Education In Colonial America

Many ideological, social, and economic forces shaped social development for colonial America. It's quite intriguing as to how only a fraction of young men attended college in the United States at one time. Attending college was recherché during the colonial time period in contrast to today, where attending college is so prominent in society. Even the offspring of colonial intellectuals, such as "Creasy" Mather, seldom attended college. Some of the first colleges ever established, such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, are now some of the most powerful and high-ranking universities the United States posses. It amusing as to how far these universities have developed and become some of the top universities in the world.

While most colonial children were deprived of a higher education, they had some opportunity for formal instruction which was offered by the local schools. In public schools today, religion is absent unless otherwise enrolled in catholic schools or private schools. For children of the colonial time period, they had no choice but to take part in Bible study and other religious activities. At first, I had to question how any of this was legally acceptable, then I realized that the constitution had yet to be established and there was no freedom of religion.
It must be noted how today, in our progressive society, we rarely follow the traditional roles that were once followed. At one time, men were the bread-winners and women stayed at home with their children, where in the post modern society we live in, those roles are deemed conservative and are unfilled and often