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supplement to

'grammar

tions had greatly increased and the demands upon secondary education had expanded, the the 'grammar schools' (see pp. 120 f.), with their narrow denominational ideals and their limitation to a classical training and college preparation, proved inadequate, and efforts were made to organize academies as a supplement. Their rise as a There may have been earlier academies in America, the narrow but the first well-known suggestion of an academy was schools'. made in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin. He wished to inaugurate an education that would prepare for life, and not merely for college. Accordingly, he proposed for the youth of Pennsylvania a course in which English grammar and composition, penmanship, arithmetic, drawing, geography, history, the natural sciences, oratory, civics, and logic were to be emphasized. He would gladly have excluded Latin and other languages altogether, but for politic reasons these courses were allowed to be elective. Through the efforts of a number of leading citizens, such an academy was opened at Philadelphia (Fig. 32), in January, 1750 (although not chartered until July, 1753). During the next generation a number of similar institutions sprang up, especially in the middle and southern colonies. A great impulse was given the movement by the foundation of the two Phillips academies,— one in 1780 at Andover, Massachusetts, and the other the next year at Exeter, New Hampshire. The Dummer Grammar School was reorganized as an academy in 1782, and the movement spread rapidly throughout New England during the last two decades of the eighteenth century.

The early academies.

Shortly after the Revolution, owing in part to the inability or unwillingness of the towns to maintain Revolution the

After the

education.

Support, location, and functions.

prevailing type grammar schools, and in part to the wider appeal and of secondary greater usefulness of the academies, the latter institutions quite eclipsed the former, and became for about half a century the prevailing type of secondary school in the United States. They were usually endowed institutions managed by a close corporation, but were often largely supported by subscriptions from the neighborhood, and sometimes subsidized by the state. Located in small towns or villages, they served a wide constituency and made provision for boarding, as well as day pupils. Unlike the grammar schools, they were not originally intended to prepare for the learned professions exclusively, but, as time passed, they tended more and more to become preparatory schools for the colleges, instead of finishing schools for the middle classes of society. The academies were also the first institutions of secondary education to offer opportunities to women. Many of them were co-educational, and others, frequently burdened with the name of ‘female seminary,' were for girls exclusively. Academies for some time likewise furnished the only means of training teachers for the elementary schools, and have generally played an important part in education in the United States.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. XVII; and Great Educators of Three Centuries (Macmillan, 1912), chaps. I and V; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 442-460. An excellent edition of Milton's Tractate of Education is that by Morris, E. E. (Macmillan, 1895); of Montaigne's Education of Children that by Rector, L. E. (Appleton, 1899); of Locke's Thoughts concerning Education, and of Mulcaster's Positions.

those by Quick, R. H. (Cambridge University Press, 1895, and Longmans, 1888, respectively); and of Rabelais' Gargantua, that by Besant, W. (Lippincott, Foreign Classics for English Readers). The works of Castiglione, Elyot, Peacham, Brathwaite, etc., are also extant. For an account of the Ritterakademien, see Nohle, E., History of the German School System (Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1897-98), pp. 41 f., and Paulsen, F., German Education (Scribner, 1908), pp. 112-116; and of the academies, Brown, E. E., The Making of Our Middle Schools (Longmans, Green, 1902), chaps. VIII and IX.

CHAPTER XV

SENSE REALISM AND THE EARLY SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT

OUTLINE

In the seventeenth century scientific investigation developed rapidly, and led theorists to introduce science into the curriculum and to advocate a study of 'real things.'

Bacon undertook to formulate induction, and while he did not understand the importance of an hypothesis, he did much to rid the times of a priori reasoning.

On the basis of sense realism, Ratich anticipated many principles of modern pedagogy, but he was unsuccessful in applying his ideas.

Comenius (1) produced texts for teaching Latin objectively, (2) crystallized his educational principles in the Great Didactic, and (3) attempted an encyclopædic organization of knowledge. He wished to make this knowledge part of the course at every stage of education, and, while he was not consistently inductive, he made a great advance in the use of this method.

Through sense realism, rudimentary science was introduced into the elementary schools; the Ritterakademien and the pietist schools stressed the subject; and professorships of science were founded in the universities.

The Development of the Sciences and Realism.-The realistic tendency did not pause with reviving the ideas represented by the words nor with the endeavor to bring Earlier realism the pupil into touch with the life he was to lead. The a transition to earlier realism seems to have been simply a stage in the process of transition from the narrow and formal human

sense realism.

the sciences.

tc

ism to a realism obtained through the senses, which may be regarded as the beginning of the modern movement to develop the natural sciences. Science had started to develop as early as the time of the schoolman, Roger Bacon (1214-1294), but for three centuries it was not kindly received. Even during the Renaissance the Church had continued to oppose it bitterly, because it tended to con- Opposition to flict with religious dogma, although this age did not object to the revival of the classics. Accordingly, the latter subject became strongly intrenched in educational tradition, and its advocates offered the most obstinate opposition to the sciences. Its numerous representatives struggled hard to keep the sciences out of education. However, concomitant with the growth of reason and the partial removal of the theological ban, there was developed a remarkable scientific movement, with a variety of discoveries and inventions. For more than a millennium the Greek developments in astronomy and Development of physics and physics had been accepted as final, but toward the close astronomy in of the sixteenth and during the seventeenth century these dicta were completely upset. The hypothesis of a solar system, which replaced the Ptolemaic interpretation, was published by Copernicus (1473-1543); Kepler (1571-1630) explained the motion of the planets by three simple laws; and, through the construction of a telescope, Galileo (1564-1642) revealed new celestial phenomena. Galileo also demonstrated that all bodies, allowing for the resistance of the air, fall at the same rate; by means of the barometer, Torricelli (1608-1647) and Boyle (1627– 1691) proved the existing theories of a vacuum incorrect, and formulated important laws concerning the pressure of gases; and Guericke (1602-1686), inspired by their

the seven

teenth century

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