3; Benjamin Franklin and the leather-apron men; The History of American education

You may have wondered. Why I gave to this lecture. The title of Franklin and the leather apron men. The reason is simple. It was the leather apron men. The artisans and tradesmen of Philadelphia the small shopkeepers and business men. The printers. Blacksmith. Candle makers stave masters from among whom Franklin came for whom he toiled and who came to look up to him as their model. These where the rising people as Franklin called them for whom he proposed an education that was at once to be useful and on a mental and education. Eminently practical and devoid of the Latin scholarship pursued in the colleges and preparatory schools of the colonies. This practical useful education intended to permit the

people to rise in the social order as Franklin himself did became in the 19th century the gateway and the means to social advance for millions of Americans. It became the universally acclaimed cure all. For the ills that befell the country and its citizens. It became a central ingredient perhaps even the central ingredient of the American way of life. And Franklin as the patron saint of the gospel of education became in our minds the representative of and profit for the great American middle class. For what Europeans would call the Border was easy. But Franklin was as Carl Becker wrote in his perceptive beautiful little study. A many sided and many facets of

man. He appeared on the scene as a man of the people and he became known as such in his own day the world over. Not everyone after all finds his likeness painted on coffee cups and carved into tobacco pipes. He appeared first as I said as a man of the people. But he was equally at home among aristocrats and diplomats among scholars and scientists. And if we may trust his own words and that by the way we may want to do only with our skepticism and critical faculties that peak alertness. But if a man trust his own words he found their company the company of the aristocrats and the diplomats the scholars and the scientists far more congenial far more relaxing than that of his fellow townspeople in

Philadelphia. Men who were as he put it free and easy easy in the material circumstances of their lives and therefore free to think and speak and do as they pleased. Men who were free and easy. Where therefore also disinterest. Were above the necessities of scheming and manipulating of making out and getting ahead among them. Franklin could relax enjoy and with fresh unself No wonder then that we encounter Franklin in many different masks and costumes. No wonder that is interpreted us appears so often to talk or write about different persons all called Benjamin Franklin. Take for example the English novelist and critic D.H.

Lawrence the author perhaps best known to you as the writer of Lady Chatterley's Lover and his Serbian masterpiece of literary criticism. His studies in classic American literature. He fast his glance on the shallowness and superficial reality of Franklin's family's homes Bon wisdom his observations are quite to the point. And as I shall show you deceptively revealing. But they touch on one side of Franklin only. Similarly the American historian called decorous characterization of the older Franklin is you should hear a moving and even beautiful summation of Franklin Franklin and the human being and the sage.

But even Becker cannot undo Lawrence critique. Now obviously I do not intend to improve on either Lawrence or Becker. I shall try to usually portrays these two men have presented and with their help and with the help of Franklin's own writings. Keep my attention on Franklin as a key figure in the shaping and expressing of American ways and views of education. Now as you know from the autobiography. Of. Franklin's educational experience and come past both the homogeneous society of early 18th century Boston and the heterogeneous cosmopolitan atmosphere of made 18th century Philadelphia. In his work as Pennsylvania's agent in London

and later as peace commissioner in Paris Franklin was the new worlds ambassador to the old. Both at home and abroad. He was acclaimed as the patron saint of a rising people. When he left New England for Philadelphia and London and Paris he fig. figuratively slew his father. That is you would check that the rigid and dogmatic conformity of his Puritan and Cistus and the tradition bound canons of the Latin the scholars in Pennsylvania he responded to the great awakening that colony wide revival of and through the asked the religion he responded to they had religion 80 of a cosmopolitan population and he

endorsed toleration accommodation and the philosophy of live and let live. Even so Franklin was no radical reformer. He favored the placement or as the sociologist would say a circulation of the elites not the abolition or the expropriation. He favored the leather apron men and young entrepreneur of the rising middle classes of enterprise and commerce over both the local Philadelphia talk recy family and wealth. And over the heavily German population in the rule hinterlands of Pennsylvania in education therefore he wanted to replace a Latin based curriculum with one based on science and the practical

arts. And a good dose of plain and simple three R's for the country people in all these ways Franklin was a model a prototype for the great American middle class. But as I mentioned before for himself he preferred the company of an elite of talent and leisure. The Society of the free and easy. You know if he has been so often portrayed. As a of representative model American obvious time it does become pertinent to consider the question that was asked once by a French contemporary of Franklin's who lived for a while in the United States. The question What then is the American There's new man there for here to the Frenchman Hector St. John the cry of courage and I shall give you now.

D.H. Lawrence answer to traffickers question. And answer which he gave by a reference to Benjamin Franklin. And this is how Lawrence answered. Oh Daddy Frank Bunn will tell you. Here to rig him up for you. The pat on American Franklin was the first downright American he knew what he was about. The sharp little man he set up the first dummy American. Which one though we may Astro for instance Franklin set up the up and coming. Odd isn't business men of the rising people or the self-made scientists call a millionaire of the free and easy. Well for one answer. Let us turn to Franklin himself. Now as you will recall from reading the autobiography

at the age of 12 he had been apprentice to his brother James as a printer. Four years later at the age 16 Benjamin made his entry into literature. You remember the story as a printer's devil as an apprentice in his brother's shop. He became envious of all those writings that other people submitted to the paper and he decided to try to sell and he did so anonymously. He slipped it under the door nobody knowing who the author was and found to his great delight that the people there in the office felt this with with printing and thus his silence do good. Its Ace did indeed appear in the New England current in the first issue of the site as do with papers came out in April the second seven in twenty two. The story is remarkable. It begins

just like John Winthrop Sermon on the Arbella in the middle of the Atlantic. The great passage from the Old World to the new. Here's how Benjamin writes about this. My entrance into this troublesome world. Was attended with the death of my father. A misfortune which the why was not then capable of knowing. I shall never be able to forget. For Is he poor man stood up on the deck rejoicing at my birth. A merciless wave ended the ship. And in one moment carried him beyond reprieve. The US was the first day which I saw the last day that was seen by my father and thus was my disconsolate mother at once made both a parent and a

widow. Now I submit to you this is a remarkable story. Heres this boy of sixteen recreating in effect the myth of America. The new man being born in the middle of the ocean the father the old man dying. O story of creation and recreation in the founding of America by these 16 year old boy in the story of science do good. But the member of this stir is to meditate by silence do good and silence do good. Is the girl why a girl. Why did Benjamin take on the form hero of a girl. He was after all a boy. Well there was a point to it of course and the point was that in Benjamin's view girls as women represented the downtrodden. The weak of the earth not the successful the aggressive male. He wanted

to be in to appear the spokesman for the common people for the leather apron meant for the orphans the women the poor and the young. For all of those who were going to be powerless. And that is how he wanted to appear. That is how he made his entry into literature. And using the daughter that permitted Benjamin to contrast the innocence and purity of country life into which side and soon enters when she lands in America where she can portray herself as a kind of quote a haughty lover of the clergy a mortal enemy to arbitrary government. And you can contrast this innocence this freedom loving all these great values with the idleness the ignorance the corruption the bribery. Now go. Of the Harvard students whom he portrays

as great corruptness of women and then he takes off in his analysis of Harvard of the students who are there studying law theology medicine and being prepared for the professions. And this is what he has to say about them. The most dangerous hypocrite in a Commonwealth is one who leaves the gospel for the sake of the law. A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat the whole country with his ability and then destroy them under color of law. That's the way Benjamin first appears. Now his next step and his first really open success after all he was still anonymous was decided to do with papers. His first Open success occurred when his brother the publisher was jailed. And Benjamin was made publisher of The Current and his brother top officially his indenture Evo is no longer now in a prince's Apprentice but

secretly wrote a new one made a private contact with him. It was at this point that Benjamin couldn't stand anymore and fled to Philadelphia. And as you may recall you reports this whole episode and season is a strange mixture of success joy success indignation over the injustice done him by the second contract and guilt over his having run away the fact he calls his running away his first erotic his first ever and begins to contemplate the relation of success which he obviously had enjoyed being made publisher to wrongdoing and guilt. And he sees the interconnection between the three. And he felt that he in particular having run away and had broken the unwritten law of human relations. That is where his guilt arose and for time now there after he seeks to

deny this predicament but denying precisely this element of human obligation called decency. Call it honesty or call it a truth as simply an interpersonal relations. He denies it so it doesn't matter doesn't exist it shouldn't be there. By staking his all on code calculating rationality that is the clever Benjamin. That's the way how you run the world and that is you movie a call to was his entry. He's becoming famous in London and his next great step out into the world. When you gain entry into the Literary Society of London with his precocious dissertation on liberty and Nessus necessity pleasure and pain. What he had done there was essentially to take his old Calvinist inheritance the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. That it's already in the stars as it were from the very beginning in the mind of God what would happen to you. Nothing what you

do has any influence on it. Everything happens by necessity and that therefore he argues. Owning up now was sending it in Calvinist theology. But in the language of rationality of a reasonable world. But if that is so then there is no such thing as vice or virtue. Because you do what you must do and there's no point to blame you in no point to praise you. And there also is neither guilt nor blame. The only thing that human beings have left under that type of living is a desire to avoid pain and maximize pleasure. Everything is governed by strict necessity. We live in a rational universe with neither miracles nor mysteries and we judge things by the way the appear to us that was in the eighteenth century a whirl usually called Deism and it was this deistic outlook that Franklin put tended at least to have adopted it.

But his conscience as he tows in the autobiography would not let him rest. There was something wrong with this doctor and he felt certainly that the greatest liability of this doctrine was the absence of virtue and vice. If there was no virtue in Vice there was no account to blame no account to praise. How could human beings grow without with one another. And it comes to that remarkable statement where he said do you ism though it might be true is not very useful. Reasoning by necessity he now begins to argue is a rationalization. It's not the exercise of reason in that in his own way he gives us as examples where instance he says it is. It is unworthy of a man to argue that he likes a speckled axe best when he is tired of shining

it. Or he says to say that a perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being ended and hated. And that a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself to keep his friends in countenance. That he says comes from something that pretended to be reason it isn't reason you know any pretense. And you sums it all up again in the auto autobiography by saying I grew convinced that truth sincerity and integrity in dealings between men and men were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life. Thus he came to object after all the deterministic philosophies of Calvinism and rationalism and deism and came to reject their Socratic governing classes of ministers and lawyers from whom he had heard these arguments and proposed instead a utilitarian philosophy. They use a

philosophy of usefulness one which recognizes virtue and vice. And one which had adopted a theology of toleration. Of live and let live one in short that was adapted. To the needs of the rising people of tradesmen and merchants to the small boys Rosy of heterogeneous Philadelphia. And again in the autobiography you find him drawing up his last conclusions on this particular phase in his life by his creed which you have seen. I'd like to read this creed to you here. You can hear it once more. And at the same time gave you the little comments side remarks as it were that D.H. Lawrence gave when he read Franklin's creed. I think you will have no difficulties to figure out who says what and which is which. So here comes Benjamin and then comes Lawrence Benjamin saying

there is one God who made all things. And I'm saying. But Benjamin made him. He governs the world by his providence. Benjamin knowing all about Providence. He ought to be worshiped by adoration prayer and thanksgiving which costs nothing but that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man. God having no choice in the matter. That the soul is immortal. You see why in the next clause and that God will certainly Ward virtue and punish vice. Either here or there after. Now says Lawrence. If Mr Andrew Carnegie or any other millionaire had wished to invent a god to suit his ends

he could not have done better. Benjamin did it for him in the eighteenth century. God is the supreme servant of men who want to get on. To produce Providence the provider. The heavenly storekeeper the everlasting want to make. Well you might ask is this a fair portrayal. And if it is not what is the point the Franklins lost for like himself was quite explicit about it. If life among human beings consisted indeed of the mutual obligations humans owe each other while on earth. Then the point of it all was that the duty of people was to do good to other people to do good to man as frank and put it and the obligations that had to be observed had

better be observed here on Earth and not in another world. As he said it I had contrived to fix them here on Earth. Now there again in his own way a little example sprinkled in just to make that concrete what he meant by it. One of it comes from his letter in 1757 to his wife Debbie after he had arrived in England after a storm tossed pathogen near catastrophe and he writes to her saying where where I. A Roman Catholic. Perhaps I should on this occasion vowed to build a chapel to some St.. But as I am not if I were to Baal at all. It should be to build a lighthouse. Or the other story. When he welcomed the great English revivalist preacher Methodist white head George White who was travelling through the colonies and support of the great

awakening giving these great revivalist meetings in Franklin as you could gather was not too impressed with what Bible is and things of that kind. But George white head was a great personage and he welcomed them in Philadelphia in fact he put him up in his own house and let him stay there while as long as he wanted to be. And White the elder was duly impressed and grateful. And when it came time to leave he shook Benjamin's hand and thanked him for Christ's sake for having picked I'd taken him up and Benjamin looked him straight in the eye and said I did not do it for Christ sake but for your sake sir. Well the last of the obligations that Franklin wanted to fix on earth what were they what did he fix. And seven twenty seven. The 21 year old founded the Leather Apron Club. Which is perhaps in the literature now better known as a John Doe

which became its later name. A lot like society of the tradesmen the small entrepreneur the artisans for mutual improvement as its founding document read with the aim of wealth and virtue for its members. And 70 31 then 25 of the old join St. John's Lodge of Philadelphia. One of the earliest Mason freemason societies in the in the then colonies and a short three years later he becomes the grand master of Pennsylvania and a moving power behind all the charitable the philanthropist and through OPIC activities the lodge. And then. Most important 749. He is among the founders of the Academy of Philadelphia. That institution that a few years later became the College of Philadelphia and today is the University of Pennsylvania. This academy has

Franklin Sawyer it. Was meant for the children of the leather apron men crowed to learn those things that are likely to be most useful and most ornamental regard being had for the several professions for which they are intended. That was his creation to allow a means for the children of the people he cared for to make their way into the world. You know I quote him in his first writings about the Academy you would come out of the school fit for learning any business calling or profession except. Such were in the languages are required. And that of course is the reference again to Latin and Greek. And though I'm acquainted with any ancient or foreign tongue they are the youths will be masters of their own which is of more immediate and gentle use and then an afterthought he adds that a number of the poor sort would also here

by be qualified to act as a schoolmaster us in the country. That is the kind of secondary interest to him. But primarily the idea was to create a new kind of school that did not exist before as you know the choices were a lot apparent to re school or some kind of private teaching that might go on by either a professional type of teacher or in the neighborhood. But here a publicly supported school based on the city of Philadelphia for the sons of the rising middle classes. The question now is did he succeed. Did you succeed in his intent through this new departure to open up an avenue for the children of the small tradesman's to make their way into the world. And the first disappointment that hit him here was that among the trustees he remained in the minority in the minority asking for the English school

as the most important part of this academy. The rest of the trustees opposed him in this and the Latin School. That is to say the old traditional approach after all got the lion's share of the support and attention. Franklin was deeply disappointed about it. It 10 years later we have some insight into this when he wrote to his for friend Ken Asli in 1759. In retrospect the trustees he wrote had reaped the full advantage of my head heart hands and purse in getting through the first difficulties of the design. And when they thought they could do without me they laid me aside. Here isn't a sense of frankness to the disappointment and his frustrations with the snubs that he encountered from the Philadelphia establishment. But even then he refused to make curricular reform what he had in fact intended to do. A weapon

of class conflict. He refused to make himself an agitator for the overthrow of the establishment. Instead he turned to create his own establishment to push bare indeed for what became the society of the free and easy for the company of the virtual we see as they were called an 18th century language. The scholars the scientists the people interested in literature the men and women of letters interested in philosophy. People who stood above the agitations the frustrations and the treacheries of ordinary daily intercourse among human beings related to politics related to economic affairs of every day. It is I think a significance to note that in the philosophical citee. He gathered in Philadelphia his old friends from the

jointer that was after all the group you could always rely on. And with them he started founded the Philosophical Society. But in the other cities of the colonies New York Baltimore Boston and abroad London Paris among the then corresponding members. He brought together the leading members of society in the colonies landholding crown officials important merchants national leaders and mainly scientists and some diplomats in the cities abroad. The Philosophical Society thus became a select company of scholars experimentalists scientists of equal rank if you will where the Royal Society in England and similar national societies in other countries. All modeled as it were after Francis Bacon's house of Solomon which in a treatise written then 16 24 he had proposed Bacon had proposed as a model by which scholars and

scientists could make their greatest contributions to societies. It is that in that context and in that company that we find frankly disillusioned in a certain sense with humanity skip the love and all with a little of the distance from politics placed his faith in nature and science and placed his alliance and people who like him meant to devote their lives to that dispassion is to search for the truth in nature and through science. Now no one as far as I know has observed this more trenchantly than call Becker whom I mentioned earlier who described Franklin skepticism. Or shall we perhaps say his human wisdom. And in fragments we action to the new constitution and to the Declaration of Independence.

And you also read something I think insightful to say about Franklin's commitment to the pursuit of science. Let me at some length give you some quotations here. Backus presentation of these points and I quote him now. Although the Constitution was not to his liking Frank inertia in his inimitable manner that it be unanimously adopted. FRANKLIN As you know with a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve but I am not sure I shall never approve them. The older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment. Though many persons think highly of their own infallibility few express it so naturally as a certain French lady

who said. I don't know how it happened sister but I meet with nobody but myself was always in the right in the neck and was too sure of myself. On the whole sir I could not help expressing a wish that every member of the convention would with me on this occasion doubt the little of his own infallibility and to make manifest our unanimity put his name to the instrument. And in another paragraph coming back to this same point of frankness attitudinal now inhalation of the decoration. Becker writes puts it this way. The secret of Franklin's amazing capacity for assimilating experience without being warped or discolored by it is perhaps to be found in his disposition to take life

with infinite zest. And yet with a humorous detachment. Always immersed in affairs. He seems never completely absorbed by them. Mastering easily whatever comes as way there remain powers in reserve never wholly engaged. It has been said that Franklin was not entrusted with the task of writing the Declaration of Independence for fear he might conceal a joke in the middle of it. Then this. Oh it's a profound symbolic truth. In all of Franklin's dealing with men and affairs genuine sincere loyal as he surely was one feels that he is never with us not wholly committed some thought remains on communicated some penetrating ups evasion is held in reserve in spite of its already attention to the business in hand. There is something casual

about his official dispatch of it. He manages somehow to remain aloof a spectator still with amiable curiosity watching himself functioning effectively in the world. After all men were but should have been needing to be cajoled affairs a game not to be played without finesse. It was then about then on that placid countenance even at the signing of the great decoration the bland smile which seems to say this is an interesting a less even unnecessary game. And we are playing it well according to all the rules. But men being what they are it is perhaps best not to inquire too curiously what its ultimate significance may be.

And then because shifts to the other area the science says one exception there was science one activity which Franklin pursued without outward prompting from some compelling impulse. One activity for which he never wished to retire to which he would willingly have devoted every odd day or hour. Even in the midst of the exacting duties and heavy the sponsibility of his public career science was after all the one mistress to whom he gave himself without reserve and served neither from a sense of duty nor for any practical purpose. Nature alone. Met him on equal terms with the disinterestedness matching his own. Needing not to be cajoled or manage with fitness nature enlisted in the solution of her problems the full power of his mind in dealing with nature he could be as he could not be in dealing with men in the face. And

tie only sincere. Pacific objective rational could speak his whole thought without reservation with no suggestion of a stupendous cosmic joke concealed in the premises. How then are we to see Benjamin Franklin. I introduced him as a spokesman for the rising middle class and as prophet of the American border was he who was in a most commitment nonetheless belong to the international scientific elite and scholarly aristocracy. Franklin was not a social revolutionary who advocated the violent overthrow of the ruling class. He was not a pro to Marxists. Rather he worked for a replacement of an English oriented than classically trained group of officeholders and merchants by the tradesmen and autisms of the colonial cities. Not being a spokesman for either

farmers or product areas. He showed little interest in common school education. He mentioned that only as a means of socializing and Anglicize and peasants and in connection with training T-shirt for this task in the academy and then only as a possible goal for would on the poorer sort. These educational interests the subject we're interested here lay in the academy and in the Philadelphia in the Philosophical Society the Academy gave Franklin an opportunity to destroy just it is up to gay sions to his fellow Philadelphians to aid the rising people of the middling classes the tradesman's small merchants of the shopkeepers of a city. But the Philosophical Society Frank being created for himself and all those who were free and easy. The opportunity to indulge their curiosity and inquisitiveness in the pursuit of science to

confront in nature a partner whose skill and complexity he could respect. As equal to his own and whose probity he could trust in the minds of his posterity However Franklin is remembered chiefly as a spokesman for utilitarian education. As a practical minded patron saint for the rising people the great American middle class for whom to this day. Education is the preferred means to affluence and status for them today. As for the leather apron men of the 18th century. Franklin remains their country's most popular educator.