Beneath the Ivory Tower: The Archaeology of Academia

15. Hail to Thee, O Alma Mater: Considering the Archaeology of Academia

15 Hail to Thee, O Alma Mater Considering the Archaeology of Academia Russell K. Skowronek Knowledge Is Good Motto of Faber College (National Lampoon’s Animal House, 1978) Education and America Fewer than twenty years after the Pilgrims established “Plimouth [sic],” private elementary and higher education was born in Massachusetts at the Boston Latin School in 1635 and Harvard in 1636. Less than a decade later the first genuinely public tax-supported schools were opened in Rehoboth in 1643 and Dedham in 1644. At that time half of the male populace of London and one-third of their rural neighbors were literate (Cohen 1974: 17). During the remaining 140 years of British rule eight more colleges (Table 15.1) and hundreds of public and parochial town schools were established throughout the colonies. After the American Revolution education figured prominently in the nascent United States. Even before the ratification of the Constitution the Northwest Ordinance specifically reserved a sixteenth of a township’s section to support education in the form of public elementary education. There students would learn the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic (Figure 15.1). Secondary school education for children aged twelve to eighteen was created by the end of the nineteenth century to address more advanced intellectual and vocational needs. During the first half of the nineteenth century the United States experienced a college building boom: more than two hundred degree-granting institutions were established by churches and state governments. While higher education in the colonial and early federal period was largely reserved for elite males, these new colleges opened their doors to a wider economic spec- Table 15.1. Colleges in colonial America Date Founded Original Name Modern Name Public or Private 1636 Harvard Harvard Private 1698 William & Mary William & Mary Public 1701 Collegiate School Yale Private 1740 University of Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania Private 1746 College of New Jersey Princeton Private 1754 King’s College Columbia University Private 1764 College of Rhode Island Brown University Private 1766 Queen’s College Rutgers Public 1769 Dartmouth Dartmouth Private Figure 15.1. A century of continuity in elementary education creates discernible patterns in the archaeological record. With few changes in clothing, the 1928 eighth-grade school room in Chicago, Illinois, of Dorothy Trevor and Walter Graham in 1928 (top); Helen Wyszpolski Skowronek’s firstgrade class in rural Silt, Colorado, circa 1966 (middle); and the sixthgrade classroom of Allison Smith in Edinburg, Texas, in 2008 (bottom) demonstrate consistency in American education from the era of the Civil War to the present. (Courtesy of Dennis M. and Margaret A. Graham; Helen Wyszpolski Skowronek; and E. Olga Skowronek) 276 Russell K. Skowronek trum of the free white male and female populace. In 1862 the federal government became directly involved in higher education with the passage of the Morrill Act, whereby states received profits from sales of federal lands for the creation of “land-grant” schools where agricultural, mechanical, and military sciences and the liberal arts were taught. By the turn of the twentieth century education as we currently construe it was taking shape. In addition to the three traditional professions of medicine , law, and theology, modern universities began conferring the doctor of philosophy degree within the context of a number of other graduate programs (Figure 15.2). During the 1920s and 1930s enrollments increased in tandem with the growing popularity of intercollegiate athletics. This was the era of Knute Rockne, Prohibition, and Rudy Vallee singing “Betty Co-Ed.” The new media of motion pictures and radio created a “shared” collegian culture in America. In this era Santa Clara had a number of All Americans on its football teams. When they played rival St. Mary’s College the games were Figure 15.2. The traditional gowns of these graduates from North Carolina State in 1940 (left) and from New York University in 1942 (right) are “timeless” aspects of the world of academe. (Courtesy of Lester John Skowronek and Helen Wyszpolski Skowronek) Hail to Thee, O Alma Mater 277 held not in Santa Clara or Moraga but in Kezar Stadium in San Francisco in front of a crowd of 60,000 (McKay 2002: 147). While the documentary record includes these activities, it does not recall those of their contemporary, “Suitcase Sullivan.” Sullivan was an entrepreneur dealing in alcohol during Prohibition. According to one oral history I heard, he would leave a suitcase filled with “booze” at the base of the cross in...