For two hundred years, America ran its schools without training a single teacher. Schoolmasters boarded family to family, were examined by the town minister, and taught because they knew the material, often as a stopgap before the pulpit or the bar. The episode covers dame schools, town schoolmasters, and district schools, and the assumption that knowing a subject qualified someone to teach it.
Who's who
- Philemon PormontSettler asked in 1635 to keep school, founding Boston Latin School
- Ezekiel CheeverCareer schoolmaster of about seventy years; master of Boston Latin
- Adam RoelantsenFirst documented schoolmaster of New Amsterdam
- John Adams+3 more episodesKept school in Worcester after Harvard while reading law
- Philip Vickers FithianPlantation tutor whose journal describes Southern tutoring
- Christopher DockPennsylvania Mennonite who wrote the first American book on school management
- Washington Irving+1 more episodeAuthor of the Sleepy Hollow story that fixed the comic schoolmaster image
- Warren BurtonMinister whose memoir recorded the one-room district school
Where it happens
- Boston, Massachusetts+11 more episodesTown meeting founded the school that became Boston Latin in 1635
- New AmsterdamColonial Dutch settlement with early documented schoolmaster
- Nomini Hall, VirginiaPlantation where Fithian tutored in 1773-74
- Worcester, MassachusettsWhere John Adams kept school, 1755-1758
Timeline
- April 1635Boston's town meeting asks Philemon Pormont to keep school
- 1647Old Deluder Satan Act requires towns to provide reading and grammar schooling
- 1692 and 1701Massachusetts requires grammar masters approved by local ministers
- 1755-1758John Adams keeps the Worcester town school
- 1820The Legend of Sleepy Hollow makes Ichabod Crane the national schoolmaster caricature
- 1823Samuel Read Hall opens his teacher-training seminary in Vermont
Still debated
No American institution trained teachers before 1823, but informal preparation existed, so the claim is better put as training being unimagined as a requirement. Historians also debate colonial literacy, especially for girls, and whether dame schools were real teaching or child-minding.
Connected episodes in other series
The Guard at the Gates (1798)The U.S. Public Health Service · Episode 1Also features John Adams
Twenty Cents a Month: America's First Federal Health LawThe Fourth Arm · Episode 2Also features John Adams
Marbury v. Madison: How the Court Gave Itself Its Greatest PowerThe Least Dangerous Branch? · Episode 3Also features John Adams
A River Named for a Man Who Never Saw ItThe Only Way Through · Episode 3Also features Washington Irving