[Sidenote: Tendency toward universal education among Calvinists, but aristocratic ideals among Anglicans.]
In addition to these characteristics, the religious reformers, like Luther and Calvin, generally held to the idea that a system of schools should be supported, or at least established, by the state, and that all children should have an opportunity to secure an education sufficient to make them familiar with the Scriptures. If people were to be guided by the word of God, they must all be able to read it. But this view of education was not held by those for whom, as in the English Church, the Reformation was not primarily a religious and theological, but rather an ecclesiastical and political revolt. In Holland and Scotland, for example, where Calvinism prevailed, universal education was upheld by the mass of the people, but in France and England only a small minority, the Huguenots and Puritans respectively, adopted this attitude. Hence it happens that, wherever in America the influence of Puritanism, the Dutch Reformed religion, Scotch Presbyterianism, or other forms of Calvinism was felt, the nucleus of public education appeared, while in the colonies where the Anglican communion was dominant, the aristocratic idea of education prevailed and training of the masses was neglected. However, even among the Calvinists, who held that elementary education should be universal, and that the State as well as the Church should hold itself responsible for its being furnished, the logical solution of the problem was not perceived for scores of years. In the Calvinistic colonies it was not at first believed that education should be the same in character for all or that the State should bear the expense through taxation. This distinctively American interpretation of public education did develop later, but in the beginning even the most advanced colonies to some extent placed the financial responsibility upon the parent or guardian.
[Sidenote: In Virginia, selective education, inherited from England.]
[Sidenote: Consequent educational legislation.]
=Colonial School Organization: The Aristocratic Type in Virginia.=--As a result of these general traditions and characteristics, there would seem to have been three chief types of school organization in the colonies. These were (1) the _laissez faire_ method, current in Virginia and the South; (2) the parochial organization of New Netherlands and the Middle Colonies in general; (3) the governmental activity in Massachusetts and most of the other New England colonies. We may profitably discuss these typical organizations in order. Turning first to the aristocratic colonies of the South, we may select Virginia, the oldest of these provinces, as representative of the type. That colony constituted the first attempt of England at reproducing herself in the New World, and here are found an order of society, form of government, established church, and distinction between classes, similar to those of the Mother Country. For some time there existed a sharp line of demarcation between the gentry, or landowning class, and the masses, which included the landless, indentured servants, and other dependents. In education, the colonists had brought with them the idea of a classical higher and secondary training for the upper classes in the semi-monastic type of university and the (Latin) grammar school (see pp. 120 f.), and but little in the way of elementary education, except private ‘dame’ schools and the catechetical training by the clergy. There were, in addition, the family ‘tutorial’ education, both secondary and elementary, for the children of the wealthy, and evident attempts at perpetuating the old English industrial training through apprenticeship for orphans and children of the poor. But no such institution as a public elementary school was at first known. In consequence, the educational legislation in colonial Virginia is concerned mainly with (a) the organization of a college or university, (b) individual schools of secondary grade, and (c) apprenticeship education for the poor.