AMERICAN EDUCATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BY ALLEN OSCAR HANSEN DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY EDWARD H. REISNER PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1926 All rights reserved COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and printed. Printed in the United States of America by LA206 H3 PREFACE The degree to which American life and institutions were influenced by the liberal movement of the eighteenth century has not yet been adequately set forth. The characteristic ideas of this movement were: that creativeness was inherent in the individual; that the creative genius of man could be directed for social progress; that the lines of human progress could be determined; and that the continuous development of the human race through scientific control was the only valid function of institutions. In the past institutions had been the result of chance or accident. In America there existed an opportunity for the scientific development of institutions that would be flexible, modifiable, plastic, and directly related to the forwarding of whatever interests might arise. Initiating, refashioning, innovating, creating, all of these could be scientifically developed and fused in the motif of societal welfare. Democracy implied the creating of intelligent citizens who would see clearly their responsibility for developing such a government and other institutions. Hence there must be instituted a system of education for creative democracy. To this task many of the best minds of the period turned their energies. The American Philosophical Society, of which Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were presidents, offered a prize for the best plan for such a system of education, and published two of the plans submitted, those by Samuel Knox and Samuel H. Smith. Other plans were published by Benjamin Rush, Robert Coram, James Sullivan, Nathaniel Chipman, Du Pont de Nemours, Lafitte du Courteil, and Noah Webster. |