In The Revolution in Education Mortimer J. Adler and Milton Mayer devote some pages to the development of the modern concept of universal education. In this connection they make brief reference to the thought of J. J. Rousseau, in a passage which is so misleading that some comment is required.

Faced with the ubiquitous problem of financial solvency, Pennsylvania's denominational colleges, in the nineteenth century, adopted an unusual—and unsound—method of securing prepaid tuition. Temporary and permanent scholarships were sold at varying prices, frequently far below the normal charge for tuition, presumably on the assumption that the large sum of money so collected and invested would realize an income adequate to meet the operating expenses of the institution.

In this quotation is recorded the beginnings of the first successful effort to establish higher education within what came to be the continental United States. There may be some disagreement concerning the role of Master Harvard, but that there was an immediate involvement of religion in this educational undertaking is very obvious. There has been, however, no single interpretation of the role of religion in this the first of our colleges. Some students of the subject find here the beginnings of a narrow ecclesiastical training from which American higher education was to suffer for many decades. Others, on the contrary, see this as the origin of liberal education available to all acceptable students, bent on careers in both state and church.

The widely used reference work, Famous First Facts, states without qualification that “the first Bachelor of Music degree was granted June 7, 1876 by Boston University, Boston, Mass., to Charles Henry Morse,” and refers for authority for this statement to the Fourth Annual Report of Boston University.

Perhaps one of the mostly highly complex developments in the history of American higher education has been that of majoring, or the ever-growing specialization in the undergraduate curriculum. Certainly much of this has stemmed from the modern industrial revolution, which has produced a need for trained experts in a vast number of specialized fields. Institutions of higher learning have become divisive and differentiated, and the principle of election and the requirements of graduate schools have served as entering wedges for undergraduate concentration of studies in one or a few closely related subjects.

Regardless of the ups and downs of modern civilization, we are reasonably certain of the continued existence of public education for the rest of this century. During the past one hundred years the public schools have developed into one of the basic institutions in western culture. This is true for the totalitarian nations as well as for those which still claim allegiance to the democratic way of life. The effect of the public school program can no longer be thought of as being individualistic in nature, for the public school is the major agency for the transmission of the cultural heritage and for maintaining social order, as well as for offering the individual opportunity in the struggle for existence. In short, education has become institutionalized.

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.

In a noteworthy address delivered to the Fulton County, New York, Teachers' Institute in 1869, Miss Julia Colman, a temperance writer, stressed the need for school temperance instruction. During the next few years other spokesmen made similar appeals, and in 1873 the National Temperance Society officially advocated the introduction into public and private schools of a physiology textbook that would discuss the origin, nature, and effects upon the human system of alcohol. Between 1874 and 1878 the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) actively attempted to further the scientific temperance campaign by creating numerous departments and committees of work. Not until Mrs. Mary Hanchett Hunt assumed leadership, however, did the campaign receive disciplined direction.