The High Church Origins of the American Boarding School

Abstract

Historians of education have deepened our understanding of the development of American boarding schools by challenging he popular view of them as straightforward continuations of New England academies or as imitations of British public schools and by tracing their actual roots back to a distinctive series of institutions that began in the United States in the 1820s, ‘30s, and ’40s. Sociologists have increased our awareness of the social and economic conditions that contributed to the flourishing of these schools as upper-class domains during the Gilded Age.1It remains for the student of religious history to point out the close connection that existed between the prototypical American boarding schools and representatives of the Episcopal High Church tradition, and to attempt to demonstrate that this association was no coincidence but that the schools were themselves concrete expressions of the High Church outlook.