A Virtuous Education: Penn's Vision for Philadelphia Schools (review)

64Quaker History Friends to a radical self-examination regarding truth. It is also clear that Heron and Dandelion took different sides in the debate ofBritish Friends on whether to call themselves Christian. Both sides of the "double culture" were reflected in their 1 987 response to the World Council of Churches's "Lima" document on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry by their letter To Lima with Love (neither FGC nor FUM attempted a unified reply to this), and in accepting an invitation to join the new Council of Churches in Britain and Ireland. Dandelion interprets this action as psychological denial, defiance and depression over loss—of Friends' Christian identity. The August 1 997 Yearly Meeting session at Aberystwyth assumed that Friends would use the escape clause 2-b, welcoming churches whose unity was not doctrinal, to accept membership in interchurch dialogue. Lively debate continues on e-mail networks and in theBritishFn'eni/, which says "2-b or not 2-b, that is the question." Hugh BarbourEarlham College A Virtuous Education: Penn's Vision for Philadelphia Schools. By William C. Kashatus. Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill, 1997. xviii + 262 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. Paper, $15. As Westtown School approaches its 200th anniversary in 1999 and the national debate over public education intensifies, William C. Kashatus' comprehensive historical analysis of Quaker concern for education in Philadelphia is quite timely. From the beginning of Penn's "Holy Experiment ," Friends were concerned both with the propagation of faith among children of the Religious Society of Friends and responded to the needs of non-Friends. Based on Kashatus' doctoral studies at the University ofPennsylvania in the history of education, this book explores more than Penn's early vision of a radical transformation of society through applying a doctrine of the Inner Light and pushing universal education. The book does offer many intimate insights into Penn's thinking. (In fact, Kashatus has been living inside Penn for many years, as those who have seen his one-man shows can attest!) But the book is far more concerned with the exploration of the social history of Philadelphia and the tugs and puffs of a changing market economy on Friends' responses to the evolving culture around them. Those familiar with the current lively debate in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting over private vs. public education will be intrigued by the record of how far back in history that discussion goes. Those who categorize Friends as left-leaning, "capitalism-challenged" folks will be surprised to learn how Book Reviews65 prominent a role the Quaker wealthy elite played in promoting public education. Moral uplift for the whole society was certainly important in Friends' education equation, but Quakers pushed a curriculum grounded in the secular market economy! A Virtuous Education is helpful in many ways. It provides long passages on colonial history and Quaker involvement in it. Keen insight is given into the emerging market economy of post-Revolutionary USA and the impact its attendant social ills had on Quaker benevolence and concern for education. Character sketches of significant Friends such as Penn, Anthony Benezet, and Roberts Vaux involved in the educational debates enliven the narrative. Descriptions of the tussle between clotted Philadelphia Quaker hierarchy and the Friends challenging that authority in the 1800s are entertaining and shed light on the wider Quaker scene leading up to the separations of the 1 820s. Today there is an outcry for public education to provide a "cure-all" for social ills; the public and private sectors are clamoring for schools to "tool up" to provide workers for the new technological economy; others retreat from public education to ensure a "guarded, moral education" for their youth. Kashatus shows convincingly that times have not changed much! And as Philadelphia's public schools currently seek to address almost overwhelming difficulties, Kashatus addresses the question ofhow Friends might maintain their own schools with integrity while applying lessons of the past to supporting such initiatives as Schools Superintendent David Hornbeck's "Children Achieving" plan. (Hornbeck, incidentally, wrote the book's foreword.) There are areas that this book might have explored with some benefit. Much is made of Friends' "Inner Light" doctrine without much discussion about what that meant theologically...