History of Education

1635	The Boston Latin School was the first school in the colonies (also called the Roxbury Latin School). Founded on April 23, 1635.
1636	Massachusetts chartered Harvard College, the first college in the colonies.
1642	The Massachusetts Law of 1642 was created. This law stated that the parents, apprentice-masters, or guardians of children and servants were required to make sure that their wards adequately understood the basic principles of religion and the capital laws of the commonwealth. They also had to make sure that their wards were competent in reading and writing. If the government decided that the parents, apprentice-masters, or guardians were not abiding by this law, they would remove the child from their home and place them in another home where they could receive adequate education. Click Here to Read the Massachusetts Law of 1642
1647	The Massachusetts Law of 1647 was created. This law was also called the Old Deluder Satan Act. This law required that towns consisting of fifty families hire a schoolmaster to educate the children of the town in reading and writing. Towns that consisted of one hundred families were required to hire a grammar schoolmaster who would prepare the children to attend Harvard College. Click Here to Read the Massachusetts Law of 1647
1675	The General Court of Massachusetts created a new class of government officials charged with inspecting families to make sure they obeyed the education laws. They were called tithing men.
1683	Pennsylvania enacted a law that required all children to be taught to read and write by the age of 12. Also, the children had to be trained in a useful trade or skill.
1690	The first edition of the New England Primer was printed. This was the principal book used in American schooling. The book was in use through 1900. The book was used for what we now consider first grade, although the grade system was not implemented at the time. Click Here to See An Authentic Digitized Version of the New England Primer.
1779	Thomas Jefferson proposed a plan to the Virginia Assembly advocating universal elementary instruction. George Washington suggested that a national university be erected. Samuel Harrison Smith and Samuel Knox suggested a uniform national school system be imposed.
1781	How Gertrude Teaches Her Children, and Leonard and Gertrude were published. They were both authored by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.
1785	The Continental Congress passed an ordinance stipulating that 1% of land in each township in the Northwest Territory should be reserved to maintain public schools. Georgia chartered the first state University.	DN-0009516, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago Historical Society.
1789	Massachusetts established free public schools, ordering small towns to maintain schools at least six months a year.
1814	The King of Denmark announced one of the worlds first compulsory attendance laws.
1830s	Influx of Irish Catholics into the cities of the Northeast. This made compulsory public education for necessary because the new immigrants needed to be educated in the ways of America.
1831	Coeducational schools were offered in Lowell, Massachusetts.
1837	Horace Mann was appointed the secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education.
1838	By this time, thirteen additional states had instituted the school district system. Philadelphia opened its first coeducational high school.
1840s	Influx of Irish Catholics into the cities of the Northeast continued.
1840	The first kindergarten was opened in Germany by Friedrich Froebel.
1840 (to 1860)	Legislation banned state aid to parochial (Catholic) schools in New Jersey, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, Iowa, Minnesota, and Kansas. Massachusetts and Maine passed laws that required the reading of the King James Bible (the authorized version for use in the Church of England) in Public Schools.
1841	The first McGuffey Reader was Published. Click Here to see the front cover of the fourth McGuffey Reader. Click Here to see a lesson from the McGuffey Reader.
1844	May 3rd, 1844: Riots broke out in Philadelphia over a compromise measure of the Board of Controllers, which would excuse Catholic teachers from leading bible readings.
1852	Massachusetts passed the first compulsory education law, aimed at all children of the state, which said that children between the ages of 8 and 14 were required to attend public school at least twelve weeks per year.	DN-0056609, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago Historical Society.
1853	The New York truancy laws said that any person between 5 and 14 years of age wandering the streets should be restrained by that person's keeper. The Teacher and the Parent was written by Charles Northend.
1855	There were 6,185 Academies in the United States. Massachusetts Laws forbade Boston, the capital of the anti-slavery movement, from continuing its policy of segregation in schools. Boston became the only major city at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation with integrated schools.
1857	Black schools in New York City received $1 of public money for every $1600 spent on white schools.
1860	By this time, Massachusetts had more than 1/3 of 300 high schools in the country.
1870	By this time, most US cities classified elementary school students into eight separate grades.
1887	By this time, women teachers were outnumbering men by a ratio of 3:1.
1879	New Jersey became the first state to abolish corporal punishment in the schools.
1890	Between 1850 and 1890 the basic school readers, the McGuffey Readers, were the basic school readers in 37 states.
1894	John Dewey founded the laboratory school at the University of Chicago in which he tested his educational ideas (1894-1904).
1896 (to 1898)	In the American Journal of Sociology, Edward Ross describes the community, family, and church as traditionally bringing about Social Control and depicts this control as on the verge of collapse.
1918	The book The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education "Virtually Ignored Intellectual Development as an Educational Goal."
1919	Kinderheim Baumgarten was opened in Vienna for children between the ages of 3 and 16, with play as its guiding principal. This school was closely observed by Freud. A book describes the new wave of immigrants as "Almost Wholly without the Anglosaxon conceptions of Righteousness, Liberty, Law, Order, Public Decency, and Government."
1920s	Freud concluded that children could not be free of control.
1938