not for others. 

 The Puritan fathers, far from being the lofty minded men historians 

 have fondly painted, were bigots, without learning or desire for any- 

 thing beyond worshiping their own idea of God in their own peculiar 

 fashion. In some respects it was the misfortune of America that these 

 men were the inaugurators of her religious and educational codes. An 

 opportunity so splendid had never been granted to humanity. America 

 started into life with the civilization, the culture, the experience of 

 past ages as her teachers ; she was enabled to take up at the last leaf 

 the book of progress which had been commenced cycles before in 

 India, Egypt, Chaldea, Greece, and Rome. The slow emergence from 

 barbarism, the crude and cruel experiences of all other peoples, could 

 have been remitted in her favor ; like the fairy princess in the story 

 of the " Forest of Lilacs," her teaching was proceeding while she slept. 

 Had she been able, upon awakening, to make use of this culture — had 

 her governors been men of liberal views and greater foresight — in 

 America the *' Utopia" of More might have become a possibility, and 

 the " New Republic " of Plato a successful reality. 



Instead of this enlarged freedom, the history of education in Amer- 

 ica is replete with theocratic superstitions. Theology interfered with 

 the civil laws, and both Church and state hampered with their bonds 

 the free development of education. Colleges were founded, not so 

 much for the advancement of science as to provide learned ministers 

 for ecclesiasticism. In the early colonial times, the Bible, Psalm-book, 

 and Catechism comprised in great measure not only the school-books 

 of the children but the family library. In 1720 we read that but one 

 parish library could be chronicled in the colony of Virginia. This li- 

 brary consisted of three books — " The Singing Psalms," *' The Whole 

 Duty of Man," and " The Book of Homilies. 



This dearth of reading matter, as might have been expected, re- 

 sulted in making Biblical stories as familiar to the children of the col- 

 onists as the legendary tales of fairies and gnomes had been to the 

 dwellers on the borders of the Rhine and Rhone. The dramatic trage- 



