Shaker Education Essay ⋆ Education Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The United Society of Believers in the Second Coming of Christ, commonly known as the Shakers, came to British North America in 1774 from Manchester, England. Mother Ann Lee, the founder, and a small group of followers established their first community near Albany, New York, the following year. The basic tenets of the Shakers were spiritualism, millennialism, common property, celibacy, and pacifism.

During the last two decades of the eighteenth century and the first two of the nineteenth century, the Shakers were successful in converting several thousand people to their sect. They were aided by the broad sweep of the Second Great Awakening and the widespread attention given to millennialism. Entire families converted, bringing a large number of children into newly founded communities located first in the New England region and then spreading into Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. At their peak, the Shakers had eighteen major communities and perhaps as many as 10,000 believers.

The large number of Shaker children required that thought be given by the church leadership to the issues of childrearing in societies characterized by the rigid separation of the sexes. Mother Ann, herself illiterate, died in 1784 and left few details as to the care of children other than the general admonition that they were to be loved and raised in the tenets of Shaker pietism. Married couples who entered the Shaker life were separated. Babies at their mothers’ breasts stayed with their mothers until they were weaned and then were placed in common nurseries under the supervision of unrelated caregivers. By age five or six, children were separated into either the girls’ order or the boys’ order, where they occupied separate quarters under adult supervision. The caregivers of these orders were selected with great care in order to provide behavior models. A communal society with a commitment to pacifism necessitated teaching cooperative social behaviors. Quarrels had to be settled quickly, conflicts resolved, and harmony achieved. To the Shakers, this was part of a concept known as “Gospel Order.”

Work was a central tenet in the Shaker belief system. Mother Ann’s most famous dictum to her following was “Put your hands to work and your hearts to God.” This gospel of work led to survival of the communities in the difficult years and to prosperity in their latter years. Children were given chores and tasks to perform commensurate with their abilities. Their physical workload was reduced during the winter months when they attended school.

The Shakers adopted policies about formal schooling very similar to the German pietists, who generally regarded an eighth-grade education as sufficient. Too much formal learning could lead to intellectualism, which was injurious to spiritualism. As the American Common School crusade swept New England and the Northwest Territorial states, the Shakers had enough people in their various communities to establish local public schools in accordance with state directives. These schools were taught by Shakers who themselves had received some education before conversion, and the Shaker school districts followed the state laws in regard to teacher licensure, the curriculum, the school calendar, and the mandate for periodic visitation by external school authorities. In the early decades, the students in these schools were almost exclusively Shaker children. As the Shaker population began to decline in the mid-nineteenth century, district boundary lines were sometimes extended to include children who lived near the community in order to preserve the schools and make them financially possible.

The Shaker school districts levied taxes and financially supported their schools. The quality of the schools was deemed to be well above average by outside authorities. The Shakers spent more money on education than their neighbors and gave the same attention to school facilities as they did all of their building projects that were publicly regarded as well planned, well built, well equipped, and well maintained.

Daily life in Shaker schools mirrored the larger society. Bible reading and the recitation of prayers was common; national holidays were observed; textbooks common to all country schools were used; recess, plays and pageants, and outings were standard; and there was no effort at converting non-Shaker children to community beliefs. Shaker children received their religious training outside of school. This pattern lasted throughout most of the nineteenth century.

Within Shaker communities, children were greatly indulged. Corporal punishment was virtually nonexistent, and work expectations were reasonable. Cookies, candies, and small gifts were commonly given, and special attention was given to providing the children with frequent excursions, community celebrations, and picnics. Upon attaining their majority, usually at age eighteen for women and twenty-one for men, the decision to sign the covenant and become a full member of the society was presented. Few chose to remain, and of that number, many were to “apostisize,” meaning they left the community at a later time.

The national efforts to “professionalize” American public education that were under way with the beginning of the twentieth century had a deleterious effect on Shaker education. Chief among such reforms were state laws requiring the college training of teachers. Dropping rates of the conversion of educated persons and Shaker convictions about the sufficiency of an eighth-grade education soon placed several of the Shaker communities in the position of either hiring lay teachers or closing their schools.

Shaker schools were also hard hit by the long-term effect of celibacy—they were not producing future generations of Shaker children to attend their schools. Efforts at taking in orphans and foster children did not solve the dilemma. By the 1930s, the few Shaker communities that were not already closed could not support schools, and efforts at taking in orphans and foster children were abandoned.

Today, only one Shaker community remains. Located in Sabbathday Lake, Maine, it was originally founded in 1794. Four Shakers—two women and two men—continue the Shaker pilgrimage. Their schoolhouse closed in the 1930s and has since been renovated into a library and archives.

Bibliography:

Andrews, E. (1953). The people called Shakers. New York: Dover.
Stein, S. (1992). The Shaker experience in America: New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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