Blog #7

 

      The New England colonies of British North America were Protestants, and “believed that the grade of God was manifest in the ideas of his subjects and the lives they led”. Everything was focused on religion, and to be a good follower of Protestantism you have to form a personal connection with God. In order to do that, they studied scripture and had to read and interpret the Bible, which meant they needed to know how to read. Because of this “becoming literate and knowledgeable was taken as a great virtue, in the service of religion”, and brought about the need for education and places for the children to study and learn in. They also had early laws in New England which ruled for establishing schools and for educating young men, and they created Harvard College as well. Schools everywhere, including New England, were really small with one room and one teacher on average. School was even less important in the south compared to the north, again connecting to religion since that was all education was deemed useful for back then. The government only seemed to be advocating schooling for the more northern settlements, and not for southern, so the southern school system lagged behind in terms of establishment and development.