Old Blue A Grand Experiment by David Chase
Farrar recruited the leading pedagogue of the day, Samuel Reed Hall, to run the Seminary. Hall had just published Lectures on School-Keeping, the first teacher training
The Seminary’s teaching methods were equally progressive. Hall used objects to teach and promoted hands-on learning. As a student in Barton’s surveying class, Olmsted mapped the campus. Student teachers honed their craft in a model school. Describing the Seminary for Annals of Education, an observer wrote in 1832: Much is accomplished by familiar, conversational lectures, giving the student ample opportunity for asking questions, suggesting doubts,
Alas, just as philanthropy made the English Academy & Teachers Seminary a reality, so it was the lack of major new gifts that spelled its end. The trustees launched the Seminary hopefully, anticipating future support, but gifts were few, and in 1842, the Seminary ceased to exist. But a portion of its curriculum survived. It formed the core of the English (later the Scientific) Department of Phillips Academy, which continued English Academy as a distinct academic & Teachers Seminary (1830) track at Andover into the 20th century.
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etc. There is nothing of that mere memory work which is so often witnessed in our schools. Methods are pursued in every exercise which give employment to the whole intellect. But what rendered this Seminary most deeply interesting to me was the conviction, which I was unable to resist, that all its methods were eminently adapted to the development and formation of character. May we not hope that a knowledge of what is effected at Andover will lead to the establishment of similar schools? r ic h
manual. An immediate success, the State of New York ordered 10,000 copies. Hall was joined by teachers of bookkeeping, mineralogy, electricity, writing, mathematics, chemistry—a host of subjects. Frederick Barton taught surveying and engineering; his star pupil, Frederick Law Olmsted, became America’s most famous landscape architect. Alonzo Gray taught natural history and husbandry. While at Andover, Gray published Scientific & Practical Agriculture. Gray’s courses are said to have been the first of their kind, predating establishment of agricultural colleges by decades.
ning Labortor y • Niswarth • Accelerate, Challeng e, E n
As its name implies, the English Academy & Teachers Seminary was to have a dual purpose: “To educate Instructors of common and other Schools…[and] practical men, for all the departments of common life…. Scholars may attend the School for any length of time, from one term to six years. Individuals may enter a class and pursue a particular study, or may attend any of the Lectures, without becoming members of the school.”
English Academy & Teachers Seminary building (ca. 1860)
Lan g ua ge Le ar
Like the original school, the Seminary came into being thanks to philanthropy. The late president of the board, Williams Phillips II, left an unrestricted bequest of $15,000 to the trustees in 1827. Confident they possessed sufficient funds to operate the classical academy, the trustees pondered how to make use of this windfall. Treasurer Samuel Farrar persuaded them to create a second school on campus, one entirely unlike the original.
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The “take” on Andover during the early 19th century is that it was a bastion of conservatism. The “classical academy” continued unchanged, devoted to Latin and Greek and little else, taught in the most traditional way. But it was joined for a dozen years by a radical new school that gained national attention, the English Academy & Teachers Seminary opened in 1830.
e nd Ge r r fo nte Andover | Winter e2010 33 Ce c a Br