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Benjamin Rush: His Theory of Republican Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Hyman Kuritz
Hyman Kuritz*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Albany
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Extract

How one assesses the characteristics, the major direction, and the role of republican education in the early national period is bound to be influenced by how one defines the kind of society in which it existed. The controversy still continuing among historians about the degree of democracy in the colonial and revolutionary eras has an important bearing on any estimate of what constituted republican education. This controversy revolves around such questions as: Did democracy exist in the colonial era or did it first emerge in the Jacksonian period? To what degree had hierarchy and status been broken down? Was there in fact a ruling elite or had it been dissolved by political democracy and a changing social structure? How much vertical mobility was there in allowing individuals to rise economically or to achieve political leadership?

Type
The New Republic II
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , Winter 1967 , pp. 432 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © 1967 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. The literature is growing on this subject but the main outlines can be discerned from the following: Bernard Bailyn, “Political Experience and Enlightenment Ideas in Eighteenth-Century America,” American Historical Review, LXVII (1962), 339-51; David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism. The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965), pp. xii-xv; Stuart Bruchey, The Roots of American Economic Growth, 1607-1861. An Essay in Social Causation (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965), pp. 157-65; Robert E. and B. Katherine Brown, Middle-Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691-1780 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1955); J. R. Pole, “Historians and the Problem of Early American Democracy,” American Historical Review, LXVII (1962), 626-46. Older studies make no truly clear distinction between republican education and democratic education. See Allan Hansen, Liberalism and American Education (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926); Ellwood P. Cubberley, The History of Education (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920), does not even have the word “republican” in the index. Edgar W. Knight, Education in the United States (2d rev. ed.; Boston: Ginn and Company, 1941), chap. 6; Newton Edwards and Herman G. Richey, The School in the American Social Order (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1947), chap. 7; H. G. Good, A History of American Education (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1956), chap. 3; Adolphe E. Meyer, An Educational History of the American People (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1957), chap. 6. An important recent corrective is Rush Welter, Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 30, 32-9. Fischer, op. cit., p. 4; Clinton Williamson, American Suffrage from Property to Democracy, 1760-1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), pp. 76-92. American Philosophy. The Early Schools (New York: Russell & Russell, 1907), p. 423. See also Riley's article, “Benjamin Rush, as Materialist and Realist,” Bulletin of The Johns Hopkins Hospital, XVIII (1907), 89-101. Benjamin Rush, An Enquiry into the Influence of Physical Causes upon the Moral Faculty (Philadelphia: privately printed, 1786). Hereafter cited as Moral Faculty. A reprint is in Blau, Joseph L. (ed.), American Philosophic Addresses, 1700-1900 (“Columbia Studies in American Culture, No. 17” [New York: Columbia University Press, 1946]), pp. 315-43. For a sketch of William Cullen, see Butterfield, L. H. (ed.), Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), I, 30, n. 1. Hereafter cited as Letters. Rush did not fully accept the premises of the Scottish philosophers. See “Thoughts on Common Sense,” in Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical (Philadelphia: T. and S. F. Bradford, 1798), p. 251. Hereafter cited as Essays. For the influence of the Scottish philosophy in the United States, see Russel Blaine Nye, The Cultural Life of the New Nation, 1776-1830 (“The New American Nation Series” [New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1960]), pp. 34-36; William Charvat, The Origins of American Critical Thought, 1800-1835 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936), pp. 29-41; Riley, op. cit., Bk. V, p. 18; Josiah Charles Trent, “Benjamin Rush in Edinburgh, 1766-1768,” in Ashworth Underwood, E. (ed. and coll.), Science, Medicine, and History; Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Practice Written in Honour of Charles Singer (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), II, 179-85. For an analysis of the Scottish philosophy, see Gladys Bryson, Men and Society: The Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945); S. A. Grave, The Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960).Google Scholar

6. Rush to John Adams, June 27, 1810; Rush to Thomas Jefferson, January 2, 1811, Letters, II, 1035, 1074-75.Google Scholar

7. Rush, Benjamin Medical Inquiries and Observations (3d ed., rev. and enl.; Philadelphia: J. Conrad, 1809), I, 33-34; Three Lectures upon Animal Life (Philadelphia: Dobson, 1799), p. 74. Hereafter cited as Animal Life. I have also used the excerpts from the 1809 edition of Animal Life in Paul Russell Anderson and Max Harold Fisch, Philosophy in America: From the Puritans to James with Representative Selections, Lamprecht, Sterling P. (ed.), (“The Century Philosophy Series” [New York: Appleton-Century, 1939]), pp. 277-92. The revisions from the 1799 edition are bracketed. Also helpful are Richard Harrison Shryock, Medicine and Society in America, 1660-1860 (“Anson G. Phelps Lectureship in Early American History” [New York: New York University Press, 1960]), pp. 68-69; Richard H. Shryock, “The Psychiatry of Benjamin Rush,” American Journal of Psychiatry, CI (1945), 429-32; Riley, op. cit., pp. 421-53.Google Scholar

8. Blau, op. cit., pp. 316–17; Moral Faculty, p. 5.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., p. 5; Blau, op. cit., pp. 317-23; Daniel Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948), pp. 35, 50 ff.Google Scholar

10. Nye, op. cit., pp. 34–36; Charvat, op. cit., pp. 29-35.Google Scholar

11. Rush, Benjamin “Observations upon the Study of Latin and Greek Language” (1791), Essays, pp. 49-50; “On the Education Proper to Qualify a Young Man for the Study of Medicine” (1792), Sixteen Introductory Lectures (Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1811), pp. 175-79; “A Defense of the Bible as a School Book” (1791)’ Essays, pp. 105-13.Google Scholar

12. Rush to Noah Webster, July 20, 1798; Rush to John Adams, April 13, 1790, Letters, II, 799, I, 545.Google Scholar

13. Rush, Benjamin “Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic,” Essays, p. 9; Nathan G. Goodman, Benjamin Rush, Physician and Citizen, 1746-1813 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1934), p. 309; Rush to John Adams, April 13, 1790; Rush to Thomas Jefferson, August 22, 1800, Letters, I, 545, II, 820-21.Google Scholar

14. An Eulogium, Intended to Perpetuate the Memory of David Ritten-house (Philadelphia: J. Ormrod and Conrad [1796]), pp. 26-27; “On the Character of Doctor Sydenham” (1793), Six Introductory Lectures (Philadelphia: John Conrad, 1801), pp. 60-61; Blau, op. cit., p. 342; Rush to Julia Stockton, September 7, 1788, cited in Goodman, op. cit., p. 318.Google Scholar

15. Anderson and Fisch, op. cit., p. 291.Google Scholar

16. Rush, Essays, p. 50.Google Scholar

17. Corner, George W. (ed.), The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, His “Travels Through Life” Together with His Commonplace Book for 1780-1813 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948), pp. 339–40. On his independence from doctrinal quarrels, see, Rush to John Adams, April 5, 1808, Letters, II, 962-63.Google Scholar

18. Boorstin, op. cit., p. 231.Google Scholar

19. Rush, Benjamin “Hints for Establishing a College in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania” (1782), in Harry G. Good, Benjamin Rush and His Services to American Education (Berne, Ind.: Witness Press, 1918), p. 102; Goodman, op. cit., p. 322; Rush to Armstrong, March 19, 1783; Rush to John King, April 2, 1783; Rush to Granville Sharp, April 27, 1784, Letters, I, 294-95, 298-99, 330-31; “To the Citizens of Pennsylvania of German Birth and Extraction: Proposal of a German College” (1785), Letters, I, 364. For the problems of pluralistic establishment, see Mark DeWolfe Howe, The Garden and the Wilderness. Religion and Government in American Constitutional History (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1965), chap. 2.Google Scholar

20. Rush to Richard Price, May 25, 1786, Letters, I, 388-89.Google Scholar

21. Animal Life, pp. 58-59, 62.Google Scholar

22. Rush, Essays, p. 17.Google Scholar

23. “On the Defects of the Confederation” (1777), Runes, Dagobert D. (ed.), The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush (New York: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1947), p. 30; “An Address to the people of the United States” (1787), American Museum, I, No. 1 (January 1787), 11.Google Scholar

24. Goodman, op. cit., pp. 309–11.Google Scholar

25. The two main sources for Rush's views on amusements are: “Thoughts upon the Amusements and Punishments Which Are Proper for Schools” (1790), Essays, pp. 57-74; reprinted in Runes, op. cit., pp. 106-16; and “To the Ministers of the Gospel of All Denominations: An Address upon Subjects Interesting to Morals” (1788), Letters, I, 461-67. Rush also looked upon “useless” activities as a drain upon the mind. “On the Influence of Physical Causes in Promoting an Increase of the Strength and Activity of the Intellectual Faculties of the Mind” (1799), Six Introductory Lectures, p. 117; Animal Life, p. 67; Goodman, op. cit., p. 284 ff; Charvat, op. cit., pp. 15-16.Google Scholar

26. Rush, Benjamin “Information to Europeans Who Are Disposed to Migrate to the United States of America” (1790), Essays, p. 204.Google Scholar

27. Letters, I, 462-64, 467, n. 3; Essays, pp. 60-68; “To Andrew Brown: Directions for Conducting a Newspaper in Such a Manner as to Make it Innocent, Useful, and Entertaining,” October 1, 1788, Letters, I, 487-89.Google Scholar

28. Corner, op. cit., p. 33.Google Scholar

29. Rush, Essays, p. 59.Google Scholar

30. Letters, I, 464.Google Scholar

31. Ibid. Rush helped to organize the first Sunday school in Philadelphia in 1791. Rush to Jeremy Belknap, January 5, 1791, Letters, I, 573, n. 6, 467, n. 4, 574.Google Scholar

32. May 25, 1786, Letters, I, 388-89. Rush's most important statements on education are: A Plan for the Establishment of Public Schools and the Diffusion of Knowledge in Pennsylvania: To Which Are Added Thoughts upon the Mode of Education, Proper in a Republic. Addressed to the Legislature and Citizens of the State (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1786). For its history see, Letters, I, 387, n. 3. The two parts are in Essays, pp. 1-6, 6-20. Hereafter cited as Mode of Education. Google Scholar

33. “To the Citizens of Philadelphia: A Plan for Free Schools” (1787), Letters, I, 412-13; Good, op. cit., p. 221.Google Scholar

34. June 27, 1810, Letters, II, 1053.Google Scholar

35. Letters, I, 415, n. 1.Google Scholar

36. Mode of Education, pp. 13, 15; Essays, pp. 47-48.Google Scholar

37. Mode of Education, pp. 15-19; “On the Influence of Physical Causes in Promoting an Increase of the Strength and Activity of the Intellectual Faculties of the Mind” (1799), Six Introductory Lectures, pp. 104-5; Essays, pp. 45-49; Hansen, op. cit., pp. 50-57.Google Scholar

38. Rush to Walter Minto, March 24, 1792, Letters, I, 613, n. 1, 622; Mode of Education, p. 15.Google Scholar

39. “Sermons to Gentlemen on Temperance and Exercise” (1772), Runes, op. cit., p. 369; Goodman, op. cit., p. 37; Mode of Education, p. 13.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., pp. 13-14.Google Scholar

41. Blau, op. cit., p. 323.Google Scholar

42. Six Introductory Lectures, pp. 105-6, 110-14; Riley, op. cit., p. 92.Google Scholar

43. Six Introductory Lectures, pp. 109-10.Google Scholar

44. Riley, op. cit., p. 427.Google Scholar

45. Six Introductory Lectures, p. 115-16.Google Scholar

46. Ibid., p. 108.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., pp. 106-7; 358-59.Google Scholar

48. Sixteen Introductory Lectures, pp. 340-62.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., p. 341.Google Scholar

50. Ibid., pp. 345-46, 348-49.Google Scholar

51. From Boorstin's title, The Lost World…Google Scholar

52. Bruner, Jerome S. Toward a Theory of Instruction (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965); The Process of Education (New York: Random House, Inc.; Vintage Books, 1960), chap. 3.Google Scholar

53. Goodman, op. cit., p. 44.Google Scholar

54. “Observations on the Government of Pennsvlvania” (1777), Runes, op. cit., p. 63.Google Scholar

55. Boorstin, op. cit., pp. 44, 50 ff.Google Scholar

56. Fischer, op. cit., p. 49.Google Scholar