The name is absent

266 History of Universities

as the first progressive school in the Colonies. For the board
of twenty-four trustees, only two or three of whom had a
university education, fell in easily with Franklin’s enlight-
ened theory that the time had come to break away from
exclusive attention to Latin and Greek. The Philadelphia
Academy anticipated the elective system by offering three
distinct courses, or “schools” as they were called; the Latin
School, with a regular classical curriculum, intended for
future doctors and divines ; the English School, for the aver-
age boy who wanted modern languages, English composi-
tion, history, and geography; and the Mathematical School,
for future surveyors, sea captains, and Ben Franklins.

At this time the project of a college in New York was the
subject of public discussion, to which two pamphlets: “Some
Thoughts on Education” and “A General Idea of the College
of Mirania” were contributed by a twenty-four-year-old
alumnus of the University of Aberdeen, who was tutoring in
a gentleman’s family on Long Island. William Smith, as
this young scholar was named, was an adept at dressing up
well-worn educational theories in a way to make them seem
novel and progressive. His description of the idyllic “Col-
lege of Mirania” differed only in detail from the curricula
in vogue at Aberdeen and Cambridge two hundred and fifty
years before; but it was so well expressed that the interest
of Benjamin Franklin was aroused, a meeting between them
was arranged, and as a result, the homespun philosopher
persuaded his trustees to appoint William Smith Provost of
Philadelphia Academy, with the special function of teaching
Liberal Arts such as “Logick, Rhetorick, Ethicks and Nat-
ural Philosophy” to advanced students. Smith accepted;
and in May, 1754, began this advanced instruction, cor-
responding to the four classes of Harvard, Yale, and
Princeton. The next year, the Trustees obtained a new

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