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The Development of a Curriculum in the Early American Colleges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Joe W. Kraus
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Extract

The early American colleges were smaller and poorer counterparts of the universities of Great Britain, rather than indigenous institutions, and the mother country was the source of their curriculum. At Cambridge University, which became the intellectual center of the Puritan movement, the curriculum of studies had evolved from the medieval trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music) and from the three philosophies (natural, moral, mental). But interest in mathematics had dwindled by 1700, and the study of classical authors was revived. The universities were still governed by the Elizabethan statutes of 1561, which required that each student be proficient in rhetoric, logic, and philosophy, and that they be tested in these subjects by public disputations before being admitted to a degree. Beyond these requirements, the subjects to be studied were determined by a tutor, who was responsible for the four or five students assigned to him.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , June 1961 , pp. 64 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © 1961, University of Pittsburgh Press 

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References

Notes

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