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Period: to
Colonial America
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Jamestown Established
The Virginia Company founded Jamestown, in what is now the state of Virginia, as the first permanent English settlement in North America. Native Americans were viewed as a barrier to progress when European settlers arrived in the New England region. As a result, the Europeans attempted to bring about the civilization of the Native Americans, which began an early process of societal transformation. -
Plymouth Colony
The Mayflower arrives on Cape Cod, carrying the "Pilgrims" who established the Plymouth Colony. A significant number of the Pilgrims were Puritans who escaped religious persecution in England. Their religious ideals eventually took over education in the New England colonies. -
Harvard College
Harvard College was founded in Newtowne, Massachusetts (now Cambridge), and is the first university in the modern United States. With Puritans moving to New England by 1636, Harvard was established to prepare future clergymen for the emerging nation. -
Massachusetts Law of 1647
The Old Deluder Satan Act is passed, commonly known as the Massachusetts Law of 1647. It mandates that all towns with fifty or more families employ a schoolmaster to teach the children to read and write and that all towns with one hundred or more families hire a Latin grammar schoolmaster to educate students for admission to Harvard College. -
John Locke
In his "Essay Concerning Human Understanding", John Locke expresses his view that knowledge is acquired via experience rather than intrinsic concepts, as many people at the time believed, and that the human mind is a tabula rasa, or blank slate, from birth. Locke's theories on the mind and learning had a significant effect on education in the US. -
The New England Primer
Boston prints the inaugural edition of the New England Primer. It eventually emerged as New England's most popular textbook. -
Yale College
Established as the Collegiate School to prepare students for "Publick employment both in Church and Civil State," Yale was founded in the town of Saybrook, Connecticut. -
18th Century: Apprenticeships
For many colonial Americans, apprenticeships were the main means of education and the development of skills and trades. Children were able to develop greater independence and make new interactions as a result. -
The Great Awakening
The Christian evangelical movement known as the "Great Awakening," which swept through colonial America in the middle of the 1700s, had a significant impact on American culture, society, and way of life. For instance, the revival carried on the Puritans' emphasis on education, fueled humanitarianism and missions, expanded the number of women attending church, and shared the Christian message with a large number of people. -
Princeton University
To prepare preachers committed to their beliefs, New Light Presbyterians established the College of New Jersey, which would eventually become Princeton University, in 1746. The college served as the center of Scottish-Irish America's ecclesiastical and educational life. -
Women's Literacy Rates Increase
In the eighteenth century, women in New England had varying levels of literacy: between 45% and 67% between 1731 and 1800, however, some estimates put female literacy at 90% by the time of the Revolution. -
Constitutional Convention
In Philadelphia, the Constitutional Convention comes together. The Confederation Congress, which presided over the country from 1781 until the U.S. Constitution was ratified, approved the constitution later that year and sent it to the state legislatures for approval. The terms education and school are not mentioned in the agreement. -
Northwest Ordinance
The Confederation Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance. Act 3 of the treaty begins, "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged," highlighting the significance of education. Preserving a portion of land for educational purposes in each township of a newly formed state is one of its maybe most significant practical provisions.