Maine History Online

Academies for the Upwardly Ambitious

Academic institutions are historically grounded, called into being by changing circumstances reflecting larger regional, even national trends. Hence Bangor Theological Seminary opened in Hampden in 1814 (and relocated to Bangor five years later) as a Congregational response to the regional religious agitation that became known as the Second Great Awakening.

The Maine Maritime Academy was founded in Castine in 1941 in the context of military preparedness for a nation on the brink of World War II.

The largest shift in emphasis over the centuries has been from the belief in colleges as uplifting institutions providing training in moral leadership for the worthy few to viewing them as economic engines providing job skills and preparation for the increasingly democratic many.

This shift brought the Maine State College of Agriculture and the Mechanical Arts into being in 1865 as a land-grant institution to become the University of Maine, and the hub of the University of Maine System a century later.

State Normal Schools sprang into being in Farmington, Machias, Castine, Gorham, and elsewhere by the early 20th century, specializing in teacher education. This shift also sparked the creation of Maine's community colleges in Auburn, Bangor, Calais, Fairfield, Presque Isle, South Portland, and Wells, schools that became part of a coordinated system by the end of the 20th century.

A parallel shift in purpose occurred in elementary education with the common school reforms of the Jacksonian period democratizing access, and the many iterations of McGuffey's Readers standardizing curriculum.

Indeed, the history of American education is well known, and Maine largely followed its trajectory beginning with local "dame schools" and scattered private academies. Gorham, Lee, Hebron, Foxcroft, Hallowell, Thornton, Fryeburg, and Washington (in East Machias) Academies served their respective Maine communities, some from the colonial period forward, with several still in operation as private or semi-private boarding schools, some serving also as public high schools.

Towns supplemented existing private institutions with subscription or tax-supported schools (including "common schools," "grammar schools," and "free high schools" partially supported by the state by 1828), which in turn developed into districts. Compulsory attendance was mandated by 1875, although it applied only to those aged 9 to 15, and only for 12 weeks of the school year.

For Maine Indians, education was more complicated. When the federal government was sending Plains Indian youths to boarding schools to rid them of their "Indianness," Indians in Maine were educated on their reservations in schools operated by religious denominations. The curriculum emphasized the basics, and offered Native students a practical education along with religious instruction, with cultural assimilation as the subtext.

An indication of how times have changed lies in the state law (L.D. 291) that requires the teaching of Maine Native American history and culture in Maine schools, and the new tribal programs that prepare teachers for doing so.

By the second half of the 20th century, districts evolved into entire systems of elementary and secondary education funded in part by state and federal monies. Although one- and two-room schoolhouses still exist in smaller communities, calls for school consolidation and other reforms – usually favored by urban areas, resisted by rural ones – continue to roil Maine's public education landscape.

While numerous towns and every city in Maine boasted a girls' school of some sort by the early 19th century, and public schools allowed both boys and girls to attend, few colleges accepted women students.

An exception was the Westbrook Seminary, which opened in 1834 to serve males and females with a purpose to "promote piety and morality." In 1863, the school incorporated "a course of study for young ladies equivalent to that of any female college in New England." It began granting degrees.

Bates College, founded in 1855, was the first coeducational college in New England.

The Maine State College began to admit women 1872.

Three of Maine's premier private colleges — Colby (Waterville), Bates (Lewiston), and Bowdoin (Brunswick) — have attained broad recognition for social leadership and academic excellence. Bowdoin, for example, boasts impressive alumni in authors Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, President Franklin Pierce and Arctic explorers Robert Peary and Donald MacMillan. Bates roots its institutional virtue in its abolitionist founding by Freewill Baptists and its coeducational roots.

The state boasts many other institutions of higher education as well. The University of New England hosts the state's only medical school. The College of the Atlantic and Unity College are known for environmental education. The Maine College of Art focuses on visual art and design. These and other colleges provide education, but also make use of Maine's geography, climate, and other features to attract students as well as to enrich the curriculum.

The history of Maine's institution building is essentially a social history. Communities and families passed on their caretaking and educating roles to larger institutions, some private, some public, as needs increased and ideas about care and education changed.

The changes follow national trends, but also are geared to Maine's rural nature and its ideals of self-sufficiency, lack of pretense, and independence.