William Elliot Griffis

“ Besides having the oldest school in the United States, still in daily operation, the Dutch of New Netherland organized and maintained academies and colleges in the Raritan, Hudson, and Mohawk valleys, most of which have been in continuous existence to the present time. Modern immigrants from Holland in the West show the same love for education. ”

“ THE Dutch came to America from it country in which printing was free and books worn cheap. Public schools, for all children to the age of twelve, sustained by taxation and giving free elementary instruction, had existed in most of alto towns from the Middle Ages. There was, besides these, a large number of Church schools, in which the young people of the upper classes received instruction in Latin and the humanities. ”

“ The steady work of the good men, done without the noise of trumpets, is left unnoticed. The school which Roelandsen began on Manhattan in 1633 continued with varying success, and was maintained at the public expense, until the downfall of New Netherland in 1664. The English rulers cared little or nothing about public elementary instruction supported by taxation, and they swept away the Dutch public schools. Then the Dutch school on Manhattan was taken over by the Church, and has ever since been maintained in unbroken continuity. ”

“ They have left their names on the landscape, as well as in the records, and their history is in the main highly creditable. From modern writers, who seek out the odd and curious, the incompetent and disreputable pedagogues have attracted much notice. ”