Education_Todd

Todd's Thoughts on Education

History of Christian Education []

When **Roger Williams** and his wife Mary arrived at [|Boston] on February 5, 1631, he was welcomed and almost immediately invited to become the Teacher (assistant minister) in the Boston church to officiate while Rev. John Wilson returned to England to fetch his wife. He shocked them by declining the position, saying that he found that it was "an unseparated church." In addition he asserted that the civil magistrates may not punish any sort of "breach of the first table [of the [|Ten Commandments]]," such as idolatry, Sabbath-breaking, false worship, and blasphemy, and that every individual should be free to follow his own convictions in religious matters. Right from the beginning, he sounded three principles which were central to his subsequent career: Separatism, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. As a Separatist he had concluded that the Church of England was irredeemably corrupt and that one must completely separate from it to establish a new church for the true and pure worship of God. His search for the true church eventually carried him out of Congregationalism, the Baptists, and any visible church. From 1639 forward, he waited for Christ to send a new apostle to reestablish the church, and he saw himself as a "witness" to Christianity until that time came. He believed that [|soul liberty] freedom of conscience, was a gift from God, and that everyone had the natural right to freedom of religion. Religious freedom demanded that church and state be separated. Williams was the first to use the phrase "wall of separation" to describe the relationship of the church and state. He called for a high wall of separation between the "Garden of Christ" and the "Wilderness of the World." This idea is one of the foundations of the religion clauses in the U.S. Constitution and [|First Amendment to the United States Constitution]. In 1802 Thomas Jefferson, writing of the "wall of separation" echoed Roger Williams in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association.[|[3]] The [|Salem] church was much more inclined to Separatism, so they invited Williams to become their Teacher. When the leaders in Boston learned of this, they vigorously protested, and the offer was withdrawn. By the end of the summer of 1631, Williams had moved to [|Plymouth colony] where he was welcomed, and informally assisted the minister there. He regularly preached and according to [|Governor Bradford], "his teachings were well approved." [|[4]]

The colony was founded by the owners of the **Massachusetts Bay Company**, which included investors in the failed **Dorchester Company**, which had in 1624 established a short-lived settlement on [|Cape Ann]. The second attempt, begun in 1628, was successful, with more than 10,000 people [|migrating to New England] in the 1630s. The population was strongly [|Puritan], and its governance was dominated by a small group of leaders, who were strongly influenced by Puritan religious leaders. Although [|its governors] were elected, the elections were limited to [|freemen] who had been examined for their religious views and formally admitted. As a consequence, the colonial leadership exhibited intolerance to other religious views, including [|Anglican], [|Quaker], and [|Baptist] theologies.
 * [[image:http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTcXfPshf6C0jPXBXvGaCfgQ3I1St4i_AHtAvNK0hezd6L-EFlFpSUYcMQ width="59" height="80" caption="See full size image" link="http://ponderingprinciples.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/john-winthrop.gif"]]John Winthrop: Massachusetts Bay Colony** was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in [|New England], situated around the present-day cities of [|Salem] and [|Boston]. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central [|New England], including portions of the [|U.S. states] of [|Massachusetts], [|Maine], [|New Hampshire], [|Rhode Island], and [|Connecticut]. Territory claimed but never administered by the colonial government extended as far west as the [|Pacific Ocean].

His religious views were influenced before 1779 by what he described as "Fletcher's controversy with the Calvinists in favor of the Universality of the atonement." After hearing [|Elhanan Winchester] preach, Rush indicated that Winchester's theology "embraced and reconciled my ancient calvinistical, and my newly adopted ([|Arminian]) principles. From that time on I have never doubted upon the subject of the salvation of all men." Rush did believe, as did Winchester and most Universalists, in a state of punishment after death for the wicked. In his later years, Rush, in a letter to [|John Adams], described his religious views as "a compound of the orthodoxy and heterodoxy of most of our Christian churches."[|[24]] He also helped [|Richard Allen] in the founding of the [|African Methodist Episcopal Church]. In his autobiography, Allen wrote: "...By this time we had waited on Dr. Rush and Mr. Robert Ralston, and told them of our distressing situation. We considered it a blessing that the Lord had put it into our hearts to wait upon... those gentle-men. They pitied our situation, and subscribed largely towards the church, and were very friendly towards us and advised us how to go on. We appointed Mr. Ralston our treasurer. Dr. Rush did much for us in public by his influence. I hope the name of Dr. Benjamin Rush and Mr. Robert Ralston will never be forgotten among us. They were the two first gentlemen who espoused the cause of the oppressed and aided us in building the house of the Lord for the poor Africans to worship in. Here was the beginning and rise of the first African church in America." "The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen." []
 * [[image:http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTpiAkVVvw36RJMIrCveW13nZaDR3WXqSXwpkuQ-CeFlgsGjd0BuQ width="68" height="80" caption="See full size image" link="http://www.theamericanrevolution.org/img/people/25_a.jpg"]]Benjamin Rush**: He is generally deemed [|Presbyterian] and was a founder of the Philadelphia Bible Society.[|[19]] He was an advocate for Christianity in public life and in education. In line with that, he advocated that the U.S. government require public schools to teach students using the [|Bible] as a textbook, and that the government should furnish an American bible to every family at public expense. He also said that the following sentence should be inscribed in letters of gold over the door of every State and Court house in the United States: "The Son of Man Came into the World, Not To Destroy Men's Lives, But To Save Them." [|[20]][|[21]][|[22]] Since such an action did not involve the establishment by Congress of a religious entity (state approved church or sect), he saw no conflict between this and the [|First Amendment to the United States Constitution], ratified in 1791, which states: "//Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;....//"[|[23]]

Dwight was the leader of the [|evangelical][|New Divinity] faction of Congregationalism — a group closely identified with Connecticut's emerging commercial elite. Although fiercely opposed by religious moderates — most notably Yale president [|Ezra Stiles] — he was elected to the presidency of Yale on Stiles's death in 1795. His ability as a teacher, and his talents as a religious and political leader, soon made the college the largest institution of higher education in [|North America]. Dwight had a genius for recognizing able proteges — among them [|Lyman Beecher], [|Nathaniel W. Taylor], and [|Leonard Bacon], all of whom would become major religious leaders and theological innovators in the ante bellum decades. During troubled times at Yale University, then-president Timothy Dwight saw his students drawn to the radical republicanism and “infidel philosophy” of the French Revolution, including the philosophies of Hume, Hobbes, Tindal, and Lords Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke. Between 1797 and 1800, Dwight frequently warned audiences against the threats of this “infidel philosophy” in America. An address to the candidates for the baccalaureate in Yale College called "The Nature and Danger of Infidel Philosophy, Exhibited in Two Discourses, Addressed to the Candidates for the Baccalaureate, In Yale College" was delivered on September 9, 1797. It was published by George Bunce in 1798. This book is credited as one of the embers of the Second Great Awakening. Dwight was as notable for his political leadership as for his religious and educational eminence. Known by his enemies as "Pope" Dwight, he wielded both the temporal sword (as head of Connecticut's [|Federalist Party]), and spiritual sword (as nominal head of the state's Congregational Church). He led the effort to prevent the disestablishment of the church in Connecticut—and, when its disestablishment appeared inevitable, encouraged efforts by proteges like Beecher and Bacon to organize voluntary associations to maintain the influence of religion in public life. Fearing that the failure of states to establish schools and the rise of "infidelity" would bring about the destruction of republican institutions, he helped to create a national evangelical movement—the second "Great Awakening" -- intended to "re-church" America. Dwight was a founder of the Connecticut Academy of Arts & Sciences, the [|American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions], and [|Andover Theological Seminary].
 * [[image:http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRWgAw1BPMtqNBYo9mH-Yzk7CJyJyWZeBC6oXD1tTJHtjEDd45_7Uuu3w width="50" height="79" caption="See full size image" link="http://www.iment.com/maida/familytree/henry/bios/images/timothydwight.jpg"]]Timothy Dwight** (May 14, 1752 – January 11, 1817) was an American academic and educator, a [|Congregationalist] minister, [|theologian], and author. He was the eighth president of [|Yale College] (1795–1817).[|[]

Jonathan Edwards, born on October 5, 1703, was the son of Timothy Edwards (1668–1759), a minister at [|East Windsor, Connecticut] (modern day [|South Windsor]) who eked out his salary by tutoring boys for college. His mother, Esther Stoddard, daughter of the Rev. [|Solomon Stoddard], of [|Northampton, Massachusetts], seems to have been a woman of unusual mental gifts and independence of character.[|[][|10][|]] Jonathan, their only son, was the fifth of eleven children. He was trained for college by his father and by his elder sisters, all of whom received an excellent education. When ten years old, he wrote a semi-humorous tract on the immateriality of the soul. He entered [|Yale College] in 1716, at just under the age of thirteen. In the following year, he became acquainted with [|John Locke]'s //[|Essay Concerning Human Understanding]//, which influenced him profoundly. During his college studies, he kept note books labelled "The Mind," "Natural Science" (containing a discussion of the [|atomic theory]), "The Scriptures" and "Miscellanies," had a grand plan for a work on natural and mental philosophy, and drew up for himself rules for its composition. He was interested in natural history and, at the age of seventeen, wrote a remarkable essay on the habits of the "flying spider."[|[][|11][|]] Even before his graduation in September 1720, as valedictorian and head of his class, he seems to have had a well formulated philosophy. He spent two years after his graduation in [|New Haven] studying theology.[|[][|12][|. In 1722 to 1723, he was, for eight months, "stated supply" (a clergyman employed to supply a pulpit for a definite time, but not settled as a pastor) of a small [|Presbyterian Church] in [|New York City]. The church invited him to remain, but he declined the call. After spending two months in study at home, in 1724–1726, he was one of the two tutors at Yale, earning for himself the name of a "pillar tutor", from his steadfast loyalty to the college and its orthodox teaching, at the time when Yale's rector ([|Timothy Cutler]) and one of her tutors had gone over to the Anglican Church.[|[][|13][|]]
 * [[image:http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS8WWInRqfhomCCZpkJPoMF6qqexrHyjRSc-VNZjD9VmumPhzb7DrpV3Q width="76" height="80" caption="See full size image" link="http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/Jonathan-Edwards.jpg"]]Jonathan Edwards:**

In 1727 Tennent established a religious school in a [|log cabin] that became famous as the [|Log College]. He filled his pupils with evangelical zeal, and a number became revivalist preachers in the [|First Great Awakening]. The educational influence of the Log College was of importance since many of its graduates founded schools along the frontier. [|Princeton University] is regarded as the successor to the Log College.[|[1]] The name //Log College// had a negative connotation at the time, as it was a derisive nickname attached to the school by ministers educated in Europe. They chided Tennent for trying to educate poor farm boys considered by some to be unsuitable for the ministry. At least one school, [|William Tennent High School] (located close to the location of the Log College) is named for Tennent. In addition, there is a Log College Middle School named in honor of the original Log College, and is about .25 miles (0.40 km) from the original building's location. Both schools are public schools located within the [|Centennial School District] in [|Bucks County, Pennsylvania], specifically [|Warminster], PA. Tennent's son [|Gilbert] and William, Jr. were also noted early American clergymen.
 * [[image:http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT08oeX_Rpn2xhvDZWA-GRkXpnOZ0AJSEwoQ52zmOfXu8xH3SSpAbdNAZE width="67" height="80" caption="See full size image" link="http://www.explorepahistory.com/cms/pbfiles/Project1/Scheme34/ExplorePAHistory-a0l7w1-a_349.jpg"]]William Tennent**

Davies left his mark as scholar and patriot on his students, particularly the eleven members of the Class of 1760 whom he taught as seniors. ``Whatever be your Place,'' he told them in his baccalaureate address, ``imbibe and cherish a public spirit. Serve your generation.'' This they did. Among the eleven were a member of the Continental Congress, chaplains in the Continental Army, judges in Maine and Pennsylvania, the founder of a college in North Carolina, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Davies was long remembered as one of the great pulpit orators of his generation. Patrick Henry, who as a boy had frequently heard him preach, acknowledged Davies's influence on his own oratory. Davies's sermons went through four editions in the United States and nine editions in England, and for more than fifty years after his death were among the most widely read of any in the English language. At Princeton, Davies was loved and respected; as one trustee wrote another, ``There never was a college happier in a president.''
 * [[image:http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTaQT20c2bpKVGcp4yulBFn2QxLU_6cEZ52FGHrfwvc7EVm1SC_pk9o5zg width="68" height="80" caption="See full size image" link="http://www.tracts.ukgo.com/images/samuel_davies.jpg"]]Samuel Davies: ﻿**

From Beith he removed to Paisley, where he became widely known for his piety and learning. He was severally invited to take charge of a parish and flock, at Dublin, in Ireland; Dundee, in Scotland; and Rotterdam, in Holland; but he declined them all. In 1766 he was invited, by a unanimous vote of the trustees of New Jersey College, to become its president, but this, too, he declined, partly on account of the unwillingness of his wife to leave the land of her nativity. But being strongly urged by Richard Stockton (afterward his colleague in Congress, and fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence), then on a visit to that country, he accepted the appointment, and sailed for America. He arrived at [|Princeton] with his family, in August, 1768, and on the seventeenth of that month he was inaugurated president of the College. His name and his exertions wrought a great change in the affairs of that institution, and from a low condition in its finances and other essential elements of prosperity, it soon rose to a proud eminence among the institutions of learning in America.
 * [[image:http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT1dDzCLNVtvjHCUwt3KsK_DvLFUhDSPr8-KjIogLLOvDm8yomBV8VW8N0 width="106" height="80" caption="See full size image" link="http://americanvision.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/John-Witherspoon.jpg"]]﻿John Witherspoon**: John Witherspoon was born in the parish of Yester, near Edinburgh, Scotland, on the fifth of February, 1722. He was a lineal descendant of the great [religious] reformer, John Knox. His father was a minister in the Scottish church, at Yester, and was greatly beloved. He took great pains to have the [|early education] of his son based upon sound moral and religious principles, and early determined to fit him for the gospel ministry. His primary education was received in a school at Haddington, and at the age of fourteen years he was placed in the University of Edinburgh. He was a very diligent student, and, to the delight of his father, his mind was specially directed toward sacred literature. He went through a regular theological course of study, and at the age of twenty-two years he graduated, a licensed preacher. He was requested to remain in Yester, as an assistant to his father, but he accepted a call at Beith, in the west of Scotland, where he labored faithfully for several years.

Though Washington offered little that was innovative in industrial education, which both northern philanthropic foundations and southern leaders were already promoting, he became its chief black exemplar and spokesman. In his advocacy of Tuskegee Institute and its educational method, Washington revealed the political adroitness and accommodationist philosophy that were to characterize his career in the wider arena of race leadership. He convinced southern white employers and governors that Tuskegee offered an education that would keep blacks "down on the farm" and in the trades. To prospective northern donors and particularly the new self- made millionaires such as Rockefeller and Carnegie he promised the inculcation of the Protestant work ethic. To blacks living within the limited horizons of the post- Reconstruction South, Washington held out industrial education as the means of escape from the web of sharecropping and debt and the achievement of attainable, petit-bourgeois goals of self-employment, landownership, and small business. Washington cultivated local white approval and secured a small state appropriation, but it was northern donations that made Tuskegee Institute by 1900 the best-supported black educational institution in the country.
 * [[image:http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQjR96JKHxLPuFMXVXyvz8WbWaQHu9nzdTq4sZDW4j6wK4_VAklSBg06A width="53" height="80" caption="See full size image" link="http://northbysouth.kenyon.edu/1998/edu/craig/bookert2.jpg"]]Booker T. Washington, 1856-1915, Educator.** Booker Taliaferro Washington was the foremost black educator of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He also had a major influence on southern race relations and was the dominant figure in black public affairs from 1895 until his death in 1915. Born a slave on a small farm in the Virginia backcountry, he moved with his family after emancipation to work in the salt furnaces and coal mines of West Virginia. After a secondary education at Hampton Institute, he taught an upgraded school and experimented briefly with the study of law and the ministry, but a teaching position at Hampton decided his future career. In 1881 he founded Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute on the Hampton model in the Black Belt of Alabama.

God and science were both areas of interest, not warring ideas in the mind of George Washington Carver. He testified on many occasions that his faith in [|Jesus] was the only mechanism by which he could effectively pursue and perform the art of science.[|[53]] George Washington Carver became a Christian when he was ten years old. When he was still a young boy, he was not expected to live past his twenty-first birthday due to conspicuously failing health. He lived well past the age of twenty-one, and his beliefs deepened as a result.[|[24]] Throughout his career, he always found friendship and safety in the fellowship of other Christians. He relied on them especially when enduring harsh criticism from the scientific community and newsprint media regarding his research methodology.[|[54]] Dr. Carver viewed faith in [|Jesus] as a means of destroying both barriers of racial disharmony and social stratification.[|[55]] He was as concerned with his students' character development as he was with their intellectual development. He even compiled a list of eight cardinal virtues for his students to emulate and strive toward:
 * [[image:http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSPZ91viAErqqkxI913OMGGubYmUV_tcUFzT46BNR09qzimieCk2qcUkw width="65" height="80" caption="See full size image" link="http://gardenofpraise.com/images2/carver.jpg"]]George Washington Carver**

Be clean both inside and out. Carver also led a Bible class on Sundays while at Tuskegee, beginning in 1906, for several students at their request. In this class he would regularly tell the stories from the Bible by acting them out.[|[37]] Unconventional in respect to both his scientific method and his ambition as a teacher, he inspired as much criticism as he did praise. Dr. Carver expressed this sentiment in response to this phenomenon: "When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."[|[56]] The legacy of George Washington Carver's faith is included in many Christian book series for children and adults about great men and women of faith and the work they accomplished through their convictions respectively. One such series, the //Sower// series, includes his story alongside those of such men as [|Isaac Newton], [|Samuel Morse], [|Johannes Kepler], and the [|Wright brothers]. Other Christian literary references include "Man's Slave, God's Scientist", by David R. Collins, and the //Heroes of the Faith// series book //George Washington Carver: Inventor and Naturalist//, by Sam Wellman. The conservative Christian evangelist Pat Robertson frequently makes references to Carver's melding of faith and science in lectures and speeches and credits this as an inspiration for founding Regent University. The standard [|author abbreviation] **  Carver   ** is used to indicate this individual as the author when [|citing] a [|botanical name] Information about educators found on Wikipedia.
 * Neither look up to the rich nor down on the poor.
 * Lose, if need be, without squealing.
 * Win without bragging.
 * Always be considerate of women, children, and older people.
 * Be too brave to lie.
 * Be too generous to cheat.
 * Take your share of the world and let others take theirs.[|[37]]