Today I want to talk to you about a book that I've been working on. It's on why education should be a fundamental right in United States. And two of the sections that I've been working on very closely is the origins of public education in the United States, and whether there should be a federal role with education in the United States. What I want to do is take us all the way back to the beginning, the school and its development in colonial America, particularly around 1620-1770, and really walk you through some of those earliest considerations that we've had in the United States dealing with public education. Now, many of us have this romantic idea or image of the Little Red School House or something or a Little House On The Prairie, for those of you are old enough to know what that TV show is. But the fact of the matter is, schooling didn't begin or even evolve in that way. We have that iconography, it exists and it's important, but that's not what the original intent is. matter of fact, in places like Virginia, and Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, those states that were part of the original 13 colonies, schooling wouldn't develop in any meaningful way until after the Civil War in 1865. When the Founding Fathers, a term coined by Warren G. Harding in 1916, when they pretty much started with the concept and the idea of public education, nowhere in the US Constitution could we see it. It was only in essays and pamphlets of people who aspire to have this as something universal or national in our system of government but not necessarily something that was ever written into the US Constitution. So nowhere in the Constitution can you find terms like schooling or education. It doesn't exist. Matter of fact, the only thing that exists is the way we went about the process of ratifying the Constitution as said in article 10 of the Constitution. The all responsibility is not enumerated within the constitution will be left to the responsibilities of the state. And so, anything like public roads, or canals, or even public education, would be something that would be left to the responsibility of the state. So education is not a right in the United States, it's a privilege that's provided to you by the responsibility at the state level. So when we think about our earliest considerations of American education, it runs counter to what we believe as the everyday citizen, that education is a fundamental right. So my pursuit to write that book actually begins with this story and it runs counter, the story runs counter to what we actually believe. So let's begin with one of the earliest considerations where public education did take place, and it's in the colony of Virginia. Now Virginia was founded as a colony in 1607. Its first settlement Jamestown, Virginia had about 100, a little bit over 100 English boys and men that would arrive as the first settlers. Now it's here that we begin to see the push for education, but it doesn't happen with the English themselves, it actually happens with the Native Americans or the indigenous population in Virginia in that time period. Now the settlers when they came, they didn't go there to kind of raise a family, they didn't go there to kind of start a church or join a church or even become an active member in a community, most of them came there to establish what I and many other historians talk about the three Gs. They were there to either find gold like you would see in Mexico and other places with the Spanish and their pursuits in this time period, where they were there to spread Christianity. So they're to spread the word of God, the second G in this regard, or they were there to kind of gain glory for themselves and their individual achievements. Most did not think of living in Virginia permanently. They thought they could become very rich very quick and in the process they would go back to England and live happy and mature lives. So with that being said, how did schools begin in Virginia? And who were the first students? And how and why did they continue to develop? Well, what the primary source evidence shows is that by the time you get to the 1630s there were already initiatives to establish schools in a colony of Virginia. But again, it wasn't for the English settlers, it was very much for the indigenous population. There are three sources in particular I want to point your attention to. The first is in 1636, the second is in 1656, and the third is in 1671. And these in some ways are little time capsules that tell us exactly what happened with the earliest considerations of schooling in the colony of Virginia. And so, when we look at this, we can debate whether they had value or whether they were challenging to the people that were trying to serve. In 1636, the London-based Virginia Council gave clear instructions to the colonies leadership on the need to educate the indigenous population, in this case, Native Americans. And what they wanted to do was teach Native Americans the ways of the English. As I said, it was about roughly a little bit over 100 English settlers in 1607, but by the time you get to 1630s you just had a few hundred, but there were an unknown number of indigenous people in the state of Virginia. This concerned the English in many ways. So their goal was to identify Native Americans who were willing to either learn the English culture and way of life and begin to adopt their formal practices or even to the point of suggesting that they remove children from their homes and settlements, even holding them as prisoners as some of the language should be used in the primary source for them to be able to learn the ways of the English. Now the interesting thing of this excerpt is it shows that the very first school experience in the United States, those that were established for in some kind of formal setting, wasn't a formal setting at all. It was an informal setting between two cultural groups. And you would see how this would kind of play itself out as we go forward. And in some ways, the English wanted Native American children to learn their ways but it wasn't reciprocal in a lot of ways. So it wasn't as if the English were trying to learn the ways of the indigenous population in Virginia. And so, in some ways if you think about it, there was a conflict or a clash of culture that was taking place. Now 20 years later in 1656, you see the second statute that would be related to schooling in Virginia. And this statue would be a Virginia statute on the education of Indian children held hostage again in 1656. And the word hostage is pretty interesting, it's no different than we used the word today, that someone is being taken against her will and kind of forced to do things that they ordinarily wouldn't want to do or would be willing to do in this regard. Now, how this plays out is interesting because going from 1636-1656, when you're reading history it doesn't sound like a long time, but 20 years is a long time. Think about it, what were you doing 20 years ago in this context? I mean, 20 years ago I was almost a graduate student. I was just a brand new professor in some contexts way and form. And so, here I am today 20 years later. It's hard for me now to remember what I did 20 days ago, let alone 20 years ago. But here over 20 years, we're getting the strong sense as a challenge the way the English had with the indigenous population and vice versa. And it show that this kind of instruction that was being offered didn't have much of an appreciation with the indigenous population, in some ways it demonstrates this antagonistic relationship. Now there are two images that I have kind of posted into PowerPoint. The one at the top shows the way the English saw native people in the way they were described them to the everyday person. This is the one that the English would refer to as a savage in this regard. And the one at the bottom will show the one that had been civilized, the one that had gone through some type of informal or formal schooling setting to learn the ways of the English. And you'll see just based on the dress of the two individuals, particularly the one at the bottom, where he's replaced his bow and arrow with a musket and where now has moccasins on whereas before he walked barefoot, and you would see that his loin cloth would be different as well. So you see kind of these differences between these two caricatures, but there's also an additional difference. Do you see it? So let's expand the picture just a little bit and if you notice the one with the bow and arrow, he also had a tail which he would have lost his tail in that new image, the one where he would have been civilized, the one where he would have gone through those formal school settings. So this iconography here as to who is savage and who is civilized, who is educated and who is uneducated, it's playing itself out in these earliest of examples. And we see this play out just a few years later even in 1662 as we see another excerpt as it relates to the way individuals should respond to English and their new colonization of Virginia. The interesting thing is by the time you get to 1662, you have examples, the earliest calls that the English themselves asking if they're children and they themselves should have a right and an entitlement to some type of education. And here there is a call and a cry. It's called the Virginia cure. And this is roughly about 55 years after the establishment of a colony. And the challenge that you're seeing is that, they're writing to both the governors that were in Virginia, at this time it would be William Berkeley, and they're also writing back to the Lords in England to basically say, what should we do for some form of education? The response on the part of the governor to those who were inquiring is that, education should be no different than what we see in England in this time period. Those who can afford to go to school will go to school, those who can't afford to go school would not get an education. And so, the challenge is that you still see that in a country like England as advanced as it was at that point in world history, it didn't educate its everyday citizen. And this transplantation of the English to the new world, in this case Virginia, also played itself out in very similar ways where they came with a sense of becoming first individuals seeking a fortune, to now individuals who are settling into a region a half century later, and are now asking for things that the everyday citizen would want. A good home, a family, a respectable community, and now institutions such as schools that would teach them the ways of not just who they are and what they need to become, but also who they were and how their children can grow into meaningful and productive citizens. And so, you will see this push and pride is displaying itself out.
