The Friend
In 1830, a series of editorials appeared in The Friend, an Orthodox Philadelphia Quaker publication, by an author signed only as Ascham. The editorial suggested the need for a liberal education that would also engage with Quaker values. The series encouraged the Society of Friends to consider founding an institution of higher education with a liberal arts curriculum specifically for Quaker young men. This dialogue among the Society of Friends eventually manifested in the founding of Haverford School, which later became Haverford College. The aims and rhetoric of Ascham’s editorials provided a strong foundation for the ways in which the Board of Managers framed the mission of Haverford and also the ways in which students constructed the narratives that documented their literary societies.
“In the first place, then, I assume as a fundamental position, that the amount and variety of knowledge, which a youth may acquire at school, ought not so much to be considered, as the moral and intellectual discipline and culture which it is the chief business of every sound and well compacted system of education to instill.”