Academies

Academies have a long history in the United States. “Twould give me great satisfaction to see a little flourishing academy in this place,” wrote the Reverend James Reed in 1766. As a result of Reed's advocacy, the Colonial Assembly introduced a bill to incorporate New Bern Academy in North Carolina. After the incorporation of Philadelphia's Franklin Academy in 1753, New Bern became the second community to receive a colonial charter. Academies serving students of both sexes predated the American Revolution. Commonly serving students between the ages of 8 and 18, academies were the dominant institution of higher schooling for both sexes during the 18th and 19th centuries. Some communities founded academies as educational alternatives to the forms of higher schooling provided by dominant cultural [Page 6]groups. Examples include the Catholic academies, the Chinese western military academies, and the academies founded by African Americans in Mississippi to provide literacy and racial uplift during the Reconstruction era. Thus, academies have served not only as institutions aiming to promote the mainstream ideology of local communities but also as agencies of educational reform and dissent.

During the 18th and early 19th centuries, schooling was often entrepreneurial in nature, characterized by market supply and demand. Students commonly enrolled in day and evening schools on a pay-as-go basis, and what Theodore Sizer has called the “age of the academies” arose in this context. After the Revolutionary War, individual states encouraged the organization of academies through general incorporation laws and various forms of limited state funds. For instance, in the 1780s, New York State established an elaborate system of regulation and financial support of academies, with oversight provided by the State Board of Regents. Other states, such as North Carolina, granted charters to academies but provided no additional funding or regulatory oversight.

An academy is defined here as an institution providing a relatively advanced form of schooling that was legally incorporated to ensure financial support beyond that available through tuition alone. A chief benefit of incorporation was the power it gave the institution to acquire donations, purchase lands, and erect buildings. An academy's articles of incorporation usually stipulated the establishment of a board of trustees responsible for policy and oversight. This is not to say that every school calling itself an academy fit these criteria in the 19th century. In some cases, administrators of venture schools simply attached the word academy to the name of their school in order to enhance the institution's prestige. Many schools designated as seminaries and institutes also belong in this category, including the institutes established by local mechanics' associations during the early 19th century.

The curriculum offered in many academies represented a synthesis of the classical studies offered in contemporary Latin grammar schools and the professional subjects offered in many of the entrepreneurial venture schools. For example, Philadelphia's Franklin Academy offered a relatively broad range of instruction, particularly when compared to the classical instruction offered in contemporary grammar schools. The Franklin Academy offered not only Latin but also geography, history, rhetoric, modern languages, bookkeeping, geometry, astronomy, and other applied subjects considered useful for merchants and navigators.

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