Episcopal Schools

Episcopal schools include some of the oldest and most prestigious schools in the United States. They have traditionally included two distinct types of institution: the secondary boarding school and the parish day school. Episcopal secondary boarding schools usually catered to the socially and academically elite, while parish day schools often targeted low–income ethnically diverse urban populations. The secondary boarding schools, modeled on independent English public schools, enjoyed their heyday during the second half of the 19th century, and many of these elite schools have survived and thrived into the 21st. Parish day schools, on the other hand, have seen a burst of new interest in the second half of the 20th century, and have become the leading form of Episcopal education. In both cases, Episcopal educators often used their schools as a vehicle for social reform. Though often paternalistic and racially exclusive, Episcopal schools succeeded in training an elite corps of African Americans and Native Americans for leadership and social service.

Episcopalians claim the oldest continually operating school in New York: Trinity School, founded in 1709. The College of William and Mary, the second college in British colonial America after Harvard, also began as an Episcopal school. Episcopalians' strong educational presence in the colonial period underwent a major crisis during the Revolutionary War period. As part of the Anglican Church, it was extremely difficult for the new Episcopal Church to establish itself as an independent American institution in the young republic.

By the middle of the 19th century, however, the Episcopal Church had overcome the stigma of British loyalism and opened a number of elite secondary boarding schools. Schools such as Virginia's Episcopal High School (founded 1839), St. Paul's in New Hampshire (1855), and Groton in Massachusetts (1884) quickly established themselves as academically and socially elite institutions, grooming students for an Ivy League education. Most of them were originally segregated by sex, although those that continued operation usually welcomed both boys and girls during the later 20th century.

During the same period, Episcopal educators and missionaries founded a series of secondary boarding schools targeted at ethnic minorities. Episcopal educators of Native American students usually combined an ardent defense of Native rights with an aggressive program of cultural Christianization and Americanization. Many White Episcopalian educational missionaries trumpeted their educational goals as the most effective way to defeat Native American resistance to Euro–American expansion. The goal was often to convert and train Indian missionaries, teachers, and deacons. Racism within the Episcopal Church usually kept ethnic minorities out of the priesthood, however. Although Episcopal educators earnestly worked in what they considered the best interest of their students, their schools explicitly sought to destroy Native culture. They forbade the use of Native languages, customs, and religious practices, and they kept student contact with families to a minimum. In spite of these conflicts, many of the students of Episcopal boarding schools learned skills that allowed them to become leaders of their communities.

Secondary boarding schools for African American students had some similarities. In spite of systemic racism among the Episcopal hierarchy, many of these schools succeeded in educating an elite cadre of African American missionaries and priests. Alexander Crummel (1819–1898), for instance, went to an Episcopal parish day school, then an Episcopal secondary boarding school. Crummel became an influential missionary in Africa and a [Page 348]leading American intellectual. His work and thought had a decisive influence on later activists such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey.

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