By Jack Wilkie
Over the next few months, we’ll be examining the history of American education in a series of articles. It’s important to look at it critically, seeing both the good and bad intentions that the innovators had and also the results that occurred when those intentions were put into action. Why should we look into this subject, though?  
Here’s why––it should be a goal for each Christian to develop a Biblical worldview and live by it. This means we should submit ourselves to God’s will in every part of our lives and see things through the filter of His Word whenever possible. So, in order to develop a Bible-based viewpoint of education, we need to take two steps; first, we must have a proper understanding of the education system around which this discussion is based, and second we must take that working definition of current education (and all that comes with it) and consider it in light of Biblical teachings. We’re going to strive to take that first step in this series so we can properly grasp what we’re dealing with when we turn to the Bible for answers on this subject of great importance. 
When considering the history of the American public school system, it seems we first go back to the quaint one-room schoolhouses. From there we picture bigger schools with separate classrooms and levels based on age and skill level. And, of course, after that we began to divide the system even more by the use of separate buildings and schools for children and teens. While I’m sure that such a timeline makes for a decent representation of the development of schools on a basic level, it skims over the changes in laws, teachers, teaching styles, and curricula. Naturally, these are very important parts of what makes up the school systems. 
To truly grasp today’s education system we need to understand how public education came about in this country and how public perception of it evolved over the years. For nearly two hundred years, schooling in this country was looked at as a necessity for the purpose of instruction in Christianity and moral values as they relate to society. Harvard University was founded in 1636 as a college for training men to be ministers (although it wasn’t called “Harvard” until 1639).  
In the next decade, Massachusetts passed the “Old Deluder Satan Act” to ensure literacy for the purpose of moral and spiritual learning. If a town had fifty households or more, they were to hire a teacher who would teach the children to read and write. If the town grew to over one hundred families they would be required to set up a school with a schoolmaster who could prepare the children to the point where they would be suitable to attend university. Again, all of this was done because that old deluder Satan wants to keep men from knowing the Scriptures. Due to their Puritan influences, Massachusetts was the early leader among education, since they deemed it essential for understanding religious principles. 
Cotton Mather 
One of the early champions of compulsory education for spiritual purposes was a Puritan minister named Cotton Mather. He was born shortly after the beginnings of organized education in Massachusetts (1663) and became one of the faces (and voices) of Puritanism. He was a prolific writer, producing more than four hundred works in his sixty-five-year life.i One of those writings (“The Education of Children”) took on the concept of schooling. In it he strongly advocated compulsory schooling and chastised Christians for not strictly enforcing and supporting schooling. In his opinion, schoolhouse development was not just a good idea––it was the Christian’s duty. 
If our General Courts decline to contrive and provide Laws for the Support of Schools; or if particular Towns Employ their Wits, for Cheats to Elude the wholesome Laws; little do they consider how much they expose themselves to that Rebuke of God, Thou hast destroyed thyself, O New England.ii 
This idea that children needed education to begin their spiritual development was held by many prominent voices of the day. This makes sense, considering that they lived in a post-reformation world where knowledge of the Scriptures was so valuable. However, while many agreed that literacy and moral instruction were needed, the method was not universally agreed upon. 
John Locke 
One of the other men who wrote concerning this might be more familiar to you, as his name has been preserved in the history books as an influence on our nation’s founding fathers. John Locke was certainly more broadly known for his literature on the principles of government, but he also wrote a piece on the development of children. In it, of course, he discussed education, but from a different angle. He believed that parents should provide for their children’s education. Both Locke and Mather agreed on this point, with Mather saying this on the matter:  “But, Lastly, and yet First of all, O parents, arise; this matter belongs chiefly to you; we also will be with you. None, I say, none are so much concerned as parents to look after it, that their children be taught the knowledge of the Scriptures.”iii Where, then, did the two differ? Where Mather put forth the idea that the schoolhouse was essential for a child’s mental and spiritual growth, Locke found it to be a hindrance. He believed that parents could do so by themselves or by means of a tutor, with either being preferred to the schoolhouse method in Locke’s opinion. Why?  
I am sure, he who is able to be at the charge of a tutor at home, may there give his son a more genteel carriage, more manly thoughts, and a sense of what is worthy and becoming, with a greater proficiency in learning into the bargain, and ripen him up sooner into a man, than any at school can do.iv 
Locke didn’t see much value in peer influence, believing that a personal learning atmosphere would eliminate the distractions and pressures that comes when children are put together in the same room for extended periods of time. He also didn’t believe that teachers appointed to watch over large numbers of students could give the necessary instruction that was needed for each student’s training as a person. Locke knew then what we know now, and that is that it’s nearly impossible for every student to end up with a teacher who excels in training each student to be a good person. 
Children should, from their first beginning to talk, have some discreet, sober, nay, wise person about them, whose care it should be to fashion them aright, and keep them from all ill, especially the infection of bad company. I think this province requires great sobriety, temperance, tenderness, diligence, and discretion; qualities hardly to be found united in persons that are to be had for ordinary salaries, nor easily to be found anywhere.v 
Benjamin Rush 
While John Locke’s writings had great sway on the founding of this country’s Constitutional republic system, his opinions on schooling were not as influential. As we can see today, the parental/tutor method Locke championed didn’t last too long. Evidence of this can be found in the writings of Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the foremost doctor in America at the time of the American Revolution. Unlike Mather and Locke (who wrote around the turn of the 18th century, long before American independence), Rush believed the government-backed schools were necessary for the training of children into good citizens who operated within the governmental system. Of course, as was consistent with his contemporaries, he believed strongly in teaching the Bible and providing a moral stability, but he had some unbiblical ideas on individuality. 
Our schools of learning, by producing one general and uniform system of education, will render the mass of the people more homogeneous and thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceable government…. Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property. Let him be taught to love his family, but let him be taught at the same time that he must forsake and even forget them when the welfare of his country requires it.vi 
So, Rush was one who believed that children belong to the state. However, this idea couldn’t gain any real traction so long as education was optional and parents could decide if and when their children would attend schools. For those in authority who held such beliefs, reform wad needed. Thus the stage was set for the so-called father of American education to introduce compulsory education, a man we’ll look at in next month’s column.