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Colonial Colleges and English Dissenting Academies: A Study in Transatlantic Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

David C. Humphrey*
Affiliation:
History at Carnegie-Mellon University

Extract

Students of early American culture often seek its sources in the experiences of England's religious and political dissenters. One example is the thesis that England's dissenting academies stimulated Colonial colleges to become, as John Brubacher and Willis Rudy express it, “broader and more modern in outlook.” Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker calls the academies' influence “a matter of profound moment in the history of American education,” while Richard Hofstadter, Lawrence Cremin, Brooke Hindle, and Francis Broderick emphasize the academies' “direct and strong” impact on college curricula. Usually this influence is defined in terms of promoting the study of modern science and mathematics, although the academies also added new subjects like English composition, English literature, modern languages, and modern history, modified traditional subjects like Latin and ethics, and adopted new teaching methods like free discussion and the use of the vernacular.

Type
Discussion I
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 by New York University 

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References

Notes

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46. The influence of the academies on Benjamin Franklin's thinking has been suggested but not documented. In “Where Did Benjamin Franklin Get the Idea for His Academy?,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 58 (1934), 8694, Owen, Eugene, contends that Franklin got the idea for an English language academy through conversations with and letters from George Whitefield, who in turn got the idea primarily from chatting with Philip Doddridge. Unfortunately, as Owen admits, there is no record of what was said in any of the conversations, nor proof that Whitefield wrote any letters. Cremin, Lawrence, apparently accepting Owen's argument, also points to Doddridge's influence on Franklin. Cremin, American Education, pp. 265, 402, 641. Most studies of Franklin do not credit the academies with shaping his educational thinking. For example, see Tyack, David, “Education as Artifact: Benjamin Franklin and Instruction of ‘A Rising People,’” History of Education Quarterly, 6, no. 1 (1966), pp. 3–15, and O'Neill, John J., “An Analysis of Franklin's Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania as a Selection of Eighteenth Century Cultural Values” (Ed.D. diss., Harvard University, 1960).Google Scholar

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