This chapter explores education in the United States prior to the Revolution. It begins by exploring the multitude of Native American methods of educating their youth. It continues a roots-based examination of the European models of schooling brought into the United States by European colonists. It concludes with a discussion on the educational legacies of this period and recommendations for further reading.

1. 1.

   H.L. Mencken,H.A. Mencken Chrestomathy, Edited and Annotated by the Author (New York: Vintage Books, 1982).

2. 2.

   The New England Primer: Enlarged for the More Easy Attaining the True Reading of English to which is Added the Assembly of Divines Catechism (Boston: S. Kneeland & T. Green, 1727), n.p.

3. 3.

   Bernard Bailyn,Education in the Forming of American Society (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1972).

4. 4.

   Lawrence Cremin,American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

5. 5.

   Milton Gaither, “The History of North American Education, 15,000 BCE to 1491,”History of Education Quarterly 54, no. 3 (2014): 323–348.

6. 6.

   Clifton Johnson,Old-Time Schools and School-Books (New York: Dover Publications, 1963).

7. 7.

   Frank Klassen, “Persistence and Change in Eighteenth Century Colonial Education,”History of Education Quarterly 2, no. 2 (1962): 83–99.

8. 8.

   Carol Mattingly, “Black Robes/Good Habits: Jesuits and Early Women’s Education in North America,” inTraditions of Eloquence: The Jesuits and Modern Rhetorical Studies, eds. Cinthia Gannett and John C. Brereton (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016), 116–124.

9. 9.

   Samuel Eliot Morrison,The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England (New York: New York University Press 1956).

10. 10.

    Jon Reyhner and Jeanne Eder,American Indian Education: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017).

11. 11.

    John Edward Sadler,J.A. Comenius and the Concept of Universal Education (New York: Barnes and Noble Inc., 1966).

12. 12.

    Joel Spring,Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009).

Authors and Affiliations

1. Gillham Hall 5000-C, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, USA

   Edward Janak

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Correspondence toEdward Janak.

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