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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
In his book, The Age of the Academies, Theodore R. Sizer argued that academies represented a significant break from the relatively narrow schooling that had been previously available to students in the early Latin grammar schools. In his view, the proliferation of academies heralded a new age in education, one more reflective of the Enlightenment values promoted by such Republican leaders as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Rush. After thirty-five years of additional scholarship on academies, does Sizer's thesis still stand? This essay investigates the range of educational institutions that provided some form of advanced schooling to Americans just preceding and concurrent with the founding of the earliest academies. It examines the differences and similarities among a number of northern and southern early nineteenth-century schools in order to address the following question: to what extent did schools calling themselves academies represent a distinctly new turn in the history of American education? By clarifying the relations between the various types of institutions during the post-colonial period, I conclude that the historical significance of the early academy movement is broader than the intellectual or curricular reform discussed by Sizer.
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2 The venture schools and academies comprising the sample for this study placed advertisements in the following newspapers: The Columbian Centinel (Massachusetts: 1827, Jan., 1831-Mar. 1833); The American Mercury (Connecticut: Jan., 1820–28); The Philadelphia Gazette & Universal Daily Advertiser (Pennsylvania: 1824); The New York Evening Post (New York: Aug. 1, 1835-May 31, 1836); The Richmond Enquirer (Virginia: Sept. 29, 1835-Nov. 17, 1837); The Maryland Gazette (Maryland: Jan. 5, 1832-Oct. 22, 1835); The Baltimore Sun (Maryland: Aug. 12, 1842-Aug.23, 1842); The Globe (Washington, D.C.: 1831); The Daily National Intelligencer (Washington D.C.: 1825). Another important source are the newspaper advertisements included in North Carolina Schools and Academies 1790–1840: A Documentary History ed. Charles L. Coon (Raleigh, NC: Edwards & Broughton, 1915).Google Scholar
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