Schools for Statesmen

The Divergent Educations of the Constitutional Framers
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7006-3309-8
Verlag: University Press of Kansas

Buch, Englisch, 368 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

“Whatever Principles are imbibed at College will run thro' a Man's whole future Conduct.”—--William Livingston, signer of the Constitution

Schools for Statesmen explores the fifty-five individual Framers of the Constitution in close detail and argues that their different educations help explain their divergent positions at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Those educations ranged from outlawed Irish “hedge schools” to England’s venerable Inns of Court, from the grammar schools of New England to ambitious new academies springing up on the Carolina frontier. The more traditional schools that focused on Greek and Latin classics (Oxford, Harvard, Yale, William and Mary) were deeply conservative institutions resistant to change. But the Scottish colleges and the newer American schools (Princeton, Philadelphia, King’s College) introduced students to a Scottish Enlightenment curriculum that fostered more radical, forward-thinking leaders. Half of the Framers had no college education and were often self-taught or had private tutors; most were quiet at the convention, although a few stubbornly opposed the new ideas they were hearing. Nearly all the delegates who took the lead at the convention had been educated at the newer, innovative colleges, but of the seven who rejected the new Constitution, three had gone to the older traditional schools, while three others had not gone to college at all.

Schools for Statesmen is an unprecedented analysis of the sharply divergent educations of the Framers of the Constitution. It reveals the ways in which the Constitutional Convention, rather than being a counterrevolution by conservative elites, was dominated by forward-thinking innovators who had benefited from the educational revolution beginning in the mid-eighteenth century.

Andrew Browning offers a new and persuasive explanation of key disagreements among the Framers and the process by which they were able to break through the impasse that threatened the convention; he provides a fresh understanding of the importance of education in what has been called the “Critical Period” of US history.

Schools for Statesmen takes a deep dive into the diverse educational world of the eighteenth century and sheds new light on the origins of the US Constitution.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Geschichte der Pädagogik, Richtungen in der Pädagogik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Staats- und Regierungsformen, Staatslehre

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Delegates to the 1787 Federal Convention: Age and Education
- A Note on Names
- Introduction
- Part I
- 1. The Framers
- 2. Education Demigods
- Part II
- 3. The Self-Taught and the Tutored
- 4. Writing Schools and Grammar Schools
- 5. The Schools of the Prophets: Harvard and Yale
- 6. Their Majesties' College in Williamsburg: William and Mary
- 7. The Old World's Old Schools:England, France, and Ireland
- 8. The Inns of Court and Legal Apprenticeship
- Part III.
- 9. The New Old World: The Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh
- 10. Presbyterian Schools and Scottish Schoolmasters
- 11. Mirania in America: The College of Philadelphia and King's College
- 12. Princeton in the Nation's Service: The College of New Jersey
- 13. At the Convention: "To Form and More Perfect Union"
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index