Founders' Education: Excerpt « - The Diigo Meta page

• 23 Jun 08
  

  Wisely

  Education of the Founding Fathers of the Republic: Scholasticism in the Colonial Colleges by James J. Walsh; Fordham University Press, 1935.

  education founding-fathers

  • Most of the signers were members of what are called the learned professions. Twenty-four, or nearly one-half the whole number, were lawyers; there were thirteen planters or farmers, but in those days dwellers on plantations and farms almost as a rule found opportunities for cultivating their minds as well as the soil and many of them were deeply interested in having their sons receive a good education. Besides, there were nine merchants, five physicians, two mechanics, one clergyman, one mariner and one surveyor…. 
  • It is a never ending source of surprise to note how many of the signers had the full benefit of the college education of that day which required a preparatory school training of some four or five years in the classics and then four years of college work….
  • When as students they came up from the Latin schools to college or from their private tutors they were expected to be able to talk Latin. Indeed their collegiate exercises in logic the first year and in metaphysics and ethics but also in natural philosophy in the concluding years were conducted in Latin….
  • They were expected to be able to read at least the New Testament in Greek and it must not be forgotten that when the Massachusetts Bay Psalm Book was printed (163 it was translated from the original Hebrew by clergymen in the colonies who had been educated in the English and Scotch colleges after the same method and in accordance with the curriculum that was introduced into the colonial colleges.
  • All of the Massachusetts signers, then, were college men, but all of them were men who did not think that their studies begun in college were ended when they took their degrees. All of them continued their interest in their classical studies and reviewed their philosophy during the subsequent years
  • George Wythe, the first of the Virginia signers, had no college experience but he was fortunate in a mother who was herself learned in Latin and who pursued her studies with her son, encouraging him in Greek, as well as in Latin, so that she made of him one of the leading classical scholars in the country.
  • We know the scholarliness of George Wythe because he had among his law students three of the most distinguished men of that time: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall and Henry Clay. We have no greater intellectual trio in our history than these and since they agreed in proclaiming the scholarship of their preceptor there can be no doubt at all of the fact.
  • Virginians usually obtained their preliminary education from private tutors in their homes….

  6 more annotations...

Would you like to comment?

Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.