A history of public education in Rhode Island, from 1636 to 1876 ... Comp. by authority of the Board of education, and ed. by Thomas B. Stockwell ...

NORT H KINGSTOWN.
BY D. G. ALLEN,
SUPERINTENDENT.
To record the educational events of one hundred years with but little
more to guide the pen than tradition, and the treacherous memory of
aged persons, we find no small task. There are but few persons living
who can recollect much of the school-room of 1790, but when they contrast the schools of the last decade with those of that date the stretch
of improvement is very great. There are many persons, however, who
have heard parents and grand-parents relate the many improvements in
the mechanic arts, but art as well as science is indebted to the light of
knowledge received in the school-room.
At the commencement of the century, the all absorbing topics of the
day were: What will the Continental Congress do? Will Washington
and his army finally triumph? The first question was settled in Philadelphia, July 41h, 1776. The second at Yorktown, October 19, 1781.
The study of arms and the practice thereof robbed the school-room
of its devotees, and the school-master of his patronage. During the war,
and for twenty years after, the subject of education received but little
attention. The lower classes, comprising the sturdy yeomanry of the
country, fancied that learning was ruinous to the young men of the soil;
the opulent and the aristocracy were the principal patrons of the few
select schools in the more populous places.
Educators. similar to Euclid, Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, did not
set forth the philosophy of letters till a later date.
The few designed for the law, divinity or the medical art prepared for
college or the university under some divine. Collegiate education was
thought to be a useless appendage, save perhaps to a teacher of the
classics in the city or large village. Lawyers, ministers, and the higher
class of teachers were the guardians of society.