Because of the social structure, riches and administrative privilege were held by the elite—the Creoles—and secondary education was specially organized to serve them. Originally, secondary schools existed only in the monasteries, but when the Jesuits arrived in the late 1560s they founded important colegios (secondary institutions) to prepare students who wanted to enter the universities. There existed a few special colegios for the Indian nobility, such as the outstanding Santa Cruz de Tlaltelolco (1536) in Mexico and San Andres in Quito, both founded by the Franciscans for liberal arts studies. The Jesuits also established schools for the Indians, including El Príncipe (1619) in Lima and San Borja in Cuzco. All these schools were eventually closed because of the jealousy of the Spanish bureaucracy.
Though the Dominicans and Franciscans had been pioneers in education, the Jesuits became the most important teachers. They offered an efficient education, molded to contemporary requirements, in boarding schools, where the elite of the Spaniards born in the Americas studied. When their order was expelled in 1767, education was dealt a severe blow. In Portuguese Brazil, where the expulsion edict had been issued eight years earlier and where they had been the only educators, the royal chancellor was forced to make feeble attempts toward organizing a secular education. The Spanish king Charles III also took advantage of the occasion and founded some new institutions—the Academy of San Carlos, the School of Mining in Mexico, the Royal College of San Carlos in Buenos Aires—and modernized others.
Traditionally, Spanish universities had been organized on the model of either Paris or Bologna. The former was a universitas magistrorum, governed by professors organized in faculties, whereas the latter, as a universitas scholarium, received its corporate authority from the student body organized into “nations” that elected leaders to whom even the professors were subject. In 1551 the Council of the Indies authorized the founding of the first American universities, one in Mexico and one in Lima; academic government was placed in the hands of a claustro, or faculty, composed of the rector, the teachers, and the professors. Dedicated to general studies, the universities required a papal as well as a royal authorization.
The Royal Pontifical University of Mexico was the first to open its doors, in 1553. In the Spanish colonies, eventually 10 major and 15 minor universities came into existence. The latter were actually colleges—nine Jesuit, four Dominican, one Franciscan, and one Augustinian—which, because they were located far from the closest university (minimally 200 miles), were given special authorization to grant higher degrees. In Brazil no university existed, and Portuguese born in the colony had to go to Portugal for study.
Though in Spain itself law reigned supreme, in the Americas theology became the principal chair. Teaching was in Scholastic mode: it began with the reading of a Classical text; then the professor explained the thesis or proposition and offered arguments pro and contra so that a conclusion in accord with Roman Catholic dogma would result. Josefina Zoraida Vázquez French Québec
Soon after the founding of the Québec colony in 1608, the first organized educational activity began with missionary work among the Indians, carried on mainly by members of the Récollet and Jesuit orders and, from 1639, by Ursuline nuns. The first mission “school” recorded was that of Pacifique du Plessis, established in 1616 in Trois-Rivières (Three Rivers).
Christian efforts among the Indians were only a dimension of the religious purposes that framed educational activity in Old World France. Roman Catholic social philosophy allowed no compromise in the spiritual direction of education, and the doctrine and aim of religion coincided with that of education in both formal provisions and informal socialization patterns. At the general level, education was intended to produce religious conformation in thought and behaviour; at the higher level, education was to produce a progeny of clerical leadership. The paternalistic authority of church and monarch was carried from the Old to the New World, where it perhaps became even more pervasive because of the initial absence of alternative institutional developments. In education the exclusive role of the state (though not insignificant) was confined to financial subsidization. Authority for the institution of education was vested in the bishop of Québec.
Most of the nonreligious functions now associated with formal education were, in the 17th and 18th centuries, carried in other institutional sectors: the family, the community, the vocation. Just as there was no sharp break between church and school in formal learning, there was an easy transition between the information and behaviour necessary for work and life as transmitted in the course of various socialization experiences. Thus, the self-sustaining and isolated life of the farmers, the wild and solitary ways of the coureurs de bois (fur traders), the miniature of European manners and customs established in the cities by the gentry—all contained within their own cycle the educative procedures for life in that society. Education as a separate institution was understandably associated with learning not related to the business of life.
Institutional forms found in French colonial Québec included parish schools, girls’ schools, secondary schools, and vocational schools; and literacy records indicate that the provision for education was, in sum, comparable to that in the Old World. Parish or common schools were irregularly provided to afford the rudiments of literacy and religion. Because of the relative sparseness of educational resources, social classes were frequently mixed in these schools. Girls’ schools were established in Québec City by the Ursulines from 1642 and by the Sisters of the Congrégation de Notre Dame from 1659, with a rudimentary curriculum but including a characteristic “finishing” of social graces appropriate to the French Canadian girl. Vocational training was probably of least concern in this early period, but specific attempts to institutionalize this educational area were begun as early as 1668 with the establishment of the School for Arts and Trades in Saint Joachim for instruction in agriculture and certain trades.
Secondary education was offered by the Jesuits from 1636. The Jesuit college, offering early training for eventual entrance into the priesthood, was conducted along characteristically Jesuit lines: militaristic discipline in conduct, unequivocal authority in method, Classical curriculum in content. The Classical curriculum pattern, comprising basically Latin, Greek, mathematics, philosophy, and theology, was to be essentially preserved in the French Canadian development of collèges classiques for secondary education.
In 1663 Bishop Laval established in the city of Québec the grand séminaire as the apex of the educational “system,” as the first French Canadian “university.” Shortly thereafter he also established the preparatory petit séminaire.
Following the cession of Québec to Britain in 1763, education fell prey to political and cultural disruption. Although the British military and colonial government attempted to preserve the structure of French civil and religious institutions, the cultural integrity of the system was inevitably broken. Financial grants from France for education were discontinued and were not replaced by the British government; recruitment to religious orders was restricted; and educational development was obstructed by the continual association of educational plans with cultural-religious controversies. The end of the 18th century saw French Canadian education fall backward into neglect. Robert Frederic Lawson British America New England