There has been considerable discussion in the press and halls of education with regard to The Common Core Curriculum Standards Initiative, an attempt by the educational establishment to standardize and strengthen educational standards and expectations at the elementary and secondary levels. Quoting from the Initiative’s English language arts standards, “As a natural outgrowth of meeting the charge to define college and career readiness, the Standards also lay out a vision of what it means to be a literate person in the twenty-first century.” In developing core curriculum standards, it would be worthwhile for the curriculum designers to spend some time reviewing what it meant to be a literate person in America from the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620 to the beginning of the twentieth century. A few excerpts from such a review will reveal the heart of America’s Original Common Core Curriculum and its role in the creation of the greatest country in the history of the world.
• Harvard University was founded in 1636 under the following Rules and Precepts: “Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies, is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore lay Christ at the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.” [Josiah Quincy, LL.D., History of Harvard University, (Boston, MA: Crosby, Nichols, Lee, & Co., 1860), p. 515.]
• The New England Primer first published about 1690 was the only elementary textbook in America for a half century, retained its central role in primary education until 1800 and continued as a principal beginning textbook throughout the 19th century. The eighty-page Puritan primer contained lessons in the alphabet, spelling, short religious instruction, commands to piety and faith, and Bible questions. [Reprint of 1777 edition of The New England Primer by David Barton, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuidler Press, May 2007).]
• Gouverneur Morris was a signor of the U.S. Constitution. Having been credited as the author of the preamble and having written large sections of the document, he was called the Penman of the Constitution. Morris was a gifted scholar and held a Master’s degree from King’s College (now Columbia College of Columbia University). Morris’s views of education reflected those of his fellow Founding Fathers when he wrote, “Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man towards God.” [Jared Sparks, The life of Gouverneur Morris, Vol. III. (Boston, MA: Gray and Bowen, Vol. III), p. 483.]
• Thomas Jefferson called Samuel Adams “…truly the man of the Revolution…for depth of purpose, zeal, and sagacity, no man in Congress exceeded, if any equaled, Sam Adams.” Samuel Adams was noted for his piety (professed and real) and had deep religious convictions. His views on education paralleled those of many other Founding Fathers. “Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity…in short of leading them to the study and practice of exalted virtues of the Christian System, which will happily tend to subdue the turbulent passions of Men…” [Samuel Adams, “Letter of Samuel Adams to John Adams, October 4, 1790,” Writings of Samuel Adams, Ed. Harry A. Cushing, (New York: Octagon Books, Inc., 1968), p. 4:343; Ira Stoll, Samuel Adams – A Life, (New York: Free Press, 2008), pp. 9-10, 240.]
• Thomas Jefferson designed of the first plan of education for the District of Columbia which used the Bible and a hymnal as its principal texts for teaching reading to students. [Newt Gingrich, Rediscovering God in America, (Nashville, Tennessee, Discovery House, 2006, p. 46.]
• Noah Webster was a descendent of William Bradford of Plymouth Plantation. His 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language was produced when the American home, church, and school were established upon a biblical and a patriotic basis. The biblical worldview of Webster’s dictionary produced during the first half of the 19th century stands as a testament to the continuing power and force of the Second Great Awakening. Webster held a belief in the importance of intertwining the Christian religion with a free government. “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…No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.” [Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language 1828, Facsimile Edition, (San Francisco, California: Foundation for American Christian Education, 1967, 1995 by Rosalie J. Slater), p. 12.]
• Between 1836 and 1920, 120 million copies of the McGuffey’s Reader textbooks were sold. The Readers hailed American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, and America as God’s country although in more secularized terms beginning with the 1879 version. In a 1927 Saturday Evening Post article titled “That Guy McGuffey,” Hugh Fullerton wrote that, “For seventy-five years his (McGuffey’s) system and his books guided the minds of four-fifths of the school children of the nation in their taste for literature, in their morality, in their social development and next to the Bible in their religion.” [John H. Westerhoff III, McGuffey and His Readers, (Milford, Michigan: Mott Media, 1982), pp. 14-15.]
• As the nineteenth century neared its end, there was an extraordinary and dramatic struggle by the forces of humanistic progressive education to wrest power from conservative Protestantism in American education. The National Education Association responded to this struggle with a statement of protest in 1892: “…if the study of the Bible is to be excluded from all state schools; if the inculcation of the principles of Christianity is to have no place in the daily program; if the worship of God is to form no part of the general exercise of those public elementary schools; then the good of the state would be better served by restoring all schools to church control.” [Kansas Historical Society, Columbian History of Education in Kansas, (Topeka, Kansas: Hamilton Printing Company, 1893), p. 82.
This cursory review of American education between 1620 and 1900 conclusively illustrates that the Bible (along with supporting books with a biblical worldview such as The New England Primer and McGuffey’s Reader) was the central text and provided the standards for the original common core curriculum in educating American children. But the influence of the Bible in education was merely a derivative of the pervasive biblical worldview that permeated every facet of American life including the law, politics, trade and business dealings, science, social relationships, and culture in general. So complete was this domination at the time of the American Revolution that 95% or more of the population held the biblical worldview, whether a professing Christian or not. So it is not surprising that the Bible and other books reflecting a biblical worldview were the standards for the original common core curriculum and formed the foundation of American education. In Part II, an examination will be made of the destruction of the original biblically-based common core curriculum in American education by substitution of the humanistic progressive education philosophies of John Dewey and others.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
“English Language Arts Standards,” Common Core State Standards Initiative, http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy (accessed June 25, 2013).
