Latin Grammar Schools

Latin grammar schools were the first college preparatory schools in colonial America. Arising from a long-established English educational tradition, the American grammar school represented an adaptation of that tradition to the conditions of the new world rather than a movement of either pure reform or dissent. In order to adapt, the schools developed unique structures that differed from the British model and that established a pattern of local government responsibility for the maintenance of community schools that remains the distinctive characteristic of American education to this day. In this case, then, adaptation rather than deliberate action led to educational reform.

In England, the Latin grammar school was the usual preparation for young men who wished to matriculate at Oxford or at Cambridge, which was the more popular British university for Puritans. A high proportion of the Puritans who emigrated to Massachusetts during the 1630s were Cambridge College graduates, and they viewed classical learning as an essential prerequisite for proper civic as well as religious leadership. In addition, the literacy of the general population was of the greatest import [Page 509]to Massachusetts Puritans, who in 1642 passed a law requiring literacy. In 1647, the Old Deluder Satan Law was passed, which mandated that towns of 50 families engage a schoolmaster to teach reading and writing, while towns with 100 families were required to maintain a grammar school.

Some grammar schools predated the 1647 statute. Harvard College opened its doors in 1636, and the grammar schools were to be the preparatory schools for the new college. Boston hired Philemon Pormont to serve as master in 1635, teaching boys in his home. In 1636, schools were founded in Ipswich and Charlestown, and by 1645 there were schools in Cambridge, Dorchester, Watertown, Roxbury, Salem, and Newbury. Historians estimate that by 1700 about 27 grammar schools were in operation in Massachusetts. In 1650, Connecticut passed a law similar to the Massachusetts statute, but by 1700 only the four county seats at New Haven, Fairfield, Hartford, and New London were required to maintain a school.

Communities sponsored and supported grammar schools in several ways. Boston supported its grammar school through taxation as well as by revenue generated by the rental of land on a harbor island. Hadley, Massachusetts, and New Haven, Connecticut, were endowed by former Connecticut governor Edward Hopkins, while the Roxbury School, founded by John Eliot, was governed by an independent board, and as such it was free from the political control of the town and relied on subscriptions, endowments, and the rental of lands for revenue. Despite their relative independence, these schools were not private schools in the modern sense; they were independent in terms of governance and the generation of revenue, but their charge was the same as the schools maintained primarily by taxation in that they were the grammar school of the community. The fact that the responsibility for the maintenance of the grammar school rested with the town set the New England grammar school apart from its British predecessor, where the church generally controlled the school. Towns that did not maintain a school could be fined, with the money from the fine divided among the towns bordering the town that broke the law.

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