Enlightenment Education and the Creation of Revolutionary Leadership
A Secular Shift in Colonial Academia
A large number of academies were built in the American colonies by competing religious factions during the Great Awakening. Mark Boonshoft explains in Aristocratic Education and the Making of the American Republic, that there were too many of them to stay in business solely by training ministers, and most chose to expand their curriculums to appeal to a larger customer base. Academies began to offer training in medicine, law, business, science and more. Though they were founded as religious schools intended to meet a high demand for ministers, the diversification of their curriculums made academies much more secular by the 1750s. According to Mark Boonshoft, “In the quarter century prior to the Revolutionary War, about 47 percent of graduates entered the ministry.”4 During the war this would drop to only 21 percent.
To appease parents who were concerned about their children’s morals while studying away from home, and appeal to a diversifying clientele across denominational lines, most academies offered a capstone course in moral philosophy. The most popular text was A System of Moral Philosophy by Scottish Enlightenment thinker Francis Hutcheson, published posthumously by his son in 1755.5
Enlightenment Indoctrination
Hutcheson’s ideas echoed those of John Locke, whose work is regarded to be a foundation of the Enlightenment movement. In A System of Moral Philosophy, Hutcheson speaks of natural and unalienable rights, such as those to life, freedom of actions, and to form one’s own opinions.6 On the subject of education, Hutcheson gives a moral justification for compulsory education policies in saying, “…such as desire offspring, or are the occasions of their coming into being, as they are under most sacred obligations…to give support and education to their offspring, and to form them into proper members of society; so mankind as a system, and every society, have a right to compel them to discharge these offices.”7 On the whole, Hutcheson’s work is intended to be an explanation of how humanity operates at a systems level, and how the individual can and should contribute to the proper functioning of the whole. He’s positioning education as the means for creating ‘proper members of society’, a viewpoint echoed by Ben Franklin in Constitutions of the Publick Academy, in the City of Philadelphia: “...nothing can more effectually contribute to the Cultivation and Improvement of a Country…than a Proper Education of Youth.”8
The academies began to grow in popularity among wealthy parents over private tutors because they created an atmosphere of academic competition. This meritocratic approach gave more legitimacy to the elite social status of graduates.9 Wealthy and ambitious people still aspired to positions of leadership, but as the colonies began to break with the monarchical system and its hereditary titles, they needed an alternative way to achieve those goals. Academies were expensive, but to those who could afford them, they offered the possibility of upward social mobility. The young men educated in American academies during the 1760-70s became the military and political leaders of the Revolution, and they would graduate with firm ideas about the place of education in society and the personal value of a good education to help one achieve their ambitions.
4 Boonshoft, Mark. Aristocratic Education and the Making of the American Republic. (The University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 27.
5 Boonshoft, Mark. Aristocratic Education and the Making of the American Republic. (The University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 22-28.
6 Hutcheson, Francis. A system of moral philosophy, in three books; written by the late Francis Hutcheson, L. L. D. Professor of Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. Published from the Original Manuscript, by his Son Francis Hutcheson, M. D. To which is prefixed some account of the life, writings, and character of the author, by the Reverend William Leechman, D. D. Professor of Divinity in the Same University. ... Vol. 1.,p. 293-296. Glasgow: printed and sold by R. and A. Foulis Printers to the University. London, sold by A. Millar Over-Against Katharine-Street in the Strand, and by T. Longman in Pater-Noster Row, M.DCC.LV. [1755]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (accessed November 24, 2024). https://link-gale-com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/apps/doc/CW0121267416/ECCO?u=msu_main&sid=bookmark-ECCO&xid=23b476f7&pg=1.
7 Hutcheson, Francis. A System of Moral Philosophy, in Three Books. Published from the Original Manuscript, by his Son Francis Hutcheson, M. D. To which is prefixed some account of the life, writings, and character of the author, by the Reverend William Leechman, D. D. Professor of Divinity. Vol. 2., p. 107. Glasgow: printed and sold by R. and A. Foulis Printers to the University. London, sold by A. Millar Over-Against Katharine-Street in the Strand, and by T. Longman in Pater-Noster Row, M.DCC.LV. [1755]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (accessed September 23, 2024). https://link-gale-com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/apps/doc/CW0121267846/ECCO?u=msu_main&sid=bookmark-ECCO&xid=20a0d1f8&pg=110.
8 Charity School (Philadelphia, Pa.), Benjamin Franklin, and Tench Francis. Constitutions of the Publick Academy, in the City of Philadelphia. [Philadelphia]: [Printed by Benjamin Franklin], 1749.
9 Boonshoft, Mark. Aristocratic Education and the Making of the American Republic. (The University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 19-30