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Socialization in Colonial New England - American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783, by Lawrence Cremin. New York: Harper & Row, 1970. 688 + xiv pp. $15.00; $4.45 (paper).

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2017

Ronald D. Cohen
Ronald D. Cohen*
Affiliation:
Indiana University Northwest
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Abstract

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Type
Essay Review IV
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , Spring 1973 , pp. 73 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1 Cremin, Lawrence, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (New York, 1970), p. xiii (hereafter cited as Cremin).Google Scholar

2 Clausen, John A., ed., Socialization and Society (Boston, 1968), p. 3.Google Scholar

3 Nisbet, Robert A., The Social Bond: An Introduction to the Study of Society (New York, 1970), p. 225. See also Elkin, Frederick, The Child and Society: The Process of Socialization (New York, 1960).Google Scholar

4 Although Cremin's book covers all of the English mainland colonies, my discussion will be limited to the New England colonies because most of the important recent literature has dealt with them.Google Scholar

5 For the English story see Vaughan, Alden T., New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620–1675 (Boston, 1965); for the French see Cornelius J. Jaenen, “The Meeting of the French and Amerindians in the 17th Century,” unpublished paper read at the Northern Great Plains History Conference, Collegeville, Minnesota, November 1969 (mimeo). On ethnic purity in New England see Zuckerman, Michael, Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1970), pp. 106–111.Google Scholar

6 See Jordan, Winthrop, White Over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1968); Greene, Lorenzo J., The Negro in Colonial New England (New York, 1942).Google Scholar

7 Bailyn, Bernard, Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1960), p. 73.Google Scholar

8 Jordan, , White Over Black, p. 45.Google Scholar

9 Cremin, , p. 136.Google Scholar

10 Cremin, , p. 485.Google Scholar

11 Greven, , Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, N.Y., 1970), pp. 31–37, 98–99, 117–122, 206–210, 272–274. For a contrary view see Henretta, James A., “The Morphology of New England Society in the Colonial Period,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, II (Autumn 1971), 397–398.Google Scholar

12 Powell, Sumner C., Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town (Middletown, Conn., 1963), chaps. 8–9.Google Scholar

13 Dunn, Richard S., Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (Princeton, N.J., 1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Breen, , The Character of the Good Ruler: Puritan Political Ideas in New England, 1630–1730 (New Haven, 1970), p. 87.Google Scholar

15 Rutman, , American Puritanism: Faith and Practice, paperback ed. (Philadelphia, 1970), pp. 114–123.Google Scholar

16 Rutman, Darrett B., Winthrop's Boston: A Portrait of a Puritan Town, 1630–1649 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1965), pp. 141–156; Powell, Puritan Village; Lockridge, Kenneth A., A New England Town: The First Hundred Years, Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636–1736 (New York, 1970), chap. 2; Lockridge, “The History of a Puritan Church, 1637–1736,” New England Quarterly, XL (September 1967), 399–424.Google Scholar

17 Pope, Robert G., The Half-Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New England (Princeton, N.J., 1969), pp. 261, 275; Pope, , “New England Versus the New England Mind: The Myth of Declension,” Journal of Social History, III (Winter 1969–70), 95–108.Google Scholar

18 On the Great Awakening see Bumstead, J. M., “What Must I Do To Be Saved? A Consideration of Recent Writings on the Great Awakening in Colonial America,” Canadian Association for American Studies Bulletin, IV (1969), esp. 43–46, 51–53; Walsh, James, “The Great Awakening in the First Congregational Church of Woodbury, Connecticut,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., XXVIII (October 1971), 543–562.Google Scholar

19 Bushman, Richard L., From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. 231, and see part 4 in general on this point. Compare Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms, pp. 57–65.Google Scholar

20 Zuckerman, , Peaceable Kingdoms, p. 123.Google Scholar

21 Lockridge, , A New England Town, chap. 3; Breen, Timothy H., “Who Governs: The Town Franchise in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., XXVII (July 1970), 460–474; Zuckerman, , Peaceable Kingdoms, passim.Google Scholar

22 Rutman, , Winthrop's Boston; Powell, Puritan Village. For Boston in the eighteenth century see G. B. Warden, Boston, 1689–1776 (Boston, 1970).Google Scholar

23 Lockridge, , A New England Town, p. 93, and part 2 in general; Cook, Edward M., “Social Behavior and Changing Values in Dedham, Massachusetts, 1700 to 1775,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., XXVII (October 1970), 546–580; Greven, , Four Generations; Charles Grant, Democracy in the Connecticut Frontier Town of Kent (New York, 1961); Waters, John H. Jr., The Otis Family in Provincial and Revolutionary Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1968); Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee, part 5. Much of this splintering occurred because of or during the Great Awakening; see, for example, Goen, C. C., Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740–1800: Strict Congregationalists and Separate Baptists in the Great Awakening (New Haven, 1962), and Bumsted, J. M., “Revivalism and Separatism in New England: The First Society of Norwich, Connecticut, as a Case Study,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., XXIV (October 1967), 588–612.Google Scholar

24 James, , “Colonial Rhode Island and the Beginnings of the Liberal Rationalized State,” Richter, Melvin, ed., Essays in Theory and History: An Approach to the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), p. 178, and pp. 165–185 in general. See also Lockridge, , A New England Town, p. 137. Precisely the opposite view is in Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms, chap. 1.Google Scholar

25 Henretta, , “The Morphology of New England Society in the Colonial Period,” 397. His interpretation conflicts with my own reading of the books he is reviewing.Google Scholar

26 Cremin, p. 544.Google Scholar

27 Cremin, p. 549.Google Scholar

28 Zuckerman, , Peaceable Kingdoms, p. 116.Google Scholar

29 See, for instance, Erikson, Kai T., Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (New York, 1966); Cohen, Ronald D., “Church and State in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts: Another Look at the Antinomian Controversy, 1637–1640,” Journal of Church and State, XII (Autumn 1970), 475–494.Google Scholar

30 Zuckerman, , Peaceable Kingdoms, pp. 47–48. He does not believe this was an impediment to achieving order and stability, however.Google Scholar

31 Eisenstadt, , From Generation to Generation: Age Groups and Social Structure (Glencoe, Ill., 1956), p. 30.Google Scholar

32 Demos, John, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York, 1970), p. 149, and in general pp. 146–151.Google Scholar

33 See Greven, , Four Generations; Lockridge, A New England Town; Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms, pp. 72–81; Demos, A Little Commonwealth. For the European background of these attitudes see Philippe Aries (Trans. Robert Baldick), Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York, 1962), and Pinchbeck, Ivy and Hewitt, Margaret, Children in English Society, Volume I: From Tudor Times to the Eighteenth Century (London, 1969).Google Scholar

34 Cremin, p. 550.Google Scholar

35 Warden, , Boston, 1689–1776; Maier, , “Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteenth-Century America,” William and Mary Quarterly, XXVII (January 1970), 3–35. For social stratification see Nash, Gary B., ed., Class and Society in Early America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1970), which contains important primary as well as secondary material.Google Scholar

36 Greene, , “Search for Identity: An Interpretation of the Meaning of Selected Patterns of Social Response in Eighteenth-Century America,” Journal of Social History, III (Spring 1970), 190–191, 218, and passim.Google Scholar

37 I have only dealt with the New England colonies, supposedly the most homogenous and stable of the colonies. It seems apparent that if what I say is true for them, it is doubly true for the more factious and heterogenous middle and southern colonies, where, for instance, the schools were certainly less important.Google Scholar