“Cursed be all learning contrary to the cross of Christ.” Those were the words of Reverend John Witherspoon, one of our founding fathers and the President of Princeton between 1768 to 1794. The truth is, Christianity had a dynamic impact on American education even far into the 19th century.
Firstly, the beginnings of public schools were Christian initiatives. The Puritans passed a law called the “Old Deluder Satan Act” in 1647. The goal of the law was to train children, through public education, to resist the Devil. The law directly cited the reading of the Scriptures as the reason for teaching children to read and write. “It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures,..It is therefore ordered that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to fifty households shall forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read,”
But the Puritans were not just important in establishing public schools for young folks. They also established several colleges and universities. Harvard, founded in 1638, was founded by the Puritans with the goal of training ministers of the Gospel. There is an etching in the Harvard Yard that reads, “After God had carried us safely to New England, and we had built our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God’s worship, and settled the civil government; one of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance learning, and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.” Fifty-two percent of Harvard graduates became ministers. Harvard isn’t the only one, Yale was founded in 1745. The Yale Charter, in part, declared that the college, “Which has received the charitable benefactions of many liberal and piously disposed persons and under the blessings of Almighty God has trained up many worthy persons for the service of God in the state as well as the church.”
Furthermore, the Bible was taught in schools! The New England Primer was the primary primer (no pun intended) during the colonial period. The Primer taught children the alphabet using Bible doctrines. These included “A: In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” or “C: Christ crucified, for sinners died.” During the early 1800s the most used reading primer in elementary schools was McGuffey’s Reader. This primer was written by a Presbyterian minister named William Holmes McGuffey. McGuffey based his reading primer on Biblical doctrines.
John Adams said that “Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.” The foundation of American education was Christian principles and the very reason for education was the betterment of the church and the growth of the Gospel. Noah Webster, a revolutionary American educator said this, “In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed.”