War-time Education
Unlike the majority of schools across the country, Episcopal did not change its curriculum at a large scale. The German class was retained, while the readings for English and History mostly stayed the same. Below is the list of English and History readings, according to the School Catalogue of the 1917-1918 school year.
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First Form:
English: Oral and Written English, Book I. Johnson’s Readers. Compositions. [Parallel Readings] The Sketch Book, Part I. The Deerslayer. Hawthorne’s Wonder Book. Ivanhoe. Yemassee. Dickens Christmas Carol.
History: Foster’s Story of the Bible. U.S. History--Elementary.
Second Form:
English: Oral and Written English, Book II. Graded Classics. Elementary Composition. Williams’ Literature. Compositions. [Parallel Readings] Lays of Ancient Rome/ Tales from Shakespeare. The Talisman. Last of the Mohicans. Lady of the Lake. Franklin’s Autobiography.
History: Foster’s History of the Bible. U.S. History--Elementary.
Third Form:
English: Hitchcock’s Enlarged Practice Book (begun). Blaisdell's English and American Literature. Painter’s Poets of the South. Compositions and abstracts. [Parallel Readings] Vicar of Wakefield. Lorna Doone. Marmion. De Quincey’s Joan of Arc and the English Mail Coach. Quentin Durward. Poe’s Tales and Poems (selected).
History: Burgess’ The Life of Christ. Myers’ Ancient History. The Rise of the Macedonian Empire.
Fourth Form:
English: Shoemaker’s Practical Elocution. Chaucer’s Prologue and Nonne Prestes Tale. Hitchcock’s Enlarged Practice Book. Pancoast’s Representative English Literature. Essays. Milton’s Shorter Poems. [Parallel Readings] Weber's Myth of Greece and Rome. The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. The Pilgrim's progress. Last Days of Pompeii. The Spy. The House of Seven Gables.
History: Walker’s Essentials of English History. Creighton's Age of Elizabeth. Hale’s Fall of the Stuarts.
Fifth Form:
English: Canby’s Rhetoric. Pace’s American Literature. The Idylls of the king. Essays. Carlyle’s Essay on Burns or Macaulay’s Life of Johnson. [Parallel Readings] Guerber’s Myths of Northern Lands. A Tale of Two Cities. Spenser’s Faerie Queene (selections). Sila Marper. The Southern Poets (selections). Palgrave’s Golden Treasury.
History:Robinson’s Medieval and Modern Times. Longman’s Frederick the great. Hazen's Modern European history
Sixth Form:
English: Macbeth and two other plays of Shakespeare. Pancoast’s Standard English Poems. Johnson’s Forms of English Poetry. Exercises in Poetics. Baskervill’s Southern Writers. Burke on Conciliation or Washington’s Farewell Address and Webster’s First Bunker Hill Oration. Essays.
[Parallel Readings] Sesame and Lilies. Essays of Elia. Selection from Browning, Tennyson and Lanier.
History: Forman’s Advanced American History. Hart’s Formation of the Union. Wilson’s Division and Reunion. Forman’s Advanced Civics.
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While the curriculum had limited change over the war to propagandize the Allies war effort, it is evident that the existing courses strongly favored Britain and France from the onset. In history class, the Episcopal students learned about the English history, the House of Stuarts, and Queen Elizabeth before studying the European history. The same anglophilic attitude carried onto the literary selections. Students read from numerous English authors, such as Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, Dickens, Guerber, among others. Granted, many of their writings were considered classics and English was the primary language of the students, but the lack of translated work limited the students’ perspectives.
Also, patriotism was an important theme of the coursework, evident in work such as First Bunker Hill Oration and Joan of Arc. Sesame and Lilies even went so far to promote Chauvinism, popular in the Victorian Era. When the students studied American literature, there was an emphasis on the Southern heritage, as the students had to read selections of Southern poets and authors. The in-class readings were supplemented by extracurricular lectures and reading activities. For instance, in February, 1917, Mr. Reade read to the students “Marse Chan,” a Lost Cause literature that glorified the Antebellum South, praised the chivalry of the Civil War, and depicted a stereotypical African American slave loyal to his former master. According to Whisper, Mr. Reade “received from his audience such praise as only real merit produce.” The emphasis on the South and Lost Cause further motivated the students to fight bravely in defense of the home.
In many sense, the Administration did not need to change its curriculum, as its preexisting education was already biased towards the Allied.