Emergent Nation

1. Emergent Nation 1790-1870

2. Emergent Nation Significant Social Events • Opening of West, Homestead Act, Louisiana Purchase • Add Florida, Texas, Oregon • European Immigration • Slavery-3/5 person • Railroads, telegraph • Bank of the US, national currency, post office • Social movements, antislavery, child labor laws, compulsory schooling, temperance

3. Emergent Nation • College Transformation • National University-proposed in 1790 • 1785-Georgia, 1791-Vermont, 1795-University of North Carolina opens w/1 faculty member who was also the President • 1811- Miami in Ohio • 1821 – 1st Jewish institution founded; fails • 1875 - Hebrew Union College • 1782-1802: 19 existing colleges founded, 2X colleges founded during the previous 150 years • 700 plus fail; National University not established; Cohen suggests 500 founded w/210-250 operating after the Civil War

4. Emergent Nation • Curriculum • Science, war, enlightenment • Columbia (Kings)- added economics, natural history, French • Univ. of North Carolina – added chemistry, agriculture, and English • Union-added French US history, and constitution government • West Point-founded in 1802 for the study of military sciences • 1802: Rensselaer Polytechnic founded, 1st technical institution in US • 1835: Addition of evening courses, branch campuses, 8 civil engineering graduates • 1850: Mining, architecture • 1865: MIT opens; Harvard, Dartmouth, and Penn have schools of science

5. Emergent Nation • Curriculum Continues • Elective Struggle- permitting student choice in college studies; curriculum too classical; old studies v new studies • Jefferson tried the elective curriculum at William and Mary and the Univ. of Va. Univ. of VA was divided into 8 schools, student could select school but course of study was set; student completed course of study as quickly or slowly as able. - 8 schools consisted of: ancient languages, modern languages, mathematics, natural philosophy, natural history, anatomy and medicine, moral philosophy, and law -Degrees awarded after a stiff exam and an earned Master’s degree was introduced

6. Emergent Nation • Curriculum Continues • George Tichnor worked with Jefferson -Joined faculty at Harvard -Recommended Harvard’s New Rules (faculty organized into dept. of study) in 1825 driven in part by student unrest • Yale Report of 1828 • Role of Yale in HE • Jeremiah Day • Discipline and furniture of the mind • Expanding its powers and storing it with knowledge; education is mental exercises to strengthen faculties of the mind. Done by the ancient subjects. What is known is known.

7. Emergent Nation • Yale Report Cont. • “But why, it is asked, should all the students in a college be required to tread in the same steps?...to this we answer, that our prescribed course contains those subjects only which ought to be understood…by everyone who aims at a thorough education. They are not the peculiarities of any profession or art. These are to be learned in the professional and practical schools….As in our primary schools, reading, writing, and arithmetic are taught to all, however different their prospects; so in a college all should be instructed in those branches of knowledge, of which no one destined to the higher walks of life ought to be ignorant. Our object is not to teach that which peculiar to any one of the professions but to lay the foundation which is common to them all.”

8. Emergent Nation • 1837- Ralph Waldo Emerson address at Harvard pleas for adapting educating to the individual rather than the individual to education “We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak with our own minds.” • 1839-1846: Harvard experiments w/a parallel curriculum • 1850: Pres Wayland at Brown “every student might study what he chose, all that he chose, and nothing but what he chose….” • 1851: Tappan (student of Wayland) at Michigan established a parallel scientific course and a MA degree-requiring a thesis • 1847: Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School • Reforms failed (Lack of funding, college not yet necessary, second rate)

9. Emergent Nation • Harvard site of reform movements-Tichnor and others • 1867-Latin & Greek optional in junior and senior years • 1869-1909 Eliot President at Harvard- Eliot significantly impacted HE 3 goals for undergraduate education 1. Freedom of choice in studies 2. Opportunity to win distinction in special lines of study 3. Student discipline main responsibility of student • Believed that any subject, provided it is well taught and well studied, has equal place in curriculum • Introduced idea of pre requisites; 1870-classes listed by academic department not class year • Reformed: standards for secondary schools, accrediting associations, uniform exams for admission, elective curriculum, graduate education

10. Emergent Nation • Dartmouth College case (1815-1819) Court viewed the college as a private institution and interpreted its charter as a contract binding on the state aw well as on the trustees: “a contract, the obligation of which cannot be impaired without violating the constitution of the United States.” • Question: From the perspective of a legislator, if you can’t control or influence an entity, should you use public monies to support it? • Significance First HE case to Supreme Court Charter as contract Private property rights Education as public good

11. Emergent Nation • Diversification ---women in HE YOU GO GIRL!!!! • Abigail Adams to husband, 1776: “If you complain of the neglect of the education in sons, what shall I say with regards to daughters, who every day experience the want of it….” • 1783 Yale examined Lucinda Foote, age 12 and found her“…fully qualified, except in regard to sex, to be received as a pupil of the freshman class.” • Social order in Europe • Women during and after Revolutionary War • Anne Hutchinson, Mass. Bay Colony, Puritan bible study • 1749 - Seminaries for women • 1821- Emma Willard Troy Female Seminary • 1837 – Mary Lyon Mount Holyoke Seminary

12. Emergent Nation • Diversification ---women in HE Cont. • 1836 – Wesleyan Female College of Macon; first degree • 1837 – Oberlin female dept. • 1857 – females speak at commencement • 1850 – Pricilla Mason, Philadelphia Academy: “They have denied women a liberal education and now if we should prove capable of speaking where we speak? The church, the bar, the senate are closed to us. Who shut them: man, despotic man.” • Climate of the times • 1851- Catherine Beecher “Those female institutions in our land which are assuming the ambitious name of colleges have, not yet one of them, secured real features, which constitute the chief advantages of such institutions. They are merely high schools.”

13. Great reforms that begin during the period: Elective curriculum and Eliot at Harvard Dartmouth College Case and private higher education Education of women Christian women as teacher Absence of men (moving west, going to sea) meant females were in majority in some place, decreasing marriage prospects. Wealthy women needed distraction Writing and teaching as options

14. Emergent Nation • Normal Schools and Universal Education • Normal schools French concept of universal education: only through universal education could citizens be taught to effectively enjoy their rights and fulfill their responsibilities. Madison: “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gains.” • Defining what it means to be American: need for educated citizenry replaced need for educated clergy • Leads to concept of common schools. • 1865- NJ Legislature: The common school is common, not as inferior, not as a school for the poor man’s children, but as the light and air are common.

15. Opposition:1829 Raleigh NC Newspaper: “……children should pass their days in the cotton patch, or at the plow, on in the cornfield, instead of being mewed up in a school house where they learn nothing….I hope you do not conceive it at all necessary that everybody should be able to read and write and cipher……”Schools demand teachers1860 Illinois teachers paid 2 dollars per week1861 average weekly salary for female teachers in rural areas was $4.05; for men $6.30