LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C., March 28, 1912.

SIR: No comprehensive history of education in America has yet been written. Until quite recently there has been little general interest in the growth and development of educational institutions, systems, and practices in this country. We have been busy building new institutions, making and remaking systems, and trying to adapt our practices to the needs of our rapidly-growing political and industrial democracy. Our interests have been in the present and the future. There has been little time for gathering, organizing, and interpreting the materials of history. There must soon come, however, an insistent demand for such work. No people can afford to remain ignorant of its past life and the means by which its institutions have grown. Everywhere history, truthfully recorded and rightly interpreted, becomes the best guide to progress. This is true in education no less than in government and economics.

Before any comprehensive history can be written, he materials must be collected and verified. Little of this preliminary work has yet been done. It must be accomplished by many industrious students working patiently at the task in different sections of the country. It should be done for every section of the country while the material is available and before it is permanently lost.

Several years ago some valuable studies of this kind were made under the direction of the Bureau of Education, and the results were published in separate bulletins or in the Annual Reports of the Commissioner, but for want of funds to do the work thoroughly and because of more important duties, they were discontinued. Recently Dr. William Heard Kilpatrick, Assistant Professor of the History of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, has made a very thorough and accurate study of some of the Dutch schools of New Netherland and colonial New York. Much of the material used in this has since been destroyed by the fire in the capitol at Albany. Dr. Kilpatrick has kindly offered his manuscript, which has much. present and permanent value, to the Bureau of Education, and I recommend that it be published as a bulletin of this bureau.

Very respectfully,

The SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

P. P. CLAXTON,
Commissioner.

PREFACE.

The scope of this work is probably indicated with sufficient clearness by the title. There were in New Netherland both Dutch and English settlements; the schools of the former only are included in the study. For a long time after the English took over the colony, the Dutch clung to their language and customs. The effort herein made is to trace the history of these Dutch schools, beginning with their first transplanting from the United Netherlands and continuing down to the American Revolution, by which time the Dutch population was in large measure merged in the common American stock.

The investigation has been made with varying degrees of exhaustiveness. So far as concerns the New Amsterdam schools and the part played by the central colonial authorities in educational affairs, it is believed that few important references have been overlookedthat is, in so far as the material exists at present in America or has been made available in Europe. Likewise, the New Amsterdam school, as continued in the school of the New York (City) Reformed Dutch Church, is probably presented with approximate fullness. The Dutch villages, however, have not been treated with the same thoroughness. Their records, even where they survive, are on the whole relatively inaccessible. Flatbush only has been presented with even tolerable adequacy. Much remains to be done in the way of bringing together the materials for a history of these village schools. If this bulletin will in any degree lead to so desirable a result, one main purpose of publication will be attained.

Of those who have rendered assistance a few only can be named. The authorities of the Flatbush Reformed Dutch Church kindly granted me access to their manuscript records. Dr. F. L. van Cleef, of the Kings County Hall of Records, has helped me with these church records as well as with the public records in his care. To Mr. A. J. F. van Laer, the archivist of the State of New York, I am indebted for invaluable assistance along many lines. In addition to help with the colonial records under his care, he has read my entire manuscript and has made many suggestions which I have been glad to accept. To Prof. Paul Monroe I am indebted for the standards of scholarship which I have sought to embody in this work. To the encouragement and untiring cooperation of my wife I am due a debt. beyond the knowledge of those who have not received similar help.

W. H. K.