Essays on Education in a Republic

Summary

Essays on Education in a Republic gathers the six essays on schooling that open Benjamin Rush's Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical, published in Philadelphia in 1798. Rush, a physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote them between 1786 and 1791 to ask what kind of education a free people needs once it has made itself a republic. The library text follows the 1798 printing, with the long s modernized and Rush's footnotes omitted. The first essay, A Plan for Establishing Public Schools in Pennsylvania (1786), lists the benefits of learning to religion, liberty, law, manners, agriculture and manufactures, then proposes one state university in Philadelphia, four colleges (Philadelphia, Carlisle, Lancaster for German citizens, and later Pittsburgh) and free schools in every township, all tied into one system. Rush answers those who would object to paying for other people's children by arguing that schools will cost less than jails, pillories and gallows. The second essay, Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, makes religion, and specifically the religion of the New Testament, the foundation of republican education, since there can be no liberty without virtue and no virtue without religion. A citizen must be taught that he belongs to his country, and Rush goes so far as to say that education can make men into republican machines fitted to the great machine of government. He recommends a temperate diet, manual work, vocal music, the study of English, French and German, history, commerce, chemistry and law, and the education of women in the principles of liberty. The third essay, Observations upon the Study of the Latin and Greek Languages, argues that four or five years spent on dead languages delay the knowledge of things, and proposes teaching them last, and only for reading. It is followed by a letter of 1791 from James Muir, principal of the academy at Alexandria, Virginia, and Rush's answer. The fourth essay, addressed to George Clymer in 1790, proposes gardening, mechanical arts and agriculture as school amusements, forbids gunning, objects to crowding children into close rooms, and argues at length that corporal punishment is never necessary in schools. The fifth, Thoughts upon Female Education, delivered at the Young Ladies' Academy of Philadelphia on July 28, 1787, outlines a course of English, handwriting, bookkeeping, geography, history, vocal music, dancing and daily Bible reading suited to American women who would manage households and teach their sons the principles of liberty. The last, A Defence of the Use of the Bible as a School Book, written to the Reverend Jeremy Belknap of Boston and dated March 10, 1791, argues from the nature of the mind, from Deuteronomy 6 and from history that children should learn to read from the Bible, and calls the Bible the surest support of republican government.

Top Lessons

• Religion, virtue and liberty as a chain

  Rush's central claim is that a republic cannot survive without virtuous citizens, and that virtue cannot be formed without religion. He therefore places the New Testament at the foundation of schooling and, in his letter to Belknap, the Bible at the centre of the classroom. For Rush, Christian teaching and republican government support each other because the Gospel teaches humility, self-denial and brotherly kindness.

• Education for usefulness

  Rush judges every subject by whether it prepares young people to serve their families, their professions and their country. That standard leads him to favour English, modern languages, history, commerce, chemistry and law, and to argue that Latin and Greek should come late and be learned for reading. His view sparked replies in his own day, and the debate he joined continues wherever schools weigh the classics.

• Governing children by reason rather than the rod

  In the letter to Clymer, Rush argues that children old enough for school can be moved by moral and rational motives, that beating confuses ignorance with wrongdoing, and that fear weakens both body and mind. He would govern schools by order, shame, confinement and the withholding of treats in dress, food or amusement instead, and he reads the biblical rod as a figure for correction of any kind.

• Educating women for a republic

  Rush argues that American women, who marry young, manage property and give children their first instruction, need an education fitted to those responsibilities, including the principles of liberty and government. He presents this as a new kind of schooling, different from the ornamental accomplishments then fashionable in Britain, and he praises the woman of Proverbs 31 as his model.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

These are a physician's essays, and Rush's medicine runs through them. In the same year as the school Plan he delivered An Enquiry into the Influence of Physical Causes upon the Moral Faculty (1786), and the Mode of Education essay applies that idea to students: a temperate diet of broths, milk and vegetables, no spirituous liquors, manual work, moderate sleep, silence, solitude and cleanliness are prescribed because physical causes act on intellect and morals. The letter to Clymer reflects the miasmatic thinking of the period when it blames morbid effluvia from crowded schoolrooms for fevers, and its case against corporal punishment draws on clinical memory (a schoolmate said to have died after a whipping, injuries to the brain from blows to the head) and on the language of excitability and stimulants that Rush shared with the Edinburgh school of William Cullen and John Brown. Thoughts upon Female Education claims that singing strengthens the lungs against consumption, citing the rarity of the disease among Pennsylvania Germans and the observations of the academy's music master. The Bible essay points to the memory of the aged and to Sir John Pringle, physician to the Queen, who studied Scripture at the end of his life. These are period theories and anecdotes; any modern reading of them, for instance of fear and stress in learning, should be offered as interpretation rather than as Rush's meaning. His later Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812) develops the same mind-body convictions at length.

• Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic

  Physical discipline for students: diet, abstinence from spirits, manual labour, sleep, silence, solitude and cleanliness, and the claim that these physical causes act on intellect and morals.

• Thoughts upon the Amusements and Punishments Proper for Schools, on gunning and on school rooms

  Gunning exposes boys to fevers and accidents; long sitting deforms the body; crowding children into one room breeds fevers from morbid effluvia, which Rush says he has seen in many hundred cases.

• Thoughts upon the Amusements and Punishments Proper for Schools, reasons 4, 9 and 10 against corporal punishment

  Injuries to body and intellect from beating, a schoolmate's reported death after a whipping, fear debilitating the mind, and the analogy between dosing a remedy to a patient's excitability and fitting discipline to a child's temper.

• Thoughts upon Female Education, branch V (vocal music)

  Singing as protection for the lungs against consumption, with the example of the Pennsylvania Germans and cases reported by the academy's music master.

• A Defence of the Use of the Bible as a School Book, argument VIII

  The memory of old age recovering early learning, and Sir John Pringle's turn to Scripture at the close of his life.