The Committee of Ten

Extract

The college-educated populations of colonial 18th- and 19th-century United States were reasonably well-versed in principles of elementary astronomy — perhaps not fully in spatial concepts of seasons and lunar phases, though they certainly had some correct ideas about their causes. Astronomy had found a niche in academies and in the public high schools that succeeded them. In 1838 an observatory was installed in a Philadelphia high school. The states turned to the academies and early high schools for the majority of their elementary teachers, so the teachers who completed high school in the 19th century had been taught the reasons for common astronomical phenomena and conveyed these reasons to children. Parental teaching reinforced what was taught in primary schools. Until the late 19th century, colleges continued to offer astronomy or natural philosophy as part of the general curriculum. It therefore seems that a cycle of astronomy teaching and learning rudimentary astronomy was in effect until the late 1900’s.