In his 1749 proposals relating to the education of youth in Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, a protean world figure, printer, author, scientist, and public servant extraordinaire, advocated a, a decidedly public purpose for what he and his associates called the public academy in the city of Philadelphia. The precursor institution of the University of Pennsylvania, which, in its formative years, also included a charity school for poor white children. The great aim and end of all learning, Franklin wrote, is to cultivate in youth an inclination joined with an ability to serve mankind, one's country, friends and family. In a letter he wrote shortly thereafter to the British intellectual, Samuel Johnson, Franklin restated this point. And I quote, I think that with you that nothing is of more importance for the public weal than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are, in my opinion, the strength of a state. Much more subtle than riches or arms, which, under the management of ignorance and wickedness, often draw on destruction instead of providing for the safety of a people. In Franklin's time, classical studies, grounded in ancient Greek and Latin, predominated in Anglo-American colleges. Franklin challenged that dominance in a document he wrote in June 1789, when, as he put it, he was the only one of the original trustees and just stepping into the grave myself. Decades earlier in his treatise, Idea of the English School, published in 1751, Franklin had proposed the curriculum he envisioned for the academy. This English school curriculum, on paper at least, foreshadowed the modern liberal arts curriculum, though with a thoroughly practical bent, omitting Greek and Latin, and giving exclusive priority to the English language, the study of which would emphasize good reading and proper speaking. As an example of Franklin's utilitarian emphasis, witness his' thoughts on the teaching of scientific studies, what he called natural and mechanic history. The merchant may thereby be and able better to understand many commodities in trade. The handicraftsmen to improve his business buy new instruments, mixtures and materials. And frequently, hints are given of new manufacturers or new methods of improving land that maybe set on foot greatly to the advantage of a country. Commensurate with the great aim and end to all of learning that Franklin proclaimed in his 1749 proposals, he exhorted an idea of the English school that knowledge of duty was the most useful knowledge. His academy would cultivate duty, virtue and piety in its pupils and students. Graduates would be disposed and qualified to pass through and execute the several offices of civil life with advantage and reputation to themselves and country. In January 1751, the Philadelphia academy opened with two courses of study, a dual curriculum that suggested a compromise between the Latinist majority on the board, and Franklin and his supporters. One was a classical course taught by the rector of the academy, a Latin master, emphasizing Latin and Greek, and also giving attention to English, history, geography, logic, and oratory. The other course was an English school taught by an English master who held no title and whose salary was one-half of the rectors. There seems to have been no mention of natural and mechanic history as an academy subject, which must have been galling to Franklin, the scientist. As the academy's original trustees began to die, a new arrangement of trustees refused to honor the terms of the original plan. According to Franklin, who wrote his 1789 polemic with several decades worth of trustees minutes in hand, the English school had atrophied to the point of public disgrace as early as the six, 1760s, having abandoned any attention to the elegance of the English language, proper pronunciation and public speaking. The English part of our scheme of education, Franklin charged, was a mockery of its original design. The English school having been injudiciously starved by the trustees, whose favors were showered upon the Latin part. Writing as the last living original trustee of what was now the College, Academy and Charitable School of Philadelphia, and in 1791 would become the University of Pennsylvania, Franklin bitterly acknowledged the long defeat of his ideas. His main ideas are pretty clear. The historian Edward Potts Cheney wrote on the 200th anniversary of Franklin's academy. He would have had an education utilitarian rather than cultural, entirely in the English language though following the best models in that language, devoting much attention to training and thought and expression. It would include mathematics, geography, history, logic, and natural and moral philosophy. It should be an education for citizenship, and should lead to mercantile and civic success and usefulness. Cheney concluded sardonically, it is unfortunate that it was never tried. Franklin's emphasis on citizenship is the great end and aim of education, though abandoned by the academy he and his associates founded, was taken up in the 19th century by the common school reformers of the National Period. Onward to our next module. [MUSIC]
