Grammar School

On the written schoolwork side of things, in Noah Webster’s time, children would begin grammar school—whether at home or at a local community-run school—around age 7 or 8, if not sooner.  At first, the curriculum was just learning the letters, the sounds that they make, and how to start sounding out words.  Phonics.

By maybe age 10, things would begin to get pretty academic—in the sense of that a fair amount of the child’s time would be spent bending over books and doing academics!

This is what many of us think of as traditional grammar school, maybe from ages 10 to 12.  Children would be taught to read a lot, still memorize a lot, and write a lot; plus they would learn geography, weights and measures, arithmetic, and (always, always) Christian character.  For many centuries, the young ones would be taught Latin at this time.  During most of Christian history, all writing and scholarship was done in Latin, so learning to read meant learning Latin.  To this day, maybe 75% of the Christian writings, from the time of Christ’s ascension to the present, are written in Latin, so it’s still very helpful for the Christian student.  In Noah Webster’s time, Latin was still commonly taught, but it was not being taught in every schoolhouse or home, anymore.

I’m sure you’ve often heard that, “Back then, most people only had an 8th grade education”?  Okay, so completing grammar school like this is what they’re talking about when they say “only an 8th grade education”.  But the young people who had this “8th grade education” thought the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were easy to read.  They read the Federalist Papers and The Last of the Mohicans for fun.

Average Americans, 200 years ago, only had a grammar school education; but with “only an 8th grade education”, they were more literate than most people with Master’s Degrees today.

(Upper) School

At around age 13, boys whose parents desired to give them a higher education would send them to school; this is often what we think of when we read old books about boys being sent to boarding school.  (Yes, it was pretty much only boys getting higher education.)  This higher education was usually preparatory to studying to become a minister of the Gospel, or perhaps to studying law.  Today, we would compare this to high school, but the curriculum was so very different that it’s far from an exact match; it might be for boys ages 13 to 15.

Boys would have already been well-versed in Latin by the time they entered school.  They would read lots and lots and lots of classical writings in Latin during their studies; learn Greek, history, and Logic; and graduate prepared for university.

University

This is another one where, when reading the old histories and biographies, we tend not to believe what the authors wrote.  But after reading more and more about this, I’ve realized that, when we read that Samuel Adams graduated from Harvard at 18, or that Jonathan Edwards entered Yale at age 13, or that Cotton Mather entered Harvard at 12, or that George Whitefield’s schooling was delayed three years, so he entered Oxford at 18…  It’s not that every single biography we read from back then happens to be about an unusual genius; it’s that university back then usually began around age 15 or 16, if not sooner.

University was for training ministers of the Gospel, hence the teachers’ title was professor, i.e., one who professes faith in Christ.  This was considered the most needful work for a society, and, thus, the highest calling a young man could pursue.

Just to give you a small taste about what university was like in those days, the seminaries did not offer Greek classes, because students were expected to have already mastered Greek at university and be thoroughly prepared to begin in-depth study of the Greek New Testament from Day 1 of seminary. When the Puritans founded Harvard College, all instruction was done in Latin, and students were taught a prescribed course of studies in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.  Other subjects taught at the school included Rhetoric and Logic, Ethics and Politics, Arithmetic and Geometry, and later, Algebra, Astronomy, Physics, Metaphysics and Theology.

Did you catch that?  The core curriculum was three subjects:  Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.  Are you starting to see what I mean when I say that the curriculum was completely different?  Can you imagine all of our 15- to 18-year-olds, today, studying a core curriculum of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, to be well-prepared to study the scriptures?!

Schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton required students to study the Bible on their own every morning, in addition to the rest of their studies; and Sunday service and chapel attendance were also required.

What Grade Is that?

You begin to see that those of us following the old school method… when we say that we don’t really have grade levels, we’re not just trying to look cute and pretend that we know something no one else knows.  The subjects that are studied, the years of study, the pace, everything is completely different.

And it’s tricky, too, because when I share the vision about how schooling worked back then, and how we’re trying to copy it (as best we can for a bunch of parents who got modern educations), so that our children will hopefully have university educations by age 18, many parents will start envisioning CLEP tests and college credit.  But there are no CLEP tests for the godly curriculum we’re pursuing.  Even the Latin AP exam examines how well students understand the writings of Cicero, Ovid, Pliny, Juvenal, and all of these other pagans.  Our children will be reading Augustine, Clement, Jerome, Boethius, and Bede.

But…

If we can achieve even part of our goal, our children will be able to take what we’ve given them, and take college courses from any school you like and ace them, standing on their heads.  Can you imagine James Madison, George Washington (only an 8th grade education!), or Thomas Jefferson, after the educations they received, at age 18, entering a modern college classroom?  These guys are going to think freshman biology, algebra, and literature are ridiculously easy.  That’s what we’re after.  Teaching children to have godly character, to love the Lord, to be highly literate, to be self-disciplined, and to know how to learn for themselves.  And then, whatever each child’s calling is, Lord willing, he will be well-equipped to pursue it.