ABSTRACT
Much like the Romans of antiquity, who associated education with the whole of life and used the word erudition to designate literary instruction and cultural formation, colonial educational writers never narrowed education's meaning to school instruction. Thus, the scope of an educational philosophy that appears on the first pages of American educational history is almost too broad to fit between the covers of a standard twentieth-century discourse on educational philosophy. Except in the most remote corners of a colony, most early Americans wanted their children to be literate. About two decades into the nineteenth century American scholars began to redefine the dimensions of the college course of study and, due likely to influence from Europe, to alter their assessment of philosophy. The relationship between religion and natural philosophy was frigid, due mainly to the erratic journey Aristotelian science took during its long interlude in the custody of Arabic translators and commentators.
